A little bit
...Is dangerous
Often a half-baked education is worse than none.
Oct 20, 2001

When Singapore announced that compulsory education was upon us, my mind went back to 1971 in Thailand, where I was resident correspondent.

I met a former Thai official from the Ministry of Education - call him Prasit - whose job was to persuade parents to observe the law requiring them to send their children to school.

Yes, primary education was compulsory in Thailand, but instead of punishing lawbreaking parents, they had people like Prasit.

He had done a career switch and was now working among the hill tribes in the northeast when we met. "Education work was too dangerous," he replied when I asked him why.

Thailand was then a prospective domino, fighting communist insurgencies in the northeast and south, and Prasit was carrying a gun when he moved around the hill-tribes. I failed to see how education was more dangerous.

It was like this, he said. Farmers often got very angry when he tried to talk them about their kids' education. Poverty was rife and children were a free workforce.

Often Mr Prasit would get a scolding and at other times he got threats of bodily harm. Once a farmer became so incensed he took out a gun and chased Mr. Prasit out of the house.

What have they got against education, I asked. They were against "half-baked" education, Prasit explained. They had a folksy logic about it.

The chances of getting into secondary school were small, so their children would end up having only a little knowledge, the farmers would tell him.

It would only raise their expectation of life, make them leave the farms for the cities. Without a real skill, their children would end up washing cars, working in the bars or nightclubs or prostitutes. And drugs, alcohol and crime.

Without any education, they would stay in the farm where they can at least earn a simple, honest living, but out of trouble.
Seah Chiang Nee