A flawed system
Thai students are not ‘taught' by their Thai teachers. As an outsider it's easy to come to this country and criticise aspects of Thai life that don't ‘measure up' to what we have back home. I don't wish to sound rude, arrogant or even racist, but it is a fact that the government-funded education system in Thailand is totally teacher-centred and revolves around students copying ‘information' from either a blackboard/whiteboard or from handouts.
Incredibly, the Thai teachers never question this, never wonder if this method is beneficial or effective and is used as a method of ‘teaching' in every subject. When the students are eventually tested they are asked what they can remember, not what they know.
In Thailand there does not seem to be any understanding of the enormous difference between these two. English is, of course, no different. For example, students can remember what the phrasal verb "take off" means but are totally incapable of using it when speaking or writing. I have a couple of stories to illustrate how ‘teaching' is done here.
My first school teaching position was in Phuket and there were children from primary and secondary levels being ‘taught' there. I was teaching the secondary students and I was interested to see how Thai teachers taught the younger ones in the primary level.
One of the primary teachers was a lovely, friendly lady called khun Dang and I went and observed one of her classes when I had some free time. She was in charge of a room full of 50 grade 2 pupils who were totally out of control until khun Dang began copying a large section of text from the textbook that every pupil happened to already have on their desks.