Sawai  Boonma 

            Bill Gates and George Lucas are two of the forty American billionaires who recently posted their pledges on the website www.givingpledge.org, promising to donate at least half of their assets to charity.  Bill Gates is relatively better known due to the dominance of Microsoft - the software company he co-founded with Paul Allen, who also posted a pledge – and to his fabulous wealth as well as his worldwide campaigns to eradicate drug-resistant diseases such as Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.  George Lucas is known more in the entertainment circle from creating some of the most popular movies of all time, in particular the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series, that helped propel him into the ranks of billionaires.  The two men have one thing in common:  they are passionate about education and have donated large sums of money to help find solutions to the serious problems facing the American basic education system.

            It might come as a surprise to some readers that the United States is having serious problems in the education sector.  Some may be even more surprised to learn about the state of education in Detroit, the center of the American automobile industry:  According to the August 16 issue of Fortune, barely 3% of the fourth-graders in that city’s school system meet national math standards; 2% and 11% of its public high school students are prepared for college-level math and English, respectively; and only 60% of high school seniors graduate.  Many school districts are facing similar problems, although the situation may not be as dire as Detroit’s.

            The problems have remained so serious despite a countrywide campaign under the program launched in January 2002 known as “No Child Left Behind”.  Bill Gates and George Lucas believe that substantive improvements will not take place fast enough without the efforts of some non-profit organizations in the private sector.  Bill Gates first chose to subsidize the break-up of large schools into smaller ones, believing that large schools were detrimental to learning.  He has recently switched to putting greater emphasis on searching for the best teachers as well as the most effective learning and testing methods, and has launched pilot programs in many states.  George Lucas has indicated that he would donate the majority of his wealth to what he started many years ago - to improve education by supporting programs to facilitate educational innovations through the combination of cooperative and project learning, mentorship, parental involvement and technological advances.

            Thailand launched the first wave of education reforms over 10 years ago but, judging from test data, the reforms have failed.  Results of the nationwide testing of students in grades 6, 9 and 12, conducted recently by the National Education Testing Institute, show that they all have failed miserably in the core subjects of math, science, Thai and English.  The government has just launched the second wave of reforms.  From what has been announced so far, this wave is not going to be much different from the first, for once again it focuses on creating more layers of bureaucracy, which is already gargantuan, rather than channeling more resources to the learning process.

            Sensing that what the government has done amounts to nothing but rowing a boat in a bathtub, a number of individuals and groups have launched various initiatives which they hope will result in real improvements in our education system.  Two initiatives are of particular interest.  One is known informally as GREEEN School Project – GREEEN stands for Global Revolution in Education, Economy, Energy and Environment.  The other is patterned along the sister-school concept but with participation of the communities and switching of school-paring after a few years.  This method will broaden the size of the “classrooms” tremendously as well as will create understanding and bonding among communities located in distant parts of the country.  Both initiatives have started pilot-testing and have met with enthusiasm in the local communities.

I believe that if these two initiatives can be combined into a nationwide program, they will have a great impact on the country - not only in educating our youth but also in creating better understanding among disparate parts of the country.  For that to happen, however, a lot of us Thais will need to support these initiatives, both morally and financially.  Unless, of course, a Thai version of Bill Gates and George Lucas is found.