News about Thai education is usually bad. Yet a Mahidol University seminar held last Friday to mark the UN International Literacy Day proved that there is hope.
Mahidol's Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA) knows a lot about education. In 2016, the institute won the Unesco King Sejong Award for Literacy -- regarded as the Nobel Prize for educators. Its success was toasted at receptions in Paris, Washington, and Seoul. Yet the Thai press and the Ministry of Education were silent.
The seminar brought together innovators working in small schools in the deep South, far North, and Central Plains. Using internationally recognised best practices, programme implementers in all three places created materials based on the local culture and trained teachers to use a non-rote learning approach to literacy.
One participants from Nakhon Sawan explained the key is to create level-appropriate books that children enjoy. She noted that many "children's books" in Thai bookstores are intended to teach ethics, responsibility, and correct grammar -- but are not designed help children learn to read. Books for literacy development require more repetition and control of age-appropriate vocabulary, using children's everyday language.
It is found that one of the most popular, locally created "big books" in the deep South was, "Mr Poop Defeats the Giant". What kid wouldn't love a book like that? The institute cooperated with dozens of local teachers and community members to produce over 200 books to support early grade reading in local Malay and Thai languages.
Another participant noted that hilltribe children in the Foundation for Applied Linguistics' mother-tongue multilingual education programme, which uses a similar approach to literacy, truly love books. Their grade 3 and grade 6 national exam results show impressive gains in reading and critical thinking.
As Thailand grapples with education reform, it should look to these Unicef-supported pilot programmes with longstanding track records of producing engaged, excited, literate children.
Kirk R Person, PhD
Booze facts awry
In the Sept 14 report, "Cabinet gives OK to revised alcohol and tobacco excise tax", you quote a source at Government House saying the new tax rates for liquor will be based on the degree of alcohol contained which would put Thailand in line with much of the Western world. However, just a few lines later there is a ThaiHealth warning that completely contradicts this and suggests that lao khao will be subject to a lower tax than beer.
Lungstib
In circles over Irma
Re: "Mixed up about Irma", (PostBag Sept 13).
Khun Norman Sr had a point when he needled the director-general of the Meteorological Department for reassuring the public that Hurricane Irma would not impact Thailand. However, I have to advise Khun Norman Sr that all tropical storms in the Northern Hemisphere (above the equator) rotate anti-clockwise regardless of whether they are hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific. Tropical storms that rotate clockwise are those occurring in the Southern Hemisphere (below the equator). These phenomenon are due to the Coriolis effect that also prevents storms from crossing the equator from North to South and vice versa.
Kantanit Sukontasap
Stealing for the rich
I seem to remember surveys being carried out that resulted in the majority of Thais being agreeable to corruption as long as they could also benefit. Could it be that the ongoing fight against all forms of corruption has had a detrimental influence on the trickle-down effect and corruption is now well and truly preserved for the upper classes and the powerful? Could this also account for the state of the economy and the lack of money in people's pockets?
Brian Corrigan
Escape from Yingluck
A part of me was relieved when I read Yingluck Shinawatra had made her escape because I was not looking forward to reading endless stories about the weeping middle-aged women calling out her name while camped outside prison gates for eight to 10 years, but now it looks like I am in for an even worse ordeal with a never-ending saga about how she might have made her escape.
observer
CONTACT: BANGKOK POST BUILDING
136 Na Ranong Road Klong Toey, Bangkok 10110
Fax: +02 6164000 email:
All letter writers must provide full name and address.
All published correspondence is subject to editing at our discretion.
