After all is said, it is really who you are, what you can achieve, what results you get and acting accordingly in any line of work. If you don’t make the sale the you are out and that’s how it should be with teaching except that the deal is already done because when it comes to exam time everyone passes. If they start with this kind of educational corruption that takes place at almost every international school that affiliate themselves with overseas and use their name for profitable gain, and stop the everyone passes method then you can have a real evaluation of all your teachers and students who represent the standard of the school they are at. If you are churning out students who cannot speak a word of english then you are quite simply deceiving the paying parents who are your customers. Parents are beginning to ask more questions, they want better results. Schools will hire teachers in desperation to fill the positions to show they are able.
Unfortunately Thais cannot face failure so this means Joe Bloggs and his dog are in with a chance of getting a job. Schools should have their own methods of evaluating for the good of the school and not the good of their pockets. Unknowingly and not realising that if they were to fail students then this would give their school a better name and more custom because the parents would know that they only want successful students who are willing to learn. The cliche that teachers are well respected in this country is what we call absolute b==locks in my country. The children in these school have no discipline, no sense of achievement and only know that their parents will be buying them the new x-box as soon as it is out.
Thai teachers constantly fail to support the falang teachers in most schools because of the jealousy factor which means they do not care about the students education in the least. As long as the pay check gets through who is to care, who is going to ask question coz the MOE certainly won’t because they are paid to look the other way. They seem to do it ass half backward here. The Presidents of all the top universities here sit on the government board determining the country’s future and education. They bring in the laws to make it difficult to obtain an education at a young age and make it more expensive as you get older.
As Mr.Thaksin said “we should invest our money at the Grassroots level”. Now all the big shakers are draining the availability of education from the countryside and making it more exclusive to Bangkok which enables them to raise the fees through the roof. Let us not argue who is the better teacher ESL or B.A, but let us focus on competence of the teacher, school and student. No results - no custom. Create a real standard and a truthful standard and build from the bottom at the grassroots level. For all his faults and allegations of corruption, maybe Mr. Thaksin had it right. When they talk of corruption, we know that one evil will only be replaced by another, its just a case of who is less corrupt. If children are to be educated in this manner then that is how they will act accordingly when are released into the world of reality. They will lose plenty of face if they go to an interview in the west with their degree from a University with everyone passes motto.
JP Robinson
