There was a recent thread on this forum entitled “Noisy Thai Inconcideration(sic).” In which a contributor named Giggle conjectured that a number of things people brought up in the west sometimes find irksome here could be conveniently explained by the locals, or the locals through their organizations, wishing to project their power.
I thought it was a very useful explanation and was grateful to Giggle for his insight. Merely on the narrow example of a school (not) providing scheduled dates for future school activity I thought the cap would fit very nicely.
I think many of you are very generous in your indulgence with what could easily be arranged for something that is clearly in the pipeline long in advance and has been every year since every school was first established. There is no getting away from the important fact that the schools do it because they can. Which is the first (sometimes only) requirement when projecting power.
However, if it is a simple choice of laughing or crying then it seems most of you seem to make the right choice.

frankieboy37 wrote: ↑

November 16, 2018, 5:40 pm

There was a recent thread on this forum entitled “Noisy Thai Inconcideration(sic).” In which a contributor named Giggle conjectured that a number of things people brought up in the west sometimes find irksome here could be conveniently explained by the locals, or the locals through their organizations, wishing to project their power. I thought it was a very useful explanation and was grateful to Giggle for his insight.

Merely on the narrow example of a school (not) providing scheduled dates for future school activity I thought the cap would fit very nicely. I think many of you are very generous in your indulgence with what could easily be arranged for something that is clearly in the pipeline long in advance and has been every year since every school was first established. There is no getting away from the important fact that the schools do it because they can. Which is the first (sometimes only) requirement when projecting power.

However, if it is a simple choice of laughing or crying then it seems most of you seem to make the right choice.

Good post, thanks.

I had it explained to me by a teacher of several years at several Thai schools, that these lower-order, Thai-owned private schools that work on the lamentably arcane Thai school calendar are woefully inadequate when it comes to simple planning and administration.

By law, they have to provide x amount of days of full-on, in-house teaching each calendar year and that 'contract' needs to facilitate local and national holidays. To me, being unable to schedule several defined subsets of (mostly) known, fixed dates within any 365/366 day year is really p!ss poor. But rather than subscribe to the theory that a 'keep them guessing' mandate prevails from any government, I suggest that it is simply a reluctance from school owners to hire staff that have the basic skills to run up the simple calendar that will happily allow for these interruptions from the Mon-Fri school routine. It's probably more akin to getting what you pay for? This was brought home to me after a couple of years of paying my lads school fees in another province, when the same clerk at the same front desk would take several minutes to identify my lad in whatever she was looking at on her LCD screen. This despite her having his name (in Thai), current class, his unique school ID number and having last terms paper receipt of payment in her hand. Mrs tam was so p!ssed off with this front-desk oxygen waster, she gave up and it became my job (since I was doing the school runs). After my first 15-minute time-waste in a totally empty school admin office: just me and Miss slow-and-petulant, I truly felt Mrs tam's pain. At least the air-conditioning was good.

There's a lot to be said for Giggles 'projection of power' theory but only if taken in a deeper context IMHO. When it is suggested that the simple mall parking ---- with his whistle is projecting power, I think that's a bit of a stretch. He simply has the IQ of a Kubota, gets minimum wage and a nice polyester shirt with badges... and a whistle. But if the educational authorities don't mandate any minimum required skill sets for a school administrator to do the relatively simple job of making a calendar at the start of the school year, then yes, I do see see where it can be construed as part of the greater subjugation of the Thai masses theory to which sadly I do subscribe.