Be sure to read the first part of the interview here before continuing.
What was the conclusion of your research?
Well-educated, foreign educators clearly do not understand Thai culture, or its ramifications in the classroom. I tested 25 foreign English teachers who were training at Siam Technical College, in Bangkok. These folks are very smart. Some of them can even read or speak Thai.
However, when given a 10-question test about the most basic points unique to Thai culture, not one of the twenty-five could pass. In fact, as a group, the teachers were only able to muster an average score of 32.8 per cent. From these results, it is crystal clear that foreigners don’t understand Thai culture and history. In fact, the results were so dramatically short of passing that it became clear that, in all likelihood, no group of normal or academic foreigners would probably pass the test. The test was very easy for all the Thais who took it.
Is 25 teachers at one school in Bangkok a large enough sample group to draw reliable, broad conclusions about all foreigners in Thailand?
To credibly publish APA-formated, Geert Hofstede-based university research, all the questions had to be approved in advance by our Research Administrator. The research model was studied by two professors, as well as adult Thai citizens before use. The questions, such as ‘what was the capital of Siam before Bangkok?’ and ‘Buddhist chants are still chanted in what ancient language that starts with a P?’ are questions that most Thai people easily know.
Twenty-five teachers might sound small, but that was out of a class of thirty in a programme with slightly less than 300 active teachers, at the time. The programme where the teachers are located is one-of-a-kind in Thailand, so several academics reviewing the project felt 10% was a fair sample.
In order to ensure honest results, with the professor’s blessing, I came under the guise of a classmate. Once everybody arrived, their computers were disbarred and they received an unplanned test. Without computers, nine students scored less than 20% and nobody reached a passing score of 70%.
Averaging 32.8% as a group, it is unlikely that any larger group could pass (70%). The reason why they all failed is because they didn’t know the answers.
Aside from the above, were there any other particular revelations that you think deserve further consideration?
Yes. The research study also made an unexpected discovery. We happened to have five non teachers, new to Thailand, who were not qualified to take the test. When I excluded their data, I happened to take the time to score the tests. Even before I crunched the numbers, they jumped off the page at me. It turned out that the non-teachers scored 30%, a mere 2.8% below much better educated teachers who have been living in Thailand for a long time.
The thought usually is that you learn best by immersion. Say that you wanted to learn German? Most people would say that the best way to do that would be to live and work in Germany. That did not happen in my research. My research clearly indicated that, for reasons as yet unknown, foreign educators do not learn Thai culture by immersion, and actually seem to go into shutdown once they are working here. Instead of learning faster, they learn much slower, if they even learn at all.
The research also indicated that, even with special eastern/western educational courses, foreign academics don’t understand their Thai students well, and that makes teaching very difficult. You can’t teach someone you don’t understand. It’s as simple as that.
How can the research be used for the greater benefit of Thailand and its foreign visitors?
In a myriad of ways. First, it seems to indicate that foreigners should probably not meddle in Thai politics, or be quick to take sides in domestic affairs. The test that I gave to candidly assess foreign knowledge was a softball test.
Had I given a real test, with tough questions, a 32% score would clearly plummet to near zero.So, I think it is best for foreigners to spend their time listening to the leaders of Thailand, rather than engaging in criticism. Second, the research can benefit any openminded foreign teacher. Because this study academically proved just what foreign educators know about Thailand is actually very little, it means that any foreign language teacher can vastly improve their effectiveness by taking the time to read up about Thai culture. They don’t have to research nearly 3,000 pages, or write a report worthy of international attention. They just need to get off of their smartphones and read the newspaper every morning.