Core lesson Thailand teaches its kids? Hypocrisy

As the year comes to an end, many of us are looking forward to a bonus, holidays and new resolutions. Looking ahead, two Saturdays after 2020 arrives, we will have yet another celebration — National Children's Day (NCD). Adults take pride in making this day memorable for children.

Traditional activities and perks for kids include an opportunity to sit in the prime minister's chair at Government House (which I did years ago), breathtaking airshows by the Royal Thai Air Force, free gifts and privileged entry to zoos and museums. What a day to be a kid!

Another activity taken seriously by adults, or at least by the prime minister, is coining the NCD motto, a custom dating back to 1956 when Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram pioneered the first slogan — "Devote yourself to the public interest".

Fast forward to today, and 18 prime ministers have presided over 62 catchphrases in 65 years. Only 1957, 1958 and 1964 had no NCD slogan. The latest motto for 2020 is: "Thai children in the new era know unity and civic responsibility".

I took a deep dive into the exhaustive list of the NCD mottos. Among the 62 slogans, I found 180 principles; and by grouping duplicates or similar ones, I identified 30 unique core values, with the top three being "Morality" at 38 instances, "Love for learning" at 22 and "Discipline" at 19.

"Morality", encompassing "virtue", "honesty" and "goodness", accounted for one in five of all the principles penned by the 18 premiers. This reflects Thai society's core belief in ethics as a key attribute our children must possess. But it also reflects an appalling hypocrisy.

We adults ask our children to uphold integrity, yet at the same time we ignore our own glaring failure to lead by example, having allowed corruption to contaminate our country — even in the sacred realms of education.

Corruption has long been rooted in Thai education, flourishing at every level of the system.

Associate Professor Pornamarin Phromkert of Khon Kaen University published a 2018 study on organised corruption in secondary education in Kalasin, Khon Kaen and Maha Sarakham provinces. Using a research method based on records of court judgements, extensive interviews with key informants and small-group discussions among stakeholders, he discovered three forms of organised malfeasance in Thai institutions of learning.

The first one is corruption in construction and procurement of school supplies. This is done through systematic bid-rigging to benefit one's own network of school executives, business people and politicians.

Actions range from developing predetermined specifications to specifically benefit particular bidders, to opaque tendering by excluding competitors or forcing them to surrender or propose higher fees so the designated bidder will win.

Assoc Prof Pornamarin estimated that 30 per cent of the budgets to upgrade school facilities are misappropriated. Graft also extends into the construction phase, where project developers fail to comply with proposed specifications but instead employ low-quality cheap materials to boost margins.

Other examples of fraud include purchases of school supplies at inflated prices, falsifying receipts to cover misspent reimbursements, and faking procurements where no supplies are acquired.

The second organised scam is corruption in human resource management.

Certain local education administrators have exploited their authority by influencing pay raises, promotions, appointments, transfers and reshuffles either for their kith and kin or for personal financial reward. Assoc Prof Pornamarin noted that corrupt officials could charge 5-10 million baht (S$224,300-S$448,600) to promote someone to a managerial post in a large prestigious school and no less than 1 million baht in a medium-sized school.

Corruption also pervades teacher recruitment, be it by giving clues on examination content to prospective teachers in advance, handing out answer sheets containing partial solutions to test takers or swapping their answer sheets with prearranged exam papers during marking.

The third is corruption in student admissions. Some schools will ignore admittance quotas for students under special conditions, often in exchange for pae jia or tea money. Such special treatment is given to students whose parents have made large donations to the schools, and to students of politicians and of high-level government officials.

Assoc Prof Pornamarin's findings align with regular media reports on corruption in Thai education. In 2018, there was a report of malfeasance in the construction of Songkhla Lake Aquaculture Research Centre which resulted in a seven-year delay and a budget overrun of 800 million-1.4 billion baht.

That same year, irregularities were found in a 279-million-baht purchase of unwanted occupational training equipment, such as tractors for 600 schools mostly in the Northeast.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry's Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund, whose objective was to help girls from poor families, made headlines after an education official drained it of almost 120 million baht in a multi-year heist.

Even students' lunches were not spared. A primary school in Surat Thani was exposed for having fed students substandard meals of noodles and fish sauce.

In other provinces, certain schools inflated the number of students in their lunch programme so as to receive more in state subsidies. In similar fashion, many school executives reported "ghost" or fictitious students in their hundreds to boost their ministry funding or attract promotions for enrollment "success".

At the start of 2019 academic year in May, the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce estimated that parents spend a total of 55 billion baht on their children's education, 15.7 billion baht (28.6 per cent) of which is for pae jia, or tea money. Four months later, the National Anti-Corruption Commission ruled three officials of Samsenwittayalai School guilty of demanding bribes from six parents totalling 1.44 million baht.

So what role does the NCD motto play in this epidemic, which is only the tip of the corruption iceberg? Mahatma Gandhi once said, "An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching."

I like the NCD slogan tradition because it adds spice to the celebration. But instead of simply bestowing mottoes of virtue upon kids, adults need to make good on them by eradicating corruption in the children's nurturing ground — schools.

Children nowadays are well aware of the rampant foul play, with news always at their fingertips. Many grow up believing corruption is an everyday fact of life.

Only by being role models can we turn our words into enduring inspiration and effectively encourage our children to embrace the integrity we have long promoted. BANGKOK POST

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bundit Kertbundit works in business consultancy, and had previous work stints in the finance industry and as a reporter at the Thai Public Broadcasting Service.