Find content
Not Telling
Acharn, on 2010-06-09 18:13:38, said:
way2muchcoffee, on 2010-06-09 18:00:31, said:
Pui, on 2010-06-09 17:52:02, said:
There is no national curriculum from what I can gather. Worse, the teachers get to write their own course work.
My wife asked me to help her little sister with some home work. When I saw what her teacher had given her, I couldn't believe it.
This is a mid to high priced School in Bangkok. The English exercises made no sense at all.
When I laughed I seemed to offend.
The usual social rules. "Don't complain, its not polite"
The government could easily adopt a national curriculum from an English speaking country. Its not the teachers fault, in my opinion its the governing body.
My wife asked me to help her little sister with some home work. When I saw what her teacher had given her, I couldn't believe it.
This is a mid to high priced School in Bangkok. The English exercises made no sense at all.
When I laughed I seemed to offend.
The usual social rules. "Don't complain, its not polite"
The government could easily adopt a national curriculum from an English speaking country. Its not the teachers fault, in my opinion its the governing body.
That's not correct. There is in fact a national curriculum. A major revision is being promulgated this term. It is fairly clear for Mathematics and Sciences, but the English Language curriculum is laughable. I believe they modeled the national curriculum from the one used in Singapore. I haven't studied the new curriculum in depth enough to comment at length, but it appears to be very similar to the one used previously, only fleshed out a bit more in the detail.
I have taught English in Thailand and now teach my own subject, Mathematics. The maths syllabus is also laughable. It looks to me as if it was written by a primary school teacher as the Prathom grades are crammed full of stuff whilst the Mathayom syllabus is so full of holes as to be meaningless.
I'm not surprised by the results. The Thai teachers I see seem more concerned with rules and behaviour than them actually knowing their subject. The really deep problem is that nobody is allowed to fail, so most students are deluded in their abilities... until they hit the excessively difficult government exams!! The official state exams look like they've been written by professors trying to show how very clever they are to their university colleagues. Absolute mismatch not just between student knowledge and the exams but between the exams and the syllabus too. In the English exams I've seen there have been on average 2 or 3 serious mistakes too - so not so smartarse professors either!
The one good thing about schools taking real externally marked exams such as the UK or IB is that the syllabus and the exams are clear and there is no way of faking results.
