Fighting for Progress: Political Determination, Education and Social Service

My focus again shifts towards education as I start my first days of my job. That definitely has to be in italicization because I'm not really working the way most people who just got into the workforce are working. I live on a base with a bunch of other teachers and we attend different schools in a really rural area to teach English. What that entails depends on the level of the kids education, the focus of the school, and your own drive to produce results.
In my first day of school, my teaching guide, who sits in on my class, helps with translation and shows me around the school, told me that I had to go slowly because the students are not as smart as the students in private schools in the city or American students. I sort of brushed it off as their was something lost in translation-- not exposed is maybe what she meant. But when she said it the second day, it really got me thinking about the political and social determination of large groups of people who feel excluded from the full experience that some selection of the body of politic is normalized to. The excluded portion can tend to become fatalistic about their destinies. "It has always been liked this, because it must be like this". This sort of thing happens in every country, especially America. It's so hard to come up with a solution in America, since so many of the privileged refuse to acknowledge it's occurrence. But here in Thailand, I think the field may be more easily changed, though it will take genuine social service.
While it may be harder for someone to change their own luck in Thailand, it seems much more likely that small acts of service can impact greatly here. Thailand's economy owes a large portion of income to tourism, but more than their present, their future calls for them to have basic English skills. Thailand is one of the ASEAN nations that will move to using English as an official language soon. This economic and supra-political coalition of south east Asian nations will likely drastically change the pathways that Thai's take towards social progression. Here's the thing though, while other countries in this group were once colonized and therefore, under terrible and nonredeemable circumstances, have come to know English in large proportions, Thailand is the only south east Asian country never colonized. As a result English is rare here. Mostly only the upper classes and small portions of city population have a chance to learn English, and if you are somewhere really rural you will likely meet less than twenty natural English speaking persons in your life.
But what you have to understand is, that the kids here are smart. They want to learn more than any kids I've ever meet (which is cliche but none the less true). They want to be better, and they aren't thinking of a higher tax bracket (I'm not even sure that term applies in Thailand), they are thinking personal betterment. All they need is a chance. Yes it would be great if I could get some kids to read Jane Eyre and write essays (I can be Du Boisian about this), but helping them understand basic conversational skills is going to do so much to open doors for their future and in turn they can return to these villages to uplift others, and the need for western intervention will dwindle. This is the hope: A completely autonomous and self determinate society, with true freedom to determine, not merely a facade of freedom to choose between the little afforded them currently. True freedom entails the ability to choose a third option rather than the two that a hierarchical structure offers you. Progress is incremental. I want to see myself as a small part of that.              

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.