Category: Letters

Hi Peter,
I read your blog and I believe it is highly relevant. I can only relate to it through the Korean experience which is also a teacher and content centric teaching style. What might distinguish it from Thailand is the super competitive nature and I am not sure whether you want to introduce this to Thailand.

I am not an expert in education, but I know that Ashoka and Bill Drayton personally is deeply passionate about empathy based learning. http://www.ashoka.org/category/tags/empathy. One of the best known educational Ashoka fellows is Escuela Nueva http://www.escuelanueva.org/pagina/index.php?codmenu=2&idioma=2 , which I believe comes close to what you envisage.
Hope it helps a bit
Kind regards Markus

I applaud what you’re trying to accomplish in Thailand by changing the philosophy of education.
Your website is illuminating on the weakness of an educational system in which the students merely
regurgitate what the teachers present to them.

However I do have 2 concerns:

1.) Are you going too far in the other direction when you propose that the students set goals and objectives?
Every discipline has a body of knowledge that should be learned by the students.
While students should actively participate in the learning process, the teachers and administrators must set
the goals and objectives.

2.) I like the fact that the students hold the teachers in high esteem and would hope that when they are retrained
to teach in the Socratic method there is no lessening of that esteem.

Best of luck on this wonderful project.
All the best to you and PO.
Dick (Eisner)