Percentile co-efficients or standard grades -- which is best?
by Tanyada Dumrongkichkarnvong
Chalong, 28 Oct 2010: When I was a student, instead of grades, the results of our study were recorded as a percentile and our rank in the class shown. So a report card would show, say, that one had reached the 91st percentile and thus was no. 1 in the class. Students graded by percent thus took their positions in class from one to whatever the last number was (typically 50, as classrooms then were quite crowded). This system resulted in unusually high competition among students for class ranking: parents forced their children to study, because none wanted to admit the rank of their kids in class was in double figures.
Everyone tried for the top three slots -- first to third; that meant you were smart; to be "class first" awarded one a status quite incomparable to any I've met with since (and I speak as one who was long a family court judge, and in 1997 was Phuket's delegate to the convention that drafted Thailand's constitution).
Administrators assigned students to class according to previous rankings. Classes were then ranked A to F, the A class having the school's top students and the F class comprising cut-ups and flops. Courses in the A class were harder than those in the B class, which were harder than those for the C class, etc. But neither parents nor administrators acted upon this important fact. That one was no. 20 in a class of the best students, and in fact a better student than the best the B class could show, was lost on them. They cared little how weak or how smart students in each class were -- only about final percentiles and rankings.
The logic of that thinking is seriously flawed; it created a lot of misery.
I was in the "king class", as it was called, which meant the top from among six classes. The last number of our class -- just to get in it -- necessarily had higher percentages than students in any other class. Nevertheless, the pressure was always on "to be no. 1" in the class. Parents were immensely proud of offspring whose class ranking never reached double figures, though their classes might comprise only dullards. One thus could take no solace from being, say, no. 20 in the school: the shame of being no. 20 in the class occluded all else!
This kind of system breeds selfishness, in my opinion. To maintain status, students won't help each other in study; it could give away their edge, their position in class drop.
To give readers a better idea of the frenzy kids can become prey to under such duress, I'll tell you a story: One of my friends was the perennial no. 1 at our school. But then, in 6th grade, a student from Bangkok, daughter of Phuket's public prosecutor, enrolled; after that she was no.1. My friend was so embarrassed she did not come to school for a week and did not want to see her report card.
Luckily, she did not commit suicide.
Thereafter she avoided school activities and recreation, thinking only to study hard, to keep her position in the class and perhaps fight her way back to the no. 1 slot.
In the end, all her memorizing and rote learning proved mere bootless exercise. Having finished high school, we took the entrance exams for university. She failed hers and did not attend. But I -- the one who had always hobbled along with the also-rans in double figures -- passed mine and attended Chulalongkorn University, the Kingdom's best.
There's a lesson in that, I suppose, which might be that life is not a multiple-choice test. Although the percentile grading system has fallen by the way in Thailand, in preference to the grading system found in many other countries, memorization and rote learning are still the norm here. This is a big mistake. Whatever success I've achieved has come from dealing with life as it happens, not from passing exams. To do that one must think for one's self, use one's powers of analysis -- not study the curriculum. Memorization never takes one outside the curriculum.
These days all students are judged by grades -- A, B, C, D -- which is much better: instead of having only one "no. 1" in a class, several students can receive an A, and its attendant status, because there is a range (say, 90 - 100 points on a test). So they are more relaxed, and help their friends more.
The great problem is that schools differ in quality, so grade A from one school is a lot different from grade A at another. This may result from flaws in the system, the curriculum or -- perish the thought -- the teachers!
Our efforts should be devoted to discovering -- and rectifying -- the causes of discrepancy.
But there is no question in my mind that the new grading system results in less selfishness and more camaraderie among students -- and that is a positive boon for which we may all be thankful.
The Basic Problems Besetting Thailand's Educational System
Chalong 14 Oct, 2010: I would first like to talk about the educational system in Thailand. Actually we have had formal education here for over a hundred years but -- speaking as a long-time career educater and former juvenile court judge -- it seems to me that the system is still disorganized. How disorganized? Just ask any teacher in Thailand about when school vacation will be -- none of them can tell you! Compare that to the system in other countries: there they have timetables and hand them out on the first day parents take their children to school. The first, easiest problem -- and we are unable to solve it!
What every school worries about is: what kind of uniform students should wear? What will be forbidden (hair parted wrong; skirts too short; what cosmetics are allowed etc.)? And, which is paramount, what benefits are to be derived from the Parents Association????
The Ministry of Education never improves curricula or techniques for teacher training, which lie at the core of improving standards of education in this country. The Ministry never cares whether teachers are teaching subjects they majored in, and they never see the need for having smaller classroom sizes. Public school classrooms in Thailand are almost universally over-crowded.
All these are simple, relatively straight-forward problems, but too difficult for our Department of Education to get a handle on.
Tanyada
Good Theory -- Bad Practice
I think it is very interesting that I was taught to save all kinds of things for reuse. For example, when I was young we had canned condensed milk. After we finished the can, we washed it and saved it to use for something else. Or we saved those cans to make Chinese cakes on Chinese New Year. All bottles of soy sauce or other kinds of bottles, we washed and kept for reuse as well. Even these days we fold plastic bags and keep rubber bands for reusing.
So, why do we have to motivate people to recycle as a means of minimizing global warming? Too few people do it. Shall we blame parents or… who else? These days most of us throw everything away.
Here is a ridiculous story – one most who have attended schools in Thailand can relate to. Most teachers do not have lesson plans. I was shocked when I trained Thai teachers to teach English: only when inspectors were coming to the classroom would have lesson plans – and then only because they bought someone else’s lesson plan and copied it!
That’s not only immoral, it’s folly: you have to do lesson plans yourself, because each class is different from another – even when you teach the same lesson.
What really annoys me is having seen for years what teachers in trying to follow a curriculum that calls for teaching how to reuse various consumer articles, e.g., popsicle sticks, yogurt cups etc. For example, say they want students to make a basket from ice cream sticks, or a chair from plastic yogurt bottles believe it or not they never let students know much ahead of time to prepare those utensils -- only two or three weeks. But parents have to buy many dozens of yogurt drinks and ice creams and ask family and friends to drink Yakult only so that the kids can take the bottles to school for their lesson.
Once, we had no time to consume so much ice cream, so I had to buy just the ice cream sticks for my nephew -- like I was going to open an ice cream shop! Unfortunately, at that time (eighteen years ago), we did not have big shopping centers in Phuket; we had to buy from small shops, and they frequently ran out of such items. It was maddening.
Isn’t that ridiculous?
Till today teachers behave just the same. How can we improve their methods? Motivate them to be creative? Is it anyway even worth the investment to create -- for a few dusty classroom credits -- things that will only be thrown away?
These mistakes are human, not divine, and they appear to be institutionalized. Such classroom courses – ostensibly aimed at teaching recycling – themselves result in increased expense and waste.
Can anyone actually sit on a chair made of yogurt bottles? Or use ice-cream-stick baskets?
It is important school administrators not ignore what teachers do. It is good that teachers have freedom in teaching, but rarely does anyone observe their lessons.
I wish to have knowledgeable teachers, with lesson plans sufficiently creative to help the world learn how to reuse and recycle. If students must make things in class, let them be useful products, not objects of contempt for those having better things to do than spending money in silly ways.
So, why do we have to motivate people to recycle as a means of minimizing global warming? Too few people do it. Shall we blame parents or… who else? These days most of us throw everything away.
Here is a ridiculous story – one most who have attended schools in Thailand can relate to. Most teachers do not have lesson plans. I was shocked when I trained Thai teachers to teach English: only when inspectors were coming to the classroom would have lesson plans – and then only because they bought someone else’s lesson plan and copied it!
That’s not only immoral, it’s folly: you have to do lesson plans yourself, because each class is different from another – even when you teach the same lesson.
What really annoys me is having seen for years what teachers in trying to follow a curriculum that calls for teaching how to reuse various consumer articles, e.g., popsicle sticks, yogurt cups etc. For example, say they want students to make a basket from ice cream sticks, or a chair from plastic yogurt bottles believe it or not they never let students know much ahead of time to prepare those utensils -- only two or three weeks. But parents have to buy many dozens of yogurt drinks and ice creams and ask family and friends to drink Yakult only so that the kids can take the bottles to school for their lesson.
Once, we had no time to consume so much ice cream, so I had to buy just the ice cream sticks for my nephew -- like I was going to open an ice cream shop! Unfortunately, at that time (eighteen years ago), we did not have big shopping centers in Phuket; we had to buy from small shops, and they frequently ran out of such items. It was maddening.
Isn’t that ridiculous?
Till today teachers behave just the same. How can we improve their methods? Motivate them to be creative? Is it anyway even worth the investment to create -- for a few dusty classroom credits -- things that will only be thrown away?
These mistakes are human, not divine, and they appear to be institutionalized. Such classroom courses – ostensibly aimed at teaching recycling – themselves result in increased expense and waste.
Can anyone actually sit on a chair made of yogurt bottles? Or use ice-cream-stick baskets?
It is important school administrators not ignore what teachers do. It is good that teachers have freedom in teaching, but rarely does anyone observe their lessons.
I wish to have knowledgeable teachers, with lesson plans sufficiently creative to help the world learn how to reuse and recycle. If students must make things in class, let them be useful products, not objects of contempt for those having better things to do than spending money in silly ways.