Education failures rooted in insular cultural mindset

The combined might of the government, Education Ministry, benevolent missionaries, free-books-for-all foundations, corporate scholarships, prizes, online learning and legions of foreign teachers, including celebrities like Andrew Biggs, can’t seem to put the Humpty Dumpty of broken educational standards back together again in Thailand. 

Meanwhile other countries in Asia are doing so much more with far fewer resources.  

The solution lies in discipline, hard work and dedication. Effective academic learning is built on reviewing, rephrasing and clarifying information so as to retain it in the mind. 

To learn English also requires immersion in the culture from which the language springs. For Thai students, that means temporarily suspending their attachment to their own culture so that they can explore fresh perspectives and embrace new ideas from elsewhere. You can witness this immersion at any class for French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese or German, where the language is typically not separated from the culture. 

However, that temporary suspension can be all but impossible in a culture where students are accustomed to penalty-free cheating, copying, poor classroom habits including the chronic use of phones, chatter, and a lack of motivation and accountability. Neither does the tendency to solve problems with either a “mai pen rai” attitude or bullying behaviour die easily – even among educators. 

These are all entrenched attitudes of a cultural mindset.

Dig deeper for the answers. They are everywhere.

Niels Jeffreys