The promise of Education inherent in Democracy

*note tonight is going to be a quick post because of a hectic day, and a well-deserved social interaction session—will get back to Dostoevsky paragraphs tomorrow. There be typos.   

                I’m in Thailand primarily to teach English, and today I was able to visit a Thai school and sit in, observe, and even teach classes for the first time. There are three things to note here: 1. the importance of the English language versus distaste for cultural destruction. 2. The ASEAN focus. 3. Witnessing an election, that spoke volumes. The basic point I want to bring from all of these is that a democracy that functions in any way that could be effectively called democratic must ensure education for all participants (what that education consists of is debatable, but that it is necessary seems insurmountable). And secondly that the only sort of patriotism or general political ambition I can condone is one that sees progress as key to life, and identity as constantly in flux.

                I had a conversation with some other American English teachers, all who are of course, highly educated at top schools and bright in individualistic in liberal arts types of ways. Some comments struck me as familiar to I felt before and I do believe that their solution was also the solution I eventually came to. How can you say that all cultures are equally valid and all forms of expression, equally on fire with a sacred (secular) fire of life and go to a country to teach kids to be more western? This is a fair critic and one that I battled with immensely (I will revisit this in a longer post, but I want to get, it’s basically the most important political-philosophical question of the global era). Well when I walked into a classroom today a student bravely stood up and told me that she wanted to be a doctor. Later on in that same class she told me that she wanted to live in America. This is such a big deal. Sometimes we philosophers can get so away from people that we forget they aren’t just theoretical. There was a little girl and she had a dream—a ‘non-superficial’, super important dream, on fire with that sacred flame I alluded to earlier. The gift of English would allow her to accomplish that goal and I would dare deny here that because some people are worried or upset a status quo so old that no one remembers its point of origin will be disturbed? I will not. She will still be Thai, in fact she will be the one to define what that even means in her day.

                Thailand is part of the ASEAN community and if you didn’t know before you went into a classroom, you would after. Facts about ASEAN embroider the walls of every classroom. They see the success and flourishing of that community of south Asian countries as the key to their future development, and the official language to that is English. So here we have two points of geopolitics intertwining: the need to band together in like-minded groups to secure your shared prosperity and the need to be a member of a larger world that is going to engulf you whether you move towards it or not. The world is global and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. We must learn what democracy means in this age.  

Lastly, I want to talk about an election I witnessed today that was momentous. It was the school election for the class presidents of every grade school class. I say this humorously, but I do think that there is immense value in the process. The elections were conducted on actual election boxes that are used in elections (like the ones we use in America and the ones that soon Thai’s will hopefully be returning to). The boxes were brought out and set up by the ROTC students, an extremely popular program here. And all the students got to vote. Now, this may be a superficial vote (I didn’t hear any of the candidate’s platforms), but it shows the children a glimpse of a future that they should be promised. This allows them to acclimate and prepare for the enormous burden that is participating in a liberal democracy. And as we learned on our last few posts, this may be one of the most important lessons that these kids could learn to ensure future triumph. Thanks for reading. I will do better tomorrow.