The deepening shame of the Thai classroom

A fresh survey on Thai schools by an independent organisation deserves the Education Ministry’s urgent attention. More than half of the schoolchildren polled by the non-profit organisation Sprouts School said a teacher had struck them sometime within the last year. It’s an alarming revelation and must be prioritised as one of the biggest problems in need of resolution, especially when teachers are supposed to be part of ongoing reform efforts.

 Education Minister Dapong Ratanasuwan has vowed to complete reforms within a year in six areas, one of which is “teacher development”. He needs to see this survey. His ambition might be too far-reaching if many of our teachers are still resorting to cruel and outdated methods of punishment.

  Misbehaving children should be punished, but there are better and more productive means of discipline than caning or a slap. All too often we have seen teacher aggression on display in surreptitious videos leaked to the social media. This has to stop.

One of the more disturbing findings in the survey is that most of the students, ages 12 to 17, feel there is nothing wrong with their teachers hitting them. It is wrong. Striking a student only teaches that youngster that violence is valid, that might is right. It’s an archaic approach to education that has no place in today’s world. 

In this day and age we seek out students who show creativity, the ability to think outside the box, the better to become global entrepreneurs. Striking a child is a sure way to curtail that creativity, since the only discipline it instils is the discipline of silence, the withdrawal of expression. It was long the aim of educators to produce an obedient workforce, but progressive school reform has shifted the objective instead to nurturing talent and skill by encouraging expression and exchange. When harsh punishment lingers in the classroom, we will have disciplined students, but none will be able to think for themselves, let alone break new ground in science, engineering or the arts.

It would certainly take the ministry more than a year to tackle this and other problems involving teachers. The same survey found that teachers are fostering corruption. Fifty-two per cent of the students polled said their teachers had offered better grades in exchange for favours, such as handling per

 sonal errands for them. Six per cent said they had paid their teachers money for improved grade scores. Two per cent had offered them sex.

No government has ever been able to bring about the reforms in education that everyone agrees are needed. On the contrary, the problems involving wayward teachers have become chronic. Among the changes Dapong is trying to make is the opening of 4,000 teaching positions to graduates of five-year education programmes. The idea addresses the shortfall in classroom personnel, which results in classes of unwieldy sizes, but increasing quantity ignores the crisis in quality. To its credit, the ministry is also hoping to recruit more capable teachers, but that will surely be the greater of the challenges it faces.

It’s clear that the government must do more to improve the quality of teaching. Educators who are prepared to strike a student or accept bribes are plainly not interested in the nobler goals of their profession. And meanwhile those who do care about giving kids a sound start in life struggle to cope on wages that patently fail to reflect the importance of their work.

As difficult as his task is, if Dapong truly hopes to bring about structural reform, then teaching quality should be his top priority. Without teachers of high morals and standards, no amount of changes to the curriculum and no amount of modern technology will cure the disease that afflicts our schools. Where past governments have failed, it’s to be hoped that this one might achieve a passing grade – and not become, as the song warns, just another brick in the wall.