Sripatum Academic Forum: Research and Innovations for Sustainable Development

August 13, 2008. Today there was an academic forum on the title of Research and Innovations for Sustainable Development held at Sripatum University. What I liked the most about this forum was the keynote speaker in the afternoon. Asst.Prof. Kanok Wongtrahgan, Ph.D. He gave a talk on Education in Thailand.

He noted that Thailand had become greater than many countries like Australia in terms of reinforcing people to receive higher education. As we can see that there are many students have entered to universities. In juxtapose, not many Australians (or New Zelanders)pursue their education after finishing high schools. However, many of the Thai students who have graduated can find no job or are not capable of working. Like my students, for example, they have learned English all their lives, yet they can't communicate with foreigners effectively. In conclusion, we have focused too much on quality, but lack in quality. Unlike people in Australia, after high school, they would go on training to apprenticeship to learn skillful tasks/jobs to become , for example, a locksmith and so forth.

Now, there is a new challenge/ weakness for the education system of Thailand to have to solve the latter problem and solve a question on how to take the burden of the parents and society of new graduates not getting a job. We can't just keep producing people with higher education, but lack of knowledge,competency, and proficiency.

In order to become successful and famous, according to the speaker, university should learn to blend in with its community, help people in the community (acknowledge what the university can do for the community, not what they can get from the community). Here, community and university should be united. For instance, Columbia University in New York used to separate itself from the New York City, so they were not quit successful and could not build as good reputation as Harvard University. Later on, they changed the management and strategy, they were more involved in the city and open the university to the city and tried to be a part of it by opening more schools that are in high demands in the job market in the NYC. Then, they became famous.

Furthermore, the speaker also mentioned about the goal of UNESCO of the basis of learning. UNESCO (2005) came up with the Basis of learning: Learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be.

Key Skills from Dan Buckley: Communication skill, Problem solving, Evaluation own and others, Information and communication technology, and working with others.

Now, education is not just some one's responsibility. It's every one's. We need to teach our students how to think, not what to think or do. They need to be able to apply the theoretical knowledge they have learned in classrooms to the real situations. They need to be able to answer the questions of their companies about what they do know, what they can do and how they can solve problems.

The speaker left a good note on students' imagination. Imagination is important and many times teachers spoil their imagination, so that they don't make progress and do not know how to think! It's very sad, but true!!