Teacher Charlie's news and adventures from the world; Korea to Germany and all points in between!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Thai education improves slowly due to lack of ICT

http://thainews.prd.go.th/en/news.php?id=255311150004

In my opinion, this is not true. There are many reasons Thai education moves 'slowly' but if IT is considered part of the equation, it is due to the inability of the teachers to understand and use it. Those teachers that do are often given the 'cold shoulder' by those that don't. Internet is viewed as a threat to the stability of the 'system', with many sites such as Wikipedia blocked by schools.

Broadband is also a huge problem with most schools. Even though a 3,000 student school has a 'net connection', it is 1mbps or less. Once the 60 or so students show up for class and turn on their computers, bandwidth drops to zero.

Thais are not stupid. The administrators and government officials intentionally design the system to 'fail' and be useless as they do not want students questioning or having access to knowledge they themselves do not know how to get or understand due to their own lack of English and research skills. Knowledge has a price and the folks who run the educational system don't want to pay it with the loss of face...

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