culicine

sparebox2, on 2012-05-08 10:18:07, said:

Am I mis-understanding something? The way I read the article I thought it was talking about students' relative performance in national test results; nothing about the relative smartness of Thai students, as a group.

However, I do agree that some Farangs underestimate the smartness of Thai students, which is silly and unfounded (although the education system may not necessarily be the best).

What the red shirts attempted whilst Abhisit was in power was to cut short his term by force, by violence, by intimidation. It wasn't democratic. In many ways it was much like a coup attempt. If they had respect for democracy, they would have said, "ok, we don't like the way that Abhisit came to power, but we will respect the democratic principles we preach, and will demonstrate this not by taking to the streets with arms and burning things down, but by trying to get him removed within the law and via the courts, and if this fails, we will simply campaign hard and make sure he is not re-elected at the next election".

Nice to see there is more than the 'perceived total educational wasteland' here.
Congratulations for the hard work bringing a win.

Lets hope this effort can one day translate in the future into better education for all Thais.

On the whole I couldn't care less what he does but there is one part of this story that makes me mad;
"He has a house in London"
Prick. He and his ilk do so much to try and stop farangs owning a house in Thailand. I would assume all the politicians own houses outside of Thailand. A-holes.

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It wasn't his enemies that forced him to commit large-scale financial fraud & illegal corporate manipulation. It wasn't his enemies that forced him to indulge in shameless nepotism from within the highest office in the land. It wasn't his enemies that found him guilty of these crimes & sentenced him to jail - this was the Thai Legal System.
If he had any respect for Thailand & Thai Law & Thai people he would have gone straight to jail & served his sentence, pausing only to beg humbly for forgiveness.
Instead he ran away and from a safe-distance brought about an armed uprising in which  many innocent people died in the crossfire & many small-scale businesses were damaged.
These mysterious "enemies" who don't like him are infact just normal ordinary working tax-paying people who are completely tired of his relentless Napoleon-complex & the damage it has/is causing to this nation.
Even if his future prison cell has a sink for hand washing, he could never wash away the blood-stains on his hands. Some stains take more than soap to rub out.

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Can't one of his bodyguards lend him a weapon, so that he can make his wish come true, or should they give him the phone-number of 'The Samaritans' ?

culicine, on 2012-04-15 11:19:39, said:

Average class sizes in the four top East Asian nations are as follows:  Shanghai 40; Korea 35; Hong Kong 36; Singapore 35.
Compare with Australia 23; US 23, UK 21; EU 21.

Average teaching loads (hrs/wk): Shanghai 10-12; Korea 15; Hong Kong 17; Singapore (no data); Australia 20; US 30; UK 19; EU 17.

As a result, teachers in Shanghai spend many non-teaching hours each week in:
– classroom observation
– team teaching
– school-based research
– giving feedback
– identifying learning needs
– modeling good practice
– active collaboration
(Report: "Catching Up", p.15)

It should be noted that the non-teaching time of Shanghai teachers is programmed and structured.  Teachers are not just left to their own devices.

In the US, by contrast, teachers have on average only 12 minutes between each class. (p.15)

Thaksin is basically the chief trouble maker in Thai politics and the country as a whole, he doesn't realise that if he took himself out of the equation then there could some kind of reconciliation amongst those people he has helped to deliberately divide.  Let us also never forget that no matter how bad a leader he or she always has followers who are prepared to whitewash or deny that the leader ever really did anything wrong-- Jatuporn and Co.

From the OP:

She added that questions of PISA tests may be put in students' exercise books so they can learn to analyse these questions...

I think they mean, so they can memorize the answers.

"Teachers have to understand PISA tests,"

Teachers have to understand the test, but not the material they are teaching.

I've seen this happen in more than one school where students take endless days of former test questions for the National Exams.  No teaching, just learning the answers to previous exams.

The country has a long way to go enable analysis and critical thinking and I am afraid it would have a profound effect on the culture of submission and privilege in the country.

'Teaching to the test', is exactly what you should not do dear Deputy Secretary. Good scores on an international assessment start with a proper national assessment. And we teachers all know that the exams in this country are flawed and meaningless! Not failing students makes a lot of students lazy and not take any responsibility in learning. And that's the main reason your Education system is in shambles!

No surprise that  the majority of Thai Engineers/ Architects etc  will be struggling for professional accreditation, they have had a nice  wooly existence where they are and only they can do those jobs in this country-- hence no need to try to improve. I have known a fully qualified architect from the UK married here for years and years but unable to ply  his profession and a Swiss medical doctor who too was prohibited from plying her profession, both were reduced to teaching English. So in truth I have very little sympathy for the position of Thai professionals when it comes to ASEAN, as it is largely  been brought about by the xenophobic/nationalist policies of their government, which if you spoke to most of them in the past and possibly some of them now, they were or are quite happy to lap up.

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Takes balls to compare the two.

Japan suffered an enormous disaster, the effects of which were lessened by the heroic lengths the Japanese people went to prepare for it.  Thailand suffered a disaster because the government is corrupt and incompetent and accidentally flooded the country due to dam mismanagement while trying to skim the treasury with their rice subsidy scheme

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Funny how they don't trumpet this one in the red propaganda.  Every campaign promise broken except the ones that benefit the rich

Has any farang been asked for T-money? I applied for a teaching job at a St. Joseph School and was asked for 50 baht to fill out the application, I thought that was a little strange. I have been saying for a long time now, the problem in Isaan is not that the people are not educated, it is that unless they have money, they can't get a job. All the people know this and thus the poor people see no value in education, because they know that they won't be able to get a job, no matter how much education they have or how well qualified they are, because they have no money to pay for the job. This applies to government jobs, bank jobs, and probably most business management jobs. I even heard of a girl applying for a cashier job at Tesco Lotus, having to pay 1,000 baht. It is a terrible practice, but I guess a way to keep the poor poor, no matter how much education they have. I don't understand why the protesting groups don't complain about it..

Again, an article that contradicts its title.

Title : " ...eradicate drugs within one year"

Article : " ... able to make considerable advances in the “War on Drugs” within one year."

Someone has a very low opinion about the IQ of his readers....