Stickman Readers' Submissions March 21st, 2005

Re: Educated Thai Lady

Well I did meet with many highly educated people in all parts of the world and have a very low opinion of many of them. For a lot of degree holders the PhD or master degrees are only a union ticket to well paid jobs, and not to forget; to hang the degrees
on the wall so that other people can see and admire them.

Unfortunately university education does not give the students any social values or even teach much about the subjects they enrolled in. Neither does it teach humility and tolerance of other more unfortunate people. My personal experience
is that the more education people have the more one sided and intolerant they are. Especially in Asian countries; here the amount of completely uneducated people with high degrees seems to be the normal case. Many times I complained to the relevant
government departments and told them to get rid of the PHD holders in charge of the different sections, as they were complete asses and did not know anything at all about their supposed work. How they ever got their degrees I would not like to
speculate at all. It was that bad at one time that I recommended to my company to stop warranty and maintenance work on systems which did cost about 40 to 50 million dollars each. Finally that got noticed and the PHD holders left the work. But
as they were from influential parents they got promoted. I could not care less; at least they were out of my hair.

He Clinic Bangkok

The way it is at the moment I can not respect any HIGHLY EDUCATED degree holders at all. I found that most of them are missing out in social values. To get acceptable levels of university degrees nowadays you have to have rich or influential
parents, at least this seem to happen here in LOS.

You might say that I don’t know what I am talking about; however I do have a PhD and two master degrees in different subjects and should be well qualified to give my opinion. These three degrees were acquired the hard way, not the
easy way as it seems to be common today. Now you can even get PhDs for basket weaving or folk dancing, at least in certain countries.

Also I found out, here in Thailand at least, the people which show off their wealth by wearing large golden rings and golden chains, driving BMW or other luxury cars etc. are usually newly rich people and look down at the so called unwashed
rubble. Well I prefer not to have anything to do with them. An uneducated girl from a poor farming area is usually a much better person as the over/under educated woman from the so called higher classes. They only show their own stupidity and
intolerance to look down at people, which might be much more intelligent as they are but simply never had a chance to study.

CBD bangkok


Another thing which really gets my hackles up is the respect which is given to teachers. I never could meet a Thai English teacher who spoke reasonable understandable English. They are usually quite good at grammar but can not speak in a
normal conversation. There must be some around somewhere but I never found them. I once went into trouble, I had a visitor from the US and my sister in law came and tried to talk with the guy, it did not last very long at all. After she left he
asked me what language she spoke. I laughed and told her that he was an English lecturer in one of the major Thai institutes: I will not give the name but it starts with R. Well this poor guy, an English lecturer at Berkeley could not understand
the world anymore. However unfortunately the sister in law overheard us talking, since then she will not talk with me anymore. I should have defended her. Maybe so, but how can you defend the undefendable?


Of course all this is pretty normal in this country, unless the students learn overseas their English skills are very poor. This is not the fault of the students at all. This is the way the system works. At one of the government schools they
had a farang English teacher and he refused to pass a certain student. The director of the school offered him 50,000 baht so that he gives B marks. The director said the father of the boy is the police chief and the student must pass. The teacher
refused and of course got fired promptly. So what is the value of a degree in this country?

I talked enough, but I do hope the educated Thai lady looks in the mirror and tries to correct herself. It is high time that she educates herself and learns some human values; also she needs to learn humility. After all she did not select
her rich parents; neither did a poor Isaan farm girl select her poor relations.

I am also a coward and like to stay anonymous. Rich Thai families can have a very long arm and I like to stay here.

Stickman's thoughts:

wonderland clinic

The state of the education system and the way that students are passed irrespective of their performance is just awful. Whenever schools refuse to acknowledge a problem – and shirk taking the appropriate action to fix it – they just create an even greater number of problems.


nana plaza