Skirting around the problem

Why do some in Thailand choose to focus on an issue that has little or nothing to do with Thailand's problems in education?

I read in The Nation this week about something that somehow appears with the regularity of similar yet irrelevant stories I find in the UK during the summer months when parliament is closed. Journalists there call it "the silly season" because, in the absence of any real news, journalists, social commentators, and media personalities resort to stories that were formerly presented in editorial meetings, but were rejected because they were probably a little frivolous, a tad lightweight, and also because, at the time, there were probably other more pressing stories to report.

Getting a dressing down

The current story doing the rounds here is thus an old chestnut because it has little or no bearing on the quality of education in Thailand and, if you've been here a while, you will again have noticed the usual pre-occupation with the length of female students' skirts' as if somehow that has anything to do with their performance in their respective schools.

This was the headline:

The Office of the Private Education Commission (OPEC) has warned private vocational schools they will be shut down for a week if they have students who are inappropriately dressed.

You could have, tongue in cheek, remodeled this to say they have "warned the privates to watch their privates", but irreverence aside, why oh why are we routinely subjected to this almost petty insistence that female students dress in a way that suits middle aged males whose idea of fashion and grasp of modernity involves having a latte once a month in Starbucks? In an age when people are supposed to have democratic rights and freedoms, which of course also means freedom of the body, why are they routinely ignored in favour of a conservative policy that seeks to deny them any clothing rights at all? And why, if these colleges truly are private, are they having these external judgments passed over them?

Just as important, why are these banal topics regularly raised when so many critical and more pressing problems are evident in the Thai education system? What about the huge shortfall of qualified teachers? The embarrassingly low salary offered to them? The results of tests for teachers which showed the vast majority in the sciences failed tests in their own subjects? The tests conducted on headmasters and school executives where 95% failed them? The fact that many vocational college students regularly fight each other with knives and guns and people die? Why pregnant teens are expelled from school as a form of punishment? Why recently a young Bangkok University student was stabbed to death by other students in a public place? Why are these problems not being given priority instead of trying to punish young teen girls for doing what all normal healthy girls in all countries do anyway?

The reasoning

The apparent logic behind these rules can be found in what the current Office of the Private Education Commission (OPEC) director Charnwit Thapsuwan said, which was that his office had received public complaints about students in Bangkok wearing inappropriate uniforms - especially skirts that were "too short". Mai oh mai! Young girls in short skirts! In Bangkok! Whatever next! You have to marvel at a country that produces places like Nana Plaza and Patpong, where prostitution and gambling are illegal but which still flourish, and where corruption is so ingrained in the social fabric that a poll found that most Thais don't actually mind corruption as long as the people committing it - politicians, policemen, poo yai leaders of industry etc. - actually do something for the country as well!

Charnwit Thapsuwan also said that "...students who overly expose their flesh could become the victims of crime...", and he also encouraged parents to watch what clothes their children were wearing. This is a bit like asking Jack and the Beanstalk to look after a trillion ants below his feet because the modern parent of today has little or no time to be acting like a "clothes policeman/woman", checking on a daily basis whether their children are appropriately dressed or not. And anyway, as soon as they leave the house, out comes the mini skirt and the tight blouse so it is impossible to police such a policy.

Moreover, when a thriving sex industry is allowed to flourish, it is hardly surprising that young women are overly sexualized at a young age because, in failing to clamp down on such illegal activities like prostitution, the government is sending a message, albeit subliminally, that dressing in a sexual manner is ok.

Double standards

These double standards are one of the main reasons why Thailand lags behind other S E Asian nations in its development as a mature nation. On the one hand, you have conservative leaders who regularly make comments which are more of a distraction than offering any real help in solving the country's problems. On the other, you have a populace which is largely young and tech savvy, and which is in tune with the modern world through peer websites like Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace among many others.

This juxtaposition is really a contradiction in terms. It's a bit like trying to chase a train that has already left the station or close a suitcase that already has too many items packed into it. Both activities are largely futile and what would make more sense would be to develop a policy that recognises that young people are living in the modern world and are constantly bombarded with images from the internet, billboard advertising, shopping malls, I-phones etc., etc., and where they see overt forms of sexual behaviour from a very early age.

The punishment should fit the crime

The article in The Nation went on to say the following:
"OPEC had notified private vocational colleges to get tough on such students. If there continued to be complaints about any college's students, the institution would be asked to explain and could end up being punished by having all classes suspended for one week, as per regulations, Charnwit said."

Again, this is meant as a deterrent, but do they really think that shutting down the offending institution would (a) actually solve the problem or make it go away? Or (b) that denying students their education is the best way to deal with something that they perceive as impolite behaviour in their conservative interpretation of what constitutes a decent society? Surely, keeping them in the school or college would serve a much greater purpose but only if an attempt were made to actually offer classes to try to understand the situation from the point of view of the students themselves? This would be preferable to a knee-jerk reaction of sending home all students from a college irrespective of whether it was actually any of them who were wearing inappropriate uniforms? For me, this is yet another example of people in power simply skirting around a problem instead of facing it head on and dealing with the underlying reasons why young women want to dress in this way.

Tom Tuohy is a teacher and writer. He has written for a number of newspapers, magazines and websites including: The Guardian Weekly, the EL Gazette, jobs.ac.uk, The Bangkok Post, and UniversityWorldNews.com You can access Tom's blog here.