Sukavich Rangsitpol

Sukavich Rangsitpol (born 5 December 1935) is Thai Educational Reformer , businessman and politician; Minister of Education, Thailand (1995–1997).

Quotes

Education for All People and Education for Life

• I strongly believe that, as a citizen of the world, any person has the right to learn
• and should be entitled to have access to education according to their competency and needs.
• It is essential that the government provide educational services that respond to the people’s needs*
• Education, therefore, has to be organized in such a way that people from all walks of life can participate in educational activities at levels and times of their preference.
• With regard to the learning society, as I mentioned earlier, optimistically, people from all walks of life should be able to have equal access to education according to their needs and potentials.
• All sort of boundaries, be their gender, age, socio-economic status, physical or mental disabilities have to be eliminated.
• To achieve this, we have to distinctively promote continuing and lifelong education, the form of education which is responsive to individual needs and preferences. With educational facilities and a variety of educational programs available, people can make use of the learning centre as a place to acquire technical skills or knowledge adaptive to their work and daily life activities.

All for Education

• At the very beginning, the crucial element to be considered for education reform is the management system. The administrative power, in particular, has to be shifted to local authorities, and local participation in the school management is essentially encouraged.
• We cannot deny that people who know more about the educational needs of local people are those who work and live within that community.

Education for Peace

• In a paper presented at the Second UNESCO-ACEID International Conference in 1996 entitled New aspirations for education in Thailand. Towards educational excellence by the year 2007,His Excellency Mr. Sukavich Rangsitpol Minister of Education,Thailand (1995 -1997)laid out his plans for education in Thailand..

According to John Cogan (Professor of Education, University of Minnesota, USA) and Derricott, Ray (Director, Centre for Continuing Education, University of Liverpool) · 2014 in Citizenship for the 21st Century: An International Perspective on Education, he saw education as "the instrument for human development, creating peace for mankind and national security"

The goal of the education reform is to realize the potential of Thai people to develop themselves for a better quality of life and to develop the national into peaceful co-existence in the global community.

Education helps reduce social problems and improves quality of life

• Education is perceived as a crucial instrument for increasing productivity and income, skills, competency of human resources, and sustainable growth. In the end, education helps reduce social problems, and improves quality of life so that people can live equally with others in society.
• The provision of education has to be congruent with the pace of the changing world. This era - the era of globalization where all sources of information can be accessed within a few seconds through Internet and World-Wide-Web linkages, we inevitably have to take a further step beyond literacy level.
• The speedily changing world and the growth in business and industrial enterprises have led to greater demand of semi-skilled manpower, who need a higher level of education in order to perform their tasks at the adequate level.To keep up with the speedy change, the educational system can no longer take a passive role.
• In fact, there is a need for the reform of the entire educational system to keep up with the challenges of globalization and “information technology” so as to prepare our younger generation for adapting to the upcoming challenges.
• The focus of education cannot be merely on general and vocational education.It is equally important that the education system provides its clientele with learning skills, so they have the ability to “learn how to learn”, the ability to make rational judgments, and they are able to express their democratic rights and freedom.
• Both individuals and communities must be able to possess the skills and knowledge required to function productively in the changing world.

• One of the most important learning outcomes in education is learners' self-esteem. It is most desirable that every learner, at various stages of education, should be able to realize his or her capacity, potentiality and optimum capability in physical, intellectual, social and emotional (moral) developments.

• An individual who has reached the stage of self-esteem almost always makes a sound and rational decision. He or she always sets a reachable yet challenging goal in his or her endeavour. When the endeavour results in a success, his or her self-concept will increase or widen.

Learn how to Learn

• learn how to learn, the ability to make rational judgments, and they are able to express their democratic rights and freedom.

Education Quotations

• Education is perceived as a crucial instrument for increasing productivity and income, skills, competency of human resources, and sustainable growth.

===Teacher===

• The old saying, "Teachers will teach the way they have been taught" is very much in evidence in the Thai educational system. Hence, introducing change to educational practices has to start with teachers' learning. When the learning process of teachers and teacher training has been changed, it is assured that the new learning process will be replicated in classrooms. If teacher education is loaded with lecturing, it is very difficult to introduce other kinds of teaching to school learning. If teachers' learning emphasizes memorization or rote learning, it is unlikely that school learning will include high-order thinking. Therefore, every educational reform has to begin with teachers' learning, otherwise classroom learning will not be changed and new learning outcomes will not be achieved.

• Teachers also say that teaching for learning how-to-learn-learn will consume a lot of time. It will be difficult to cover all the content specified by the curriculum if learning uses up too much time on hands-on activities. The less-is-more alternative has not been considered as a possible solution at all in educational reforms where only expanding will bring about progress and development is more. Now is an appropriate time for educators to come down to the heart of educational matters or the learning methods to achieve the less-is-more alternative in all educational reforms.

• Teachers need to be trained on how children learn, not only how to solve mathematical problems. They must know how to make learners well understand the New Math and enable them to solve mathematical problems.

• Teachers should be able to help learners to efficiently communicate to other numerical ideas and to make connection with real-life problems in the areas chosen for their eventual career. Training only on subject matter is definitely not going to bring about this expertise. There must be more emphasis on coaching and facilitating techniques. In their normal practices, teachers must see very clearly where each individual learner stands on the learning continuum of that particular development, what problems and difficulties he or she is going to face and what lies ahead on that learning continuum to be walked by the learner. Teachers should be trained to be a master of how to help each and every learn to walk through the learning task. Going through the learning task is a necessary and essential aspect of teacher training but it is not sufficient to make them good and effective teachers.

• Teachers have to be learners. They have to treat each new group of students as a different group, fresh and unknown. Teachers often perceive new students as being the same as those in the previous group and apply the same practice to them. If teachers are learners, they will study the new group of students in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses, then teach them accordingly.

• The kind of education we are looking for, it is necessary that teachers have to walk through this learning process and then practise them later on in their teaching. Professionalism can be achieved by teachers if they practise learning in their teaching.

• In fostering a sense of success, teachers have to be responsive to the learners and create several self-assessment activities in learning.

• A reflective teacher always fosters a sense of success. He or she begins his or her teaching by learning about each and every learner. He or she encourages and negotiates with the learners to set a challenging learning objective, and to select an appropriate learning task, through his or her knowledge about the learners' capability and constraints.

• The reflective teacher makes the learners decide for themselves and ensures that the decision is sound and reasonable. He or she asks a lot of questions for the learners to carry out self-assessment.

• The reflective teacher is also a learner. He or she always reflects on his or her behaviour by looking at what happens to the learners. Learning about the learners' responses will help the reflective teacher select more effective behaviour for some particular purposes that suits particular learners.

• To make teachers more reflective, a series of self-assessment sessions have to be conducted, beginning with an analysis of the learners, or the students. Teachers have to be trained or retrained on how to make their teaching more effective and successful.

• It should be seen that reflective teachers are necessary and essential in an education which is geared towards human development.

• It will be fair and just to require all teachers to be reflective, only if educational practices specify the empowering of human resources or emphasize that learning is a reconstruction of nature. Otherwise, retraining of teachers to be more reflective will not be cost-effective

Teaching

• A sense of success in teaching has to be reinforced to make the teachers proud of their achievement.

citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.

• In a world that changes at an exponential rate, members of such world community have to be very proficient in finding reasonable solutions to the problems that they face by themselves.

• A solution to one problem can not be totally applicable to other problems. It is said that there are no two problems that are exactly alike.

• There are many variables intertwined in every problem and components of all the variable involved have to be carefully studied. Forming solutions by studying and synthesizing the relationship among key variables seems to be very much in need. The ability to identify a meaning from observable and obtained data is the core of human characteristics in such changing society. Hence, inductive thinking has to be instilled in every learner for a productive citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.

The Learner

• The learner has to realize that he or she is the one who sets the objective, the learning tasks and the stage for success.

• The learning must belong to the learners and not to the teachers.

• The "scaffolding" practice that forces every learner to go along a very definite path of learning will create negative feelings about learning. At the end, the learners will be submissive to the teachers. Good disciplinary practices cannot then be achieved.

• Education in the form of passing on information, facts and specific knowledge does not need reflective teachers. Reflective teachers are very important in a democratic education because the learners' liberty is always respected.

Learning

• Constructive process is a process of development and learning is a process of reconstruction of nature.

Free Education

In Thailand, free education began around in 1996.

Therefore we have to improve and provide free education for poor children up to 12 years in formal schools. Non-formal education, then, should play a greater role in secondary and higher education. What I would like to achieve is to see our educational system assist people to be able to cope with social and economic problems and progress

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AND KEYNOTE SPEECH by His Excellency Mr. Sukavich Rangsitpol Minister of Education, Thailand

===Our education system subsidizes the rich and denies the poor===

❝ Our education system subsidizes the rich and denies the poor. It was more expensive for the son of an upcountry farmer to attend an agricultural vocational college than one of Bangkok’s elite universities.

Our education system is more attuned to the needs of the 19th Century than those of the 21st Century.

We have downgraded the role of teachers in our society, keeping them poor and under-trained, Lacking the respect and honor that they deserve.

Our education system is autocratic and highly centralized. Teacher, students and parents have little say in the system.

School curricula have little relevance to the practical realities of life and pay no attention to local environments.

The physical facilities in many schools, especially upcountry, are in a disgraceful state of disrepair. ❞