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Published on March 29, 2008

 The solutions to Thailand's educational maladies are simple but require a brave man's implemention.

1) Two-speed education. Farmers do not need to learn English or many of the other subjects within the curriculum. Make them numerate and literate in the mornings, with agricultural classes in the afternoon. Let those whose interests lie outside of farming learn in other classes all day.

2) Put the brighter students in classes with other brighter students; exclude disruptive pupils.

3.) Use essay questions rather than multiple choice for both course work and exams.

4) Use Independent markers for exams in all years (i.e. swap papers between schools in different provinces) using untraceable numbers entered into a central database rather than names. These schools should be drawn from a hat to make the selection random.

The actual curriculum content can be adapted once Thailand's culture of rote learning and guaranteed passes has been challenged. Education is not about face; it is about betterment. Rurally the improvement will be gradual but it will happen and it will make a difference.

Ben Kelly

London

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Asean has a duty to help the Tibetan people

 Asean member states must know that they share the responsibilities in preventing China's human rights violations in Tibet.

Virtually all countries in Asean, and even China itself, have experienced foreign occupation and suffered harsh treatment by the occupants. If they fail to stop the suffering of Tibetans under Chinese rule, they cannot justify their own tragedy under foreign rulers either.

Asean must join the US and Europe in pushing China to halt its violent crackdown on the Tibetan people and to solve this crisis peacefully through dialogue. Asean nations should not continue turning a blind eye to the misery and injustice in Tibet.

 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," warned the late US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Moeun Chhean Nariddh

Phnom Penh

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Another auto plant will add to Thailand's pollution

They say if you live long enough you see just about everything. I just read in The Nation that India is planning on opening an auto plant in Thailand. I will not even get into what possible rationale could be working here as to why a country with a population of a billion people and a large unemployment rate wants to open an auto plant in another country, but rather will concentrate on what I perceive as the greater enigma.

Why would Thailand want another plant that manufactures "environmentally friendly" cars, when the plant will not be environmentally friendly? I already know the answer, as I am certain a queue of politicos are already lined up at the manufacturer's representative's hotel room with their hand out. But I still have to wonder why they do not see the danger in further polluting a country whose largest industry is tourism.

I would imagine that the answer to that is that they simply don't care. And I would further imagine that the answer to my first question about why India would want to build the plant here is that maybe they are trying to develop a tourist trade and don't want their ecology ravaged by an auto plant.

John Arnone

Yasothon

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