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Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has announced an ambitious, and expensive, mega-project plan to lift Thailand out of its middle-income trap. According to the Bangkok Post:
Ms Yingluck yesterday said Thailand had not completed any major infrastructure projects for several years. Its latest development project was Suvarnabhumi airport seven years ago. Her government is investing in infrastructure to increase national competitiveness and potential. Large-scale investments will continue for the next seven years, she added. She hopes the investments will create jobs and boost people’s incomes, reduce the income gap among Thais, eradicate poverty and strengthen businesses including small and medium enterprises. The National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) expects Thailand to break out of its middle-income trap in 10-15 years based on present forecasts. … Ms Yingluck said her government was trying to boost people’s incomes by promoting agro-industry, tourism, the service sector and the zoning of land use in the country.
Yingluck has good reason to be optimistic. Thailand’s rapid recovery from the terrible flooding of 2011 demonstrates the resilience of its economy. According to the recent Thailand Economic Monitor issued by the World Bank, GDP growth in 2012 was 4.7 percent, with foreign investment remaining strong despite the disastrous images of submerged factories. Growth in 2013 is predicted to be a healthy 5 percent. Government spending has increased (with the rice price support scheme estimated to cost around 3.5% of GDP each year) and there are expensive water resource projects on the way. Overall, however, public debt will be about 50% of GDP at the end of 2013, a level which the World Bank considers to be “not excessive” despite the need for “prudent” management.
So, Thailand is well placed to embark on a new phase of productivity-improving investment. However, spending on infrastructure and mega-projects probably won’t be enough for Thailand to break free from the middle-income trap while it continues to perform relatively poorly on human capital. Overall, Thailand is a development success story but it is well recognised that it has underperformed when it comes to investing in high quality education. Moving people into more productive forms of economic activity requires sustained investment in the acquisition of new skills. Remember that around 40 percent of Thailand’s workforce is still in agriculture, producing around 10 percent of GDP.
As one recent study of the middle-income trap notes:
Skilled workers are needed to move up the value chain from low value-added industries and activities. High quality human capital is especially important for modern high value-added activities like business services. The Asian Development Bank (2012) finds that the underdevelopment of the service sector in China and other Asian emerging markets is attributable partly to the dominance of traditional low value-added services. It identifies shortages of appropriate human capital as an important explanation for the weakness of modern high value-added services. Lack of high quality human capital helps to explain why Malaysia and Thailand have become synonymous with the middle income trap. The rapid expansion of secondary and then tertiary education helps to explain Korea’s successful transition from middle- to high-income status.
Developing physical infrastructure is relatively easily. Transforming the intellectual and cultural infrastructure that lies behind Thailand’s lacklustre performance on education will be a much more daunting task.
One of the most pernicious and ubiquitous effects of the decadent culture spawned by Thai Royalism is the idea “merit” comes from one’s place/position at birth and from what patrons one has rather than merit coming form hardwork, diligent study, perserverance, etc. Until the present King and all the royalist baggage associated with his reign has disappeared, how will Thailand ever developed a large class of highly educated, motivated, hard-working and industrious people in the manner of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the coastal areas of China?
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Go back to your desired country. Never live or stay Thailand any longer, if you are not satisfied
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The idea of acceptance of one’s position and not striving for change has roots in a predominantly agricultural/feudal, Buddhist society. Most Thais accept their place and work hard enough to get by, and the Thai-Chinese minority, usually raised with different expectations and attitudes, grab the business opportunities.
This is indeed a problem, but monarchy, in its present form, is not the major cause of it. It can be a force for national (and class) cohesion, and there’s no reason for it to negatively impact education.
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Is every god awful thing that is wrong with Thailand the monarchy’s fault? My vote’s with NY Mouse on this one. If anything, the king’s messages – regardless of whether you think them hypocritical or not – have always stressed the very merits you say are lacking in royalist rhetoric, and that’s the message our hyper-royalist curricula have always espoused.
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I think Andrew has hit the nail on the head. Yet again the Thai government’s complete failure even to recognise that education is central to so many of its challenges is very depressing. No mention of it in Yingluck’s four national strategies. Does she not read Thai Woman Talks ?
http://thaiwomantalks.com/2012/02/26/the-sorry-state-of-thai-education-part-1-ridiculous-o-net-questions/
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All of the Ministry of Education’s initiatives to improve education have been miserable failures. After witnessing the system in action for ten years, I would have to say that the biggest impediment is the Thai teachers themselves. They haven’t improved their teaching methods in 60 years, and show no interest in reform. They rely on boring lectures and focus on rote, repetitious learning; refuse to accept questions from students; and are hostile to any introduction of student centered learning. This is true for higher education as well as for K-12 instruction. Social promotion of failing students is the rule nearly universally, so the students have learned that they don’t have to try. Sports days last for entire weeks. For all the money that is spent on promoting English, English language proficiency for Thai public school students is extremely poor, perhaps the worst among the ASEAN countries. The test scores reveal that they don’t do much better in Thai language studies either, nor in Science and Mathematics, and they are especially poor at critical thinking skills. This has bred an outside tutoring system, where the parents of good students send their sons and daughters to after-school classes seven days a week, and the good teachers increasingly are focused on moonlighting work.
In addition, the classroom infrastructure in the public schools is crumbling. The chalkboards and the desks are the same ones that have been used for 50 years. Furthermore, there is no air conditioning, despite global warming and the fact that the plan is to switch the academic calendar to an ASEAN-wide school year that will have students attending school during the hottest two months of the year, April and May.
The top levels of government have not paid attention to this problem. I once asked an expert when the last time was that we had an Education Minister who actually knew and cared what he was doing, and the response was “more than 20 years ago”!
There is already a chronic shortage of competent, trained technical workers who can compete on an international stage (i.e. speak English as the international language of commerce). As Andrew Walker rightly points out, if the problem persists, employers will not be able to find the knowledge-based workforce they need for the creative economy of the future all of the Thai leadership is fond of talking about.
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No one seems to mention Sufficiency Economy these days since the photo of its top advocate Khun Sumeth with a Ferrari car is circulating in the social media.
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There are stil “seeds of hope” in Thailand. Thai education needs a major overhaul,especially civics and history in conjunction with technology. The current government has so far made an initiative to make changes, exempli gratia, free tablet computers to young Thai Students. Culture forms the root of our society. If we can seed a new root, a new culture will follow. It may take time, but it can be done. Thais presently have very narrow perspectives, from my observation. When I was younger, living in northeast Thailand, I had witnessed many teachers partaking long lunch breaks often accompanied by alcoholic drinks. I had no idea what these teachers were thinking. I now know this behavior is unethical and unprofessional;it should not be tolerated. This illustration of my experience is in no way disrespecting Thais. It is out of concern for the progress of the Thai people. Thais must enable self discovery and self criticism. Constructive criticism from other individuals should be viewed as positive: a way of increasing self awareness. In the face of authority, they must be able to constructively raise valid questions so that different point of views may be heard. To increase critical thinking skills in the young, new ideas and values must be encouraged. The “Haves” must be willing to help the “Have Nots” for the Thai society to move forward. Strong positive ethical role models must take precedent to the status quo. After all, Thailand is a Buddhist country. Impermanence (change) is one of the major teachings of the Lord Buddha. Change is good for people.
To Noo NY mouse, the value you have described of Thai is pre-Buddhist. The concept of the “god king” is Hindu in origin. Before present day Thailand, the land was governed by the Khmer empire and that culture was heavily influenced by Hinduism before the introduction of Buddhism in SE Asia. To sum it up, the Thais have Mother india, Father Khmer, and Cousin China in the mixture. I am no Buddhist scholar but I have read my fair share of books on this subject. May I suggest some documentary films for you to enjoy? One is “The Story of India” with Michael Wood and the other one called, “The Buddha:The Story of Siddhartha,” a film by David Grubin.
“Do Not Fear Truth for it is The Light of Humanity”
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