'How do you do?"
"I'm fine, thank you. And you?"
For decades, the Education Ministry has tried to make students speak English naturally rather than memorising all that their teachers tell them in the classroom. That effort goes nowhere and there is nobody to blame except policymakers at the ministry themselves.
Despite the failure to improve English teaching for pupils thus far, the ministry shows no sign of throwing in the towel. A panel was set up this year as part of education reform and it came up with a new idea in July. The panellists wanted to promote English as the other official language of the country, in addition to Thai.
Once English became the second language officially in Thailand, all resources including teachers would be pooled to improve efficient use of the language. Students would eventually be on the receiving end of this benefit and the country as a whole would have more human resources with better English-speaking skills.
The rationale is strange enough. But what is weird is the reason Education Minister Chinnaworn Boonyakiat gave to put the brakes on it. After carefully studying the proposal forwarded by the panel, the former most outstanding teacher of Nakhon Si Thammarat decided on Oct 19 to shoot it down. He believed that what was proposed by the panellists would paint Thailand in a negative light.
Countries that have English as an official language normally are ones once colonised by the British. Thailand is not in that group. Other countries might misunderstand that we are one of them if we announced English as an official language. That is his argument. For him, it would be safer for the country if we only say that we are treating English as a main foreign language.
Still, he promised that he would not ignore the importance of English. English teaching would be revamped in schools to meet international standards; students would be groomed to fluently communicate in English in the future.
Few believe that the ministry can turn around poor English teaching as he boasts it can. What has happened with the issue is that it shows the ministry has spent unnecessary energy on thinking about the form rather than the substance.
One solution to this problem is easy and has been mooted for some time. The ministry has put the wrong focus on the subject of English. Policymakers want students to be adept at grammar rather than conversation. That is why English classes are very boring for them because they are forced to write down what their teachers tell them.
The bottom line, in fact, is to groom learners who can communicate in English first with grammar coming second. English classes should be more interactive with the teachers and students having conversations in that language.
Unfortunately, nobody seriously tries to correct it, even though they know that this is the way of the future; for Thais to survive is to equip themselves with English. Their future will be more competitive given that in the long run people in this region can freely find jobs anywhere after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations becomes one community in 2015. A free flow of people, including skilled workers, will inevitably eventuate.
Instead of getting to grips properly with this problem, those politicians in charge of education now seem content with the political propaganda of their populist policies like free tuition fees, free school uniforms and free textbooks. That will benefit their party when a new general election comes along but not for the country in the long run.
Time is running out for them and Thailand. Real action is needed to better prepare students to cope with the future.
"Are you with me, Mr Chinnaworn?"
Saritdet Marukatat is editor, opinion/editorial pages.
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