I saw an article in the Bangkok Post yesterday and it inspired me to write this rant post. The headline read “Obec queries benefit of repeated classes”, Obec being the Office of the Basic Education Commission, which oversees the rules and regulations that govern the Thai education system. I’ll include some quotes below, but essentially the article said that making kids repeat courses if they fail is unfair because it makes them feel bad, and doesn’t have any real benefit anyway. Good Lord, someone call the Wah!mbulance. Having done my time in front of a class in Thailand, I thought I’d chime in with some thoughts.

Teaching in Thailand can be a blessing or a curse, depending on what school you’re at and what your attitude is (Richard Barrow’s blog Thai School Life is a great window into how rewarding it can be if you have the right frame of mind). In my first few years here, I was lucky enough to teach English at a mid- to upscale all-girls High School (an experience which could supply enough strange stories for a whole other post in and of its own) and, luckily, had (mostly) awesome students and generally nice Thai and foreign co-workers. I didn’t know any Thai at the time, so I was able to float above the roiling layer of gossip that you’d imagine would exist in a school with 2,000 female students, 200 female Thai teachers, and 5 male farang (foreign) teachers. Overall, I had a nice time, and am even still in touch with several of my old students, who are now leading much more interesting lives at 22 than I think I ever will. This, of course, is most likely due to the awesome influence I had on them. But I digress.

One of my classes back in the day. All these smiling, fresh-faced young girls are now slaves to the grind like you and I, which is either funny or sad, depending on your level of evil.

One of my classes back in the day. All these smiling, fresh-faced young girls are now slaves to the grind like you and I, which is either funny or sad, depending on your level of evil.

Anyway, for all the fun I had doing the job, I remember the exact minute that I lost all interest in being a good teacher, and decided it was enough to just be a funny, friendly farang. After grading one particularly bad class’s final exams and figuring out their grades, one student failed with a grade of around 25%. I don’t want to be harsh, but she was an idiot and a bitch. She openly defied the rules I ran my classes by, often left to ‘go to the bathroom’ only to stay there, never did any homework, and said bad things about me right in front of me (I didn’t understand much, but I could figure it out). She didn’t know any English and had only handed in a fraction of the semester’s homework.

So, when it came time to fail her, I was called into the Principal’s office and asked why I had given her a failing grade. “She can’t speak English, she never did any homework and hardly ever came to class,” I said. “Oh,” said the Principal. “I see. Well, you can’t fail her.” That was it. No matter how poorly she did, or how she abused the system, she still passed, along with all of her classmates who had worked their asses off. She wouldn’t get honors or anything, but she would still pass. I was told in friendly but firm tones that it would just be easiest for everyone if all of my students passed.

This of course touches on the age-old (well, decades, anyway) practice of making sure you graduate a huge percentage of your students to make the school look really good. Thailand is not the only country where this happens; a teacher friend in Canada once told me of a similar experience, and there are many, many, many other cases. But the article in the Post kind of made me weep for the future of education in Thailand or, indeed, any country that feels the need to shelter students in this type of bubble.

The article says in part that students “get stressed, lose their self-respect, give up making friends and develop bad behaviour.” Awwwwww. What, because once they make it through school without doing any work and get a job as a peon in an office, the stress will suddenly stop?

What happens if they breeze through high school and university without doing much, start at their first job and then decide they don’t really need to hand in that report on time. “What do you mean, ‘fired’?” They would barely understand what was happening. “You mean there are consequences to being a jerk-off?”

An actual shot of the whiteboard after my four-hour lesson.

An actual shot of the whiteboard after my four-hour lesson.

I hate to turn into one of those bickering old fuddy-duddies that starts sentences with “When I was young…” but… well, when I was young, failure was a part of life, man! That’s how things worked – if you didn’t keep up your end of the deal, you got the boot. This teaches children a thing called ‘responsibility’ which, as it turns out, comes in pretty handy in the real world. I remember once when I was in grade 5 I had to sit in the Kindergarten class all afternoon because I was being an idiot. Not only did the little kids finish their crafts before I did, but I sure learned what not to do when I was allowed back into my class.

Now, I’m sure that many children do feel more rebellious and some do begin a downward spiral if they’re held back, but surely this is is a sign that, if they can’t handle the stress in school, that they won’t be able to handle it in the real world. There should be some type of alternate action to take besides just saying, “Nevermind, good job! See you next year!” What are your thoughts?