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Published on March 19, 2008

Fine! Using public coffers to commit treason, forcibly overthrowing a democratically-elected government, certainly should be a criminal office.

While we're at it, though, Defence Minister Samak should use the opportunity to review the whole mess, starting from the military's role right down to how the monies are spent. To me, the military is to protect us from external enemies, while the police keep the domestic peace. So, 90 per cent of our soldiers should be at our borders, for if the foe penetrates to Bangkok, the game's almost over, anyway. Why does the military need APCs for the South? What terrorism there is, is so far, mainly a home-grown problem.

If we need the APCs, give them to the police. Given that Samak's cuddling up to the Burmese and we have Asean to mediate regional squabbles, our Army's probably grossly overstaffed. Let's shift to a leaner, more professional force - one whose loyalty is to King and country, not one where generals are shifted depending upon political winds, and one that will ignore unlawful orders to stage a coup.

With its missions redefined to serve national interests, not private ones, we can then allocate public funds accordingly. The budget process should be transparent, starting from each armed force's mission, and subject to review by the Senate's armed forces committee at all stages - including by the opposition.

Thus, hopefully, we would not have repeats of fiascos like Stingray tanks whose hulls cracked when its guns were fired, or anti-sub carriers purchased without an enemy in sight.

Let's professionalise the military to serve, not to rule.

Burin Kantabutra

Bangkok

Educators need lessons before they can set exams

I wanted to share with your readers a perspective on the ONET problem that they may not be familiar with.  My foundation aims to improve rural teaching by sending qualified trainers to upcountry schools. One of these reported back recently as follows:

"Prathom Five had a local government English exam last week in preparation for ONET. It was invigilated by a local official who came to the school…

"The students struggled because the questions were in English and most of the kids couldn't read them - well, we knew that already and that's why we are trying to teach them a system to read. But even if they had been able to read the questions perfectly, the exam would still have been difficult. This was due to the number of mistakes I noticed in the exam paper: typing errors, grammar mistakes and general confusion. The paper was multiple choice. Each question had four possible answers, each labelled a, b, c, or d. Yet, some of the questions had such terrible errors that the student had to choose the correct answer from: a, b, c, c. Other questions didn't make any sense. One question asked: 'Which is dangerous? a) a man racing on a motorbike. b) a man hanging by one hand from a rope. c) a man leaning over a fire. d) a man on a child's scooter.' It was impossible to choose one answer. In addition, some questions had answers that could be interpreted as the same as other choices of answer. And some questions/answers were grammatically incorrect.

"I feel desperately sorry for school children in such a situation. It's difficult enough for them to try to understand English. But, even if they overcome that huge hurdle, they face another hurdle through no fault of their own: one of confusion due to ill-prepared exam papers.

"I mentioned this to several teachers at the school and they agreed that it was a terrible problem. I even showed one question to the invigilator. But when I suggested that this should really be pointed out to those at the education department, everyone became very uncomfortable - not wanting to complain. So I left it. It presumably costs a lot of money for government departments to produce, administer and distribute these exam papers. But it would only take ten minutes for a fluent English speaking Thai, or a foreigner to check the papers and correct any mistakes. I just find it extraordinary.

"How can a government be serious about wanting to improve the standards of learning and the pass rates in the National Tests when one of the biggest obstacles is created by themselves? These papers have got to be checked. Anyway, I just thought I would let you know."

Perhaps your paper can help get the attention of the Ministry of Education to address these issues.  Our efforts to do so have not had any success to date.

Napaporn Landy

Teacher Plus Foundation

Bangkok

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