We are a nation driven by the lowest common denominator
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Never mind that the world is going to have a "global" school where any school anywhere on this green planet will be able to benchmark itself against the best, Thailand still goes on with its stock faith in deus ex machina - the belief that divine interv
That our students rank among the lowest in Asean nations on international standard tests like TOEFL, and a large number of our teachers flunk the subject matters a lot. The fact that they are still teaching does not raise any red flag for policy-makers or administrators.
In our current curricular smorgasbord of gobbledygook education, there is no subject on civic or ethical duties and responsibilities, no subject that provides a right balance to the rising sense of right and entitlement among our youngsters. It is not an accident that our children genuinely believe that corruption is acceptable. To them it means the difference between a life of want and a life of abundance. It’s a no brainer.
If one stands in line at a skytrain station behind a group of young uber fashion-conscious girls, or behind one talking into the earpiece of the latest model smartphone, one is likely to hear the kind of language that could make you squirm. They are the lewdest of the lewd. Nor are they are about anything that makes an iota of sense.
Girls are drinking and smoking just like boys, and they view sex just as boys normally do – as casual. Promiscuity is the norm; sometimes a one-night stand is a perfect exchange for a meal at a five-star hotel restaurant, so they can brag about it later. Liberty and freedom must be total, unabated, unencumbered and more. They are not concerned, or not made aware, that in the real world there can be no such thing – not without a hefty price. Our youngsters are utterly preoccupied with physical looks. Boys and girls are undergoing surgeries they view as necessary to make them feel more worthy. The whimsical world of their young life does not teach them anything of real value.
On a national level, the situation is alarming. We are turning into a land devoid of strategic culture. Everything is ad hoc and lassez-faire. National interests and investments comingle conveniently and purposely with personal interests and financial gains. The floodways are not needed, as correctly pointed out by a group of Japanese non-profit organisations, for the prevention of future floods. They nonetheless will be built because they entail adjacent roads and the huge real estate profits for the cronies of the powers-that-be that have purchased the land with the prior knowledge of the planned construction.
We do not spend much time thinking about which direction we want our nation to go in or become. Just to get by, only on a daily basis, is good enough an objective and goal for most of us.
While a country like Singapore defies the odds of its DNA and limited natural resources, and becomes an unordinary, sensible nation, we betray the vision and wisdom of our ancestors and strive to be just ordinary, with no lofty inspiration or aspiration. It is too much trouble to think too hard.
How many times have you walked into a store and the salesperson proceeds to tell you proudly and self-knowingly that what you are looking at is a pair of pants, when it is obvious to any human eye that you are looking at a pair of pants? How many times are you told that the colour of the particular shirt to which you seem to be paying attention is blue, when it is obviously not yellow or pink? How many times have you been to a fruit stand and the vendor tells you all the names of the Thai fruits in your plane of view, as if you had never seen any of them before in your life? Why do so many people feel that they have to say something when they do not have anything to say?
How many times have the questions in the official standardised A Net and O Net tests represented a challenge to the words “knowledge”, “education”, and even “sensibility”? Why does it happen year after year after year, and nobody takes the real responsibility of providing our children with a genuinely high standard of education. Why is so little done to enable Thais to compete effectively in a world that is becoming intensely competitive?
Why can we not comprehend the fact that if we can do anything we want, with no ethical or civic constraint, then the country will become an existential problem – an empty space that has no walls and no floor?
If our people are devoid of self-reflection, self-doubt and the ability to criticise, we will soon be faced with the worst facets of absolute rejection. If we allow ourselves to be driven by the lowest common denominator, with no real core values or sense of purpose, we will make ourselves a dumbed-down nation as we watch others passing us by, fooling ourselves that this is the very best we can do.
