Thai Education System Needs Reform, Thailand.

I want to thank my good mate Vern, over at Thaipulse.com for sending me this link. I hadn’t read this story because my computer gave up the go yesterday and I had to put in a new power source this afternoon and now I am back to normal again.

If you are a long time reader then you know what I do here in Thailand, a teacher at a private school. I have had a few ups and downs along the way and complained about the Thai school system that I still have so much trouble getting my head around things at times.

Well, this article, Teachers Fail Exams on Own Subjects was a very good laugh for me. It sounds terrible but I also hope it really puts a massive fire rocket up the arse of the incompetent people running the Ministry of Education (MOE) for so long.

Now the minister of education has said this, ''Even teachers fail, so how can we raise the quality of students?''

Why did he say this? Because of this. Thai teachers had to sit tests for the first time and the results are below.

The Office of Basic Education (Obec) said up to 88% of 3,973 teachers who specialise in computer sciences failed the test. A high number of failing teachers was also found in biology (86% of 2,846), maths (84% of 5,498), physics (71% of 3,487), chemistry (64% of 3,088) and astronomy and earth sciences (63% of 529).

These numbers are so sad, but I am in no way surprised. For years I have said the current Thai way of teaching, mostly rote learning is dead and needs to be changed. Older teachers need to be retrained and use more current methods that engage the learner and actually make them think.

I have walked into a classroom and a full whiteboard of writing is to be copied into a notebook. The whole lesson is taken by students writing and the teacher sitting at a desk marking work. The students will learn nothing from this.

But there was some good news, teachers at the junior high level earned high marks. Obec said 58% of 14,816 teachers teaching maths were categorised in the grade A group with marks of more than 80%, while 54% of 13,385 teachers did very well in sciences.

So the year 7 to 9 students are safely in the hands of brilliant minds while the older students are being taught by people who have degrees in these fields but apparently know nothing about their subject.

I will say this though; these tests are really, really poorly put together a lot of the time. I have sat them over the years and some of the mistakes and questions that have no right answer have been many.

I am not standing on my soap box claiming to be the best teacher, or even claim I know all there is to the English language, far from it. I do not have a degree in teaching.

Often when I am teaching my year 12 class, and a question is raised or something is unclear. I have to admit that I am not sure of the correct answer, write it down and then find the answer, why this is correct and inform the students in the next class.

I still remember the words from a senior teacher, one who has much experience saying in front of a class. “Thai students cannot create.”

This came after presenting a new topic to students and trying to elicit what knowledge they might already have on the subject about to be presented to them.

I am being truthful when I say that the majority of teachers believe this and spoon feed the students the information, no student input, no audio, visual, or tactile approaches are used.

Using audio, visual and tactile or kinesthetic aids are so important for engaging students. You can engage what they are about to learn without a word. A few pictures, sounds or something for them to touch will produce all sorts of engagement from students.

I never want to stand in front of my students for more than a minute of non stop talking as I will lose them. I want to use any methods that limit my talking and get the students contributing to the topic at hand.

I don’t want to feed them, but they feed me their knowledge, real life experiences they may have had or even seen on TV or in a book. I want to draw this out of them.

Is this the best way to teach? I have no idea! I believe it works as my students engage when they see a flashcard and hands shoot up to say the answer, or a sound and the guesses of what made it start.

It is like a reading class, students have a long text. The teacher tells the student to read the story. The students pull dictionaries out and start translating most words they see. This is counterproductive to me. Or they ask individual students to read out loud, it is laboured, mispronunciations that the teacher corrects each time and so forth. So the teacher stands there and reads, this is so boring to students and you could be speaking any language in the world.

For learners of a second language many will find this daunting. I will find stories that have voice to them. It isn’t because the students cannot read, though many cannot. I want students to follow and hear the words pronounced, see the words and hear correct pronunciation. I want them to expand vocabulary, I have said again and again to my students that they need a good basic vocabulary and actually know what the words mean, so they can be used in everyday situations.

So many students in Thailand are taught to be parrots, they are rote learnt to say whatever they are being taught, but understanding what they are learning and then using this vocabulary in a real situation, just is not possible.

If I want to see, if a student can read I will conduct a reading test. But this usually only confirms what I already know. Read a paragraph, a rubric is used so that no bias is engaged. Fluency, pronunciation, punctuation, tones and so forth is evaluated. For students to read, they need to know the vocabulary, the pronunciation or be able to syllabify words so that they can be pronounced.

Often when I have a word students are having trouble with, I write it on the board and then have the students try and break it into syllables so it can be pronounced. At times it is really funny hearing a word pronounced incorrectly. But the students enjoy and engage and eventually hear the correct pronunciation. The meaning they can look up in a dictionary.

Okay way off track, back to the failing teachers. The best part was this and made me also grin, “about 95% of about 40,000 directors (school bosses) failed the tests."

And many wonder why there are many problems in the Thai education system. Could I fix it? No chance in hell. I don’t think in the next century it could be fixed as the false grades, smoke and mirror charades will continue as the importance of “face” is too prevalent.

A school to fail, or keep back poorly performing students, retiring teachers that may have passed used by dates would blacken the school, make ripples in the glassy waters.

Brunty