EDUCATION IN THAILAND

The alphabet was created so that the many princes of the land would be literate enough to administer their provinces and communicate with the palace in the capital, while monks had to know how to read the religious texts from which they preached sermons to the peasants. The great bulk of the people was either in service or engaged in farming so they had little need for reading skills, since village lore, history and culture was transmitted orally (Kanoksak, 1984).

Buddhist monasteries were virtually the only source of semi-public education and only a very small portion of the population, mostly male, received any formal education. The reign of King Mongkut (1851-1865), who was immortalized in the Western world as the ôKingö in the ôKing and I,ö is the one man in the country most responsible for the growth of education (Sukhabanij, 1970).

Under Mongkut, ThailandÆs first printing press was set up and the educational curricula of Thai children were restructured to suit the new needs of the nation. The knowledge of English became a necessary tool and an English teacher was hired to teach t

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school for elementary school teachers was founded. In the 1960's a larger number of teacher training institutions were established to meet an urgent demand for more teachers. This expansion was precipitated by three major factors: the extension of compulsory education, population growth, and the availability of secondary education to a lager population. ThailandÆs teacher-training programs caused almost an international incident during the last year, when an ill-conceived plan was announced. ThailandÆs economy had been suffering thanks to the devaluation of the baht in 1997 and the Asian Development Bank agreed to aid the country if educational reform was instituted. The money is contingent on Thailand moving ahead in several areas. * The school drop-outs as a result of the economic crisis must be sufficiently contained. * The government must quickly improve the quality of education in such crucial fields as science, language and mathematics. * There must be a sufficient increase in the budget to support secondary school education. * The government has to appropriately allocate education, human resources and improve the quality of teachers * Thailand's education must take into account needs of rural communities, which shou
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Development Bank, Modern Education, Development Plan, Education Special, Education Thailand, Education Commission, King Ramkhamhaeng, Vocational Education, University Affairs, Unicenter TNG, education *, chulalongkorn university, sudaprasert 1973, education thailand, ministry education, national education, education commission, unicenter tng, enterprise management, institute technology, king mongkut's institute, faculty information technology, television radio programs, ministry university affairs, lower secondary level,
Approximate Word count = 2911
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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