It feels funny to be blogging about anything other than Haiti right now. Although I’m a million miles away, I am, like you, glued to my computer and news stations, in an effort to digest and to process this horrific catastrophe. Even in my office here, in my podunk town in Thailand, I walked in this morning to, “Anna, did you see about Haiti? What about in America? Close to your home?” No, no, I replied, not close to my home, but close to many peoples hearts.
That being said, I’ve been meaning to write an entry for quite some time about my experiences here as a teacher. My time here has only further put into relief the universal commonalities of broken education systems, whether they be in rural Thailand, rural Ohio or downtown D.C.
I teach at a mid-sized public school on the outskirts of an industrial town. The school sits on a stretch of highway that tapers out to the most rural parts of Thailand-- we are at the beginning of the end of urbanity in the province. Imagine this: you have superhero vision and are standing in front of the Warinchamrap School. If you looked to the left, you’d see a small city, with a handful of cute cafés and restaurants, a bunch of Walmart-like establishments and endless mom-and-pop specialty stores. If you looked to the right you’d see miles and miles and miles of golden rice paddies, a few gas stations, some factories and the occasional roadside restaurant. You would also see my students.
In other words, much like the students I worked with at Kenyon, my students here are almost exclusively the children of farmers and factory workers. While they are not the hill tribe children of the north that you most often read about as the children in need here, they come from some of the lowest income areas in the country. And, while poverty is not necessarily conducive to shoddy education systems, it is an all too-common and undeniable trend—both here and in America.
Of the 272 students who enter the Warin School their first year (7th grade), 121 make it to graduation; of that 121, ten to fifteen will make it to university. The pool of males shrinks drastically each year, leaving only a handful once they’ve reached the second semester of their senior year. In my lowest level classes, I am lucky if half show up to our class that meets just once a week, a problem even the most veteran teachers have (“Anna, I just don’t know what to DO,” one of my co-workers lamented yesterday, shaking her head. “My students are exhausting”). I have classes with students who have been taking English for at least four years and quite literally cannot write the English alphabet. And, like the students I worked with in the states, they my students here come from broken homes and have never seen anyone they know or love go beyond a rice paddy. It is—perhaps not surprisingly—the same song that is sung throughout the public school system in the states, and throughout the world: seeing no future for themselves in the education system, or for the education they are told they must get, the students, in so few words, shrug their shoulders and give up.
I judged an English competition a few weeks ago featuring the top 61 students in the entire Isaan region. These students were truly astonishing. Most were eloquent, thoughtful, ambitious, smart and, well, fluent in English. And the things the most impressive ones had in common? Their father was a foreigner, their parents could afford to send them on exchange programs and they had just gotten back from a year in America, or they were in top English programs (where all of their classes are taught in Egnlish) in the richer parts of the region. It was, sadly, quite easy to spot the students from the “country schools” : they were the students who did not and could not keep up. I do not mean to hyperpolarize the situation; there were, of course, exceptions. Unfortunately, though, this formula held largely true.
Education, as anyone who has had one will attest to, is the surest road to freedom. It can mean freedom of opportunity, freedom from oppression, freedom of mind, and, almost always, freedom of choice. Once given and received, education is the coal under the fire for everything or nothing. If pursued, an education gives you the choice to be a farmer or factory worker, a shop owner, a doctor, or an English-speaking farmer with a law degree. It is for this reason, this freedom that education provides, that oppressive governments and institutions everywhere have long feared education, and have established, blatantly and latently, systems in which the poor remain poor and therefore uneducated and uneducated and therefore poor (thank you, Paulo Freire).
Well, that's my two cents, at least. Phew. It's exhausting to think about, isn't it? But hang on, dear reader, because these musings get even more exhausting with the big questions they agitate. Lets start with, well, what in the hell do we do about it? And what can I do in this small school, in this small place, to help these kids see that education is important and enriching and enlivening and freeing? To provide them with the support, opportunities and, well, fun they need to pursue it? How can I help them see past their very limited financial situations to scholarships and university? How do I help them to see that English really could, in this globalizing world, be the ticket that takes them far beyond the borders of their lives? How do I make them... come to class?! Most of all, how do I help to change a broken system, so that equal opporutnity is provided to all students, no matter what their background be?
Now, I understand that one might think these are pretty lofty goals for a year, a decade, a lifetime—I can perhaps see your point. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands here, to pontificate and ponder about this whole education thing. And maybe I've just let that youthful optimism get the best of me. It helps that I really do (most days) love my kids, and have ridiculous amounts of fun with them. But I'd like to believe that, in addition to my foolish optimism (something I blame in large part on the the brilliant, dedicated and groundbreaking work of so many educators I have met), that progress really is possible—even if it means reaching just one student in just one class in one school in rural Thailand.
Sigh. A girl can dream, right?
Welp, I miss you all. And again, sorry for the length—guess I should blog more often or something.
Lots of love,
Anna
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