About Education

    From the Shinsane guest hostel to the road on the right, walking through the grocery store, tea shop, restaurant, uphill and downhill, and suddenly, there is a monument stand in front of us and it says: " Mae Salong Xing Hua Junior High School."Behind the monument is a path leading to the school, and the school is surrounded by a large open space and three blue and white school buildings. There is a stage in the center of the large open space, and a bronze statue of General Duan Xiwen on the left side.Xinghua Junior High School was founded by General Duan Xiwen, the commander of the Yunnan People's Anti-Communist Volunteers Fifth Army. The reason why he founded the school was because that he believed that no matter where he was, he could not forget his own roots. In addition to the differences in language and environment, the soldiers’ children could not keep up with the local formal education system. Thus , this is also the origin of the creation of many Chinese schools in the northern Thailand. At the beginning of this school, local students and poor students were exempted from tuition fees, and 40 outstanding students were sent to universities every year. The students they funded nowadays are all over the world. As time goes by, Xinghua Junior High School gradually becomes the largest Chinese school in Mae Salong.

 

    According to the teacher of the school, all the Chinese schools in Northern Thailand lack teachers. Even the two major government-issued Chinese High School like Jianhua High School and Guangfu High School in the Northern Territory are no exception, and once teachers are frequently mobilized, it is difficult to demand the quality of teaching. For those Chinese schools that have not yet been recognized by the government, it is easier to make the teaching quality more difficult because there is no limit on the quota of teachers. In addition, the Thai government actually opposed the education of Chinese schools in the past. Therefore, it took back the land of Chinese schools and built Thai schools. However, they relaxed the restrictions and chose to close one eye after several years, so the Chinese school was able to re-established on a land with worse location. Moreover, because the strength of the overseas Chinese in northern Thailand is small and scattered, it is not possible to compare the practices of Malaysia and create a set of private Chinese school systems parallel to the formal system by collecting the power of overseas Chinese.

 

    However, although there are still many structural problems need to be resolved in the education of Chinese Schools in Northern Thailand, the parents in the northern Thailand still believe that allowing children to go to the Chinese schools can be better educated. Therefore, they will force the children to go. The reason is because the parents themselves have a relationship with China. Secondly, if the children do not go to the Chinese school, they will learn less language than other children, resulting in insufficient competitiveness. The children who learn Chinese well can do a lot of work in the tourism industry and the catering industry and they have more jobs to choose in the future. In addition, in the past, many parents would like their children to go to Taiwan to study and receive better education, but now the concept has gradually changed. Parents hope that children will stay in northern Thailand, because if children go to Taiwan to study, they don’t have any differences between Taiwanese children and they were only Chinese-speaking children, but if the child stayed in Northern Thailand, he would probably be proficient in Chinese, Thai and English. Thus, it will be better than studying in Taiwan.

 

    Regarding to the textbooks of Chinese schools, the Taiwan Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission will re-edited the original textbooks in Taiwan for the Northern Thai children, and then sent them to Chinese schools in Northern Thailand. The resource is from the establishment of the Chinese Schools to the present. However, in recent years, the sources of resources of Chinese Schools has gradually been divided into two factions, one for Taiwan and the other for mainland China. It seems that there are many Chinese schools using the textbooks of mainland China. However, as of now, Many leading educators in the northern Thailand are opposed to the resources of mainland China. The reason is that in addition to political factors, it also includes the inconvenience of simplified Chinese characters for students to learn, and the most crucial: teachers sent by the mainland China usually have a strong political color. Moreover, they are usually two-month-old college interns. The result of changing teachers frequently cannot really help children. Therefore, Taiwan’s resources are still large, and the mainland China’s policies can be seen that they just want to stepping into the northern Thailand, not really thinking about the education for the children.

 

    At last, we inquired the teacher's thoughts about college volunteers coming to Northern Thailand. The teacher said that most of the college students who came to serve in Northern Thailand were just taking students to play, and did not really teach something educational to students. Therefore, many Chinese schools do not like college students who runs the camp because students here and college students just played together through the whole camp for a few days, and school teachers have to spend a week for making students be concentrate. It really caused some teaching problems. However, it is undeniable that there are college students who come to northern Thailand really want to teach children different educational things indeed , but they usually use the wrong way because they do not really grasp the Chinese level and cultural differences of the children. For local children, their Chinese studies have not been able to involve rhetoric or grammar or even literature, they can only learn the basics like Phonics. Although teaching the basics are boring, basics are still necessary because they are the foundation, otherwise if the foundation is not yet solid, how should children understand more deeper concepts by Chinese? Therefore, the best way to educate by college students team is following the education methods of Chinese schools itselves , and help after-school tutoring, and to organize interesting language games or stories on holidays to stimulate the children to think and discuss, so they can review Chinese and increase cultural stimuli at the same time.