Ah, Thailand. I keep hearing how it's such a great place. Well....It IS. It's a great place to VISIT, I should say. As far as working here, it blows. Let me tell you about MY time working here. Mind you, this post reflects only MY OWN personal experiences. Lots of folks have come here, worked a year or more, and loved it. They may have never seen anything like the problems I'm describing. Actually, I love Thailand too, as long as I'm on the beach somewhere in the south, or riding my mountian bike up in Chiang Mai. In other words, as long as I don't have to struggle against the immovable object called the Thailand education system. Yes, after pulling my one year, after paying my dues, after playing the fool, I've learned the truth about English teaching in the land of Thai.

Other people have yaked over and over about the low pay and lack of airfare reimbursements here. It's good to know that information. It's true. However, I won't go into that. I'll stick to my personal working experiences at a government school out in the sticks near Lopburi.

Check this out:

I had five English speakers at my school. Four were Thai, and one was a white-faced fool from the west (me). One BIG problem here was every Thai teacher had a 'piss-off' attitude towards every other teacher, be he Thai or American. This meant the 'team' never really formed. We never worked together on any concepts or lessons. I personally believed it would have been a great idea for all the English teachers, the real one (myself), as well as the 'pretenders' (the Thai) to assemble and plan 'themes' for lessons once a week or so. I presented this idea a few times to the 'head' of the English department, to no avail. This went over like a lead balloon. Crash and burn. No, no one ever shared his or her ideas with me, the native speaker, the one employee who was getting paid more than the director himself.

So.....all during both semesters, my students faced a daily 'barrage' of English concepts coming from every direction. For instance, one week while I was working on the present progressive tense, one teacher was working on simple past, another on future perfect, etc. What a crock. It could have been done much better. We could have all gotten on the same page from the beginning with one Thai teacher introducing and translating vocabulary, another going over grammar, another phonology, etc, etc, etc. But nope. PISS OFF was the attitude there.

Another problem I encountered at my school was 'undermining'. I once had a 10-minute argument with my M6 students over what we English speakers say: "I am going TO home." or "I am going home." Give me a break. The reason I had the argument to begin with is because one of the Thai teachers went behind my back and told my M6s his 'opinion' of what was 'correct' (the former). Like I don't know my English. A guy who was born in the US and as lived there for 38 years. And this Thai is about to get a MASTER'S DEGREE--God help us all.

There also seemed to be a 'piss-off' atitude on the part of the students toward homework and speaking practice outside of class. For some unknown reason, the higher-ups in Thailand believe that a student should learn in, and ONLY in, the classroom. This applied to my English classes, of course. My boss and my fellow teachers accepted this and went along with it. When I'd give my students homework to complete or practice after class and bring it completed to the next class, they wouldn't bother. Someone has put the idea in Thai students' minds that there shouldn't be any homework in an English class. It is an idea I spent a year futilly trying to root out

To complicate this problem further, about half the students at my school would see me, the native speaker, in only two 50-minute classes a week. The other half saw me only once a week. I remember there was a series of holidays during the first semester of last year. I saw several of my classes in late June just before these holidays and didn't see them again until mid-August. I was never asked to make up those 'lost' classes, either. I tried to hold make-up classes on Saturdays, but it was just pissing up a rope. What a fine way to teach students.

So, I agree. Thailand IS great, but only if you're here as a tourist. Forget working here. It MIGHT be better in Bangkok. Bangkok is like a separate city-state compared to the rest of Thailand. Maybe it should seceed and become its own entity.

Don't tell anybody I said Thailand is great to visit. I want Thailand's beautiful, quiet beaches down south, and its awesome, uncrowded mountain bike trails in Chiang Mai, to stay that way.

Elephant