Today in the Times... Reforming Education in Thailand

Thailand considers reforming its authoritarian educational system.​

​My dissertation examines how education has been used for authoritarian ends in Morocco, so I read with interest an article this morning in the NYT about Thailand's current conversation over educational reform. The article highlights several significant points:

1. Educational reforms have path dependent effects: changes made to educational curriculum can continue shaping individuals long after the conditions in which those reforms were made have passed.

In the Thai case, educational style is rooted in the military dictatorship established in the country in 1972. The country experienced a period widely viewed as democratic in the mid-2000s, but returned to military dictatorship after the coup d'état of 2006. Its curriculum is deeply rooted in authoritarian values, even as the country's political space opens.

2. Education in authoritarian contexts is distinctly undemocratic: I know this is obvious, but I think the political science literature has done very little to examine this. Sometimes I get the impression some political scientists think any education is better than no education. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

In the Thai case, students are beat with bamboo canes, can have their hair cut or dyed publicly at school if it does not meet rigid dress code standards and the curriculum is rooted in rote memorization. “School is like a factory that manufactures identical people,” one student said.​

3. Schools are the training grounds for citizenship: again, obvious. But in a system where students are expected to "bow, bow, bow" to their teachers, and never articulate their own arguments nor learn to evaluate others' arguments, how can a democracy function?​ where else do people learn to be critical?

In Thailand, the new education minister, trained in the US, is interested in moving towards letting students think more independently, though his support seems distressingly conditional. He remarked, "We want them to be individuals, within reason.” ​

4. You can't always get what you want, and neither can the regime: The Ministry of Education can change the national curriculum, but whether its implemented on the ground depends on its relationship to teachers, principals and other bureaucrats. ​

​In the Thai case, one vice principal interviewed in the article seems likely to ignore reforms if he thinks they are too drastic. He was clear with his views, “The military needs guns; teachers need sticks. Sometimes you need to hit them a little bit, but only on the bottom.”

Today in the Times... an editorial on the common core

Editorial on New Public School Curriculum​

I applaud the NYT for taking an interest in nation-wide educational reforms and I am grateful that they ask for a year of grace for teachers making this transition. ​

But I'm still waiting for the perfect editorial on public education.​

It would go something like this:​

Gentle Readers,​

We applaud recent reforms intended to bring more rigorous standards to the public school curriculum. At the same time, we lament the reform's inattention to the structural issues that give rise to many of our system's challenges.

Our schools are desperately in need of more resources. In particular, there is a need for an immediate shift of one percent of the nation's budget away from defense and toward education. This would dramatically increase the resources available to the next generation of leaders. A large amount of these funds should go to increasing teachers' salaries. Teaching is already an enormous challenge, why must it also be a serious financial sacrifice?​

Secondly, we send students to universities to get a liberal arts education, but our public schools look like factories for creating employees, for sorting those who deserve a liberal arts education from those who deserve nothing but a vocation. Suzanne Pepper, in her masterful work on education in authoritarian China, describes it this way, "Schools did not develop talent as much as they performed a sorting, labeling and certification function that was, by reason of the educational inflation also under way, more than sufficient to meet the cognitive requirements of most jobs that most school leavers would fill. Through meritocratic values - with grades allocated for performance and promotion for grades - schools were therefore legitimating the present and future status of all who passed through them" (2000:29).

Schools teach people their place in society, and help employers identify potential employees. Is that what we want from them? Our students study math, science, social studies, history and literature. But what about all of the other aspects of being a human being, about which our schools are silent?

We should admit that we do not prepare students for most of the challenges they will certainly have: managing their finances, cooking for themselves, dancing at weddings, ​maintaining their cars or marketing themselves in the age of social media. We act as if students are more likely to have to estimate the length of a hypotenuse than to pay their electric bill. Think of how much more engaging schooling would be if American history were taught through the lens of pop music and the music industry, if home economics were required for all students and actually taught them life skills like how to maintain a budget or save up for a car, if disagreements between students were seen not as disciplinary problems but as opportunities for talking about healthy relationships.

Sincerely,​

[Significant Newspaper Editorial Staff}​

I know what my critics think: all of these things should be learned in the family, and that is certainly a valid critique. At the same time, the most effective lessons are taught in multiple locations and I'll be honest, I don't care if my kids can calculate the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle.​

Can the academy be a bandstand?

Stefon Harris's Ted Talk​

​There's a lot for academics to learn from Jazz musicians, and particularly their conception of the bandstand. Harris argues that there are no mistakes on the bandstand, there are only opportunities that go unrealized. If, in the middle of a performance, he plays a particular note which could change or influence the direction of the piece, it either affects the other musicians or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it is not a mistake, it's an unrealized opportunity:

"So there is no mistake. The only mistake is if I'm not aware... if each musician is not aware and accepting enough of his fellow band member to incorporate the idea.. if we don't allow the creativity..."

If we view the academy as a bandstand, then other peoples scholarship merely provides opportunities for the field to go in different directions. If the field does not go in that direction, it is not a reflection on the quality of that person's scholarship, though it may say something about that scholars' relationships with other members of the field.

In other words, the literature review is not a hazing activity. It's an exercise in listening, and being aware of what others are doing around you. It is part of a larger process of engaging others which includes collaboration and conference participation.

The only way to really make change in your field is by engagement. ​Take another lesson from Jazz. Harris explains that he as a musician can force his idea on other band members, but that will stifle their creativity:

[If he forces an idea musically] "It's kind of chaotic because I'm bullying my ideas. I'm telling you come with me over there. If I really want the music to go there, I have to listen. This is a science of listening. It has far more to do with what I can perceive than what I can do. So if I want the music to get to a certain level of intensity, the first step for me is to be patient, to listen to what's going on, and to pull from something that's going on around me. When you do that, you engage and inspire the other musicians and they give you more, and gradually it builds."​ (emphasis mine)

Those interested in making a change in their fields or in the larger academy are wise to learn from Jazz musicians. Don't bully the field in the direction that you want to go. Listen, take from a pre-existing thread, engage the scholars around you, and it will gradually build.​