re: "A critical lack of thinking" (BP, Editorial, December 7, 2019)
Dear editor,
Whilst it was a joy to hear that Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan believes that "Every MP should instead contribute to promoting education," I was a little perplexed that he thinks open debate might interfere with promoting education, debating long being known to contribute to a range of skills desirable in any sound education.
In fact, I would propose that the Education Minister take this opportunity to encourage formal debates within and between schools on topical, controversial issues. Formal debating is a powerful way to practice the critical thinking skills that are essential to modern life, helping debaters on both sides to better understand the issues under discussion, deepening their awareness of complexity and learning to sort out real from fake claims, all of which are valuable life skills for students to learn.
By choosing topical issues to debate, students will be genuinely motivated to study not only the specific subject, such as conscription, but related issues, such as what national defence truly requires. Such engaged interest on issues which concern them and their nation is surely a proper aim of any decent education. In addition to instilling awareness of national issues, debates on such topics as conscription will encourage students to study the related history, thereby enhancing their awareness of how their nation came to be the state it is today. Moreover, such motivated research will practice students' reading skills, notoriously weak in traditional Thai education as regularly shown in PISA tests. This improved historical awareness of their nation's evolution allied to stronger reading skills are surely additional desirable educational outcomes.
Finally, debating the pros and cons of truly controversial issues will not only give the engaged students the ability to make better decisions when they come to exercise their rights to vote, but will also deepen their understanding of ethics, of justice and of a good life, of what makes an act or an existing state morally right or wrong. Again, it is hard to see how the Education Minister could object to such strengthening of the moral foundations that are an important aspect of an education preparing Thai youth to be active, informed citizens of their nation, to be engaged Thai citizens not easily swayed by dubious claims unsupported by solid evidence and sound reasoning.
The Education Minister should thank Future Forward's Chirat Thongsuwan for bringing such productive debate to Thai education.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 9, 2019, under the title "Bring it on..." at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1811449/bring-it-on-
In the published version, the Post's editor inserted a new second paragraph:
ReplyDelete'Mr Nataphol was unhappy when the Future Forward Party (FFP) MP Chirat Thongsuwan discussed conscription during a school visit. He accused him of being an opportunist who uses tricks and propaganda to instil "hatred" against the military among youngsters, in what he said was "a very evil thing to do".'
Whilst I can understand their desire to give the extra context, I'm not sure that it was really needed, and adding an entire paragraph is a fairly substantial "edit".