Teachers must learn
The increasing call to help heavily indebted teachers is a reflection of deep failure at so many levels. As the government rightly points out, teachers collectively have acted irresponsibly in accumulating debts totalling 418 billion baht from the special Government Savings Bank (GSB) fund. The teachers claim the government and its bank have encouraged borrowing. And critics are correct to note that the vast majority of the borrowings were mainly for personal enjoyment and buying consumer items.
The last point is vital to understanding the strictly unsympathetic government policy. The reasons given for the loans, unavailable to the general public, are 100% personal. They include buying homes and condos or purchasing high-priced vehicles. Teachers claimed they wanted loans to invest in the stock market or start a business. A startling common reason given for a loan was to repay previous debt. This is where irony supplements greed and avarice in the tragic tale of teacher debt. The GSB reports that thousands of teachers are currently failing to repay a loan taken out to pay back an earlier loan or installment transaction. Another way to put this is that classroom teachers, who grade their students either as pass or fail, have failed completely to learn their lessons.
The government, as indebted teachers now point out correctly, has played the enabler in this sad story. The GSB has a special fund, on government orders, that has billions of baht available to be given as loans to teachers. It is impossible for this or past governments to deny a role in teachers’ debt. While the public at large must meet stringent terms including collateral for loans, teachers bypass such steps.
It is disappointing then, that at the moment the government shows tough love by denying all help and even sympathy to the indebted teachers, it maintains its policies. The Minister of Finance, Apisak Tantivorawong, was stern in criticising the request for aid. “Teachers who fail to pay off their debts in due time will face prosecution,” he said. But he had nothing to say about policy changes going forward.
Unless the government changes policy, teachers will continue to borrow, and some will refuse or become too heavily indebted to repay. Mr Apisak and the cabinet, including Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, are thus perpetuating the problem. Even if the government remains stone-hearted in dealing with the stressed-out teachers, it has the responsibility to try and bring in changes that stop the problem here and now.
The need to change and reform the teacher-borrowing programme begs the obvious question of overall education reform. It is a shame the current system turns out thousands of teachers so unfamiliar with personal responsibility and the important subject they are assigned to teach: Sufficiency. Had they lived according to the sufficiency economy philosophy formulated by the late King Bhumibol and espoused by the government, they would have been living a stress-free life today.
“Thai education” is rightly criticised at home. It often surprises foreign education experts who expect better from our students than being at the bottom of the international rankings. This regime, like previous governments, has not recognised the need for reform. It has been unwilling to take on the stubborn establishment inside the Ministry of Education who like things just the way they are.
Like the deeply indebted teachers, who borrowed for personal comfort and aggrandisement, the unhelpful education establishment should also be brought to book. Thai students — the only innocent parties in this sad saga — fall further behind their foreign peers. This step-by-step fall is happening just when children need a lift, to compete in a new world dominated by technology. The debt crisis is a reminder that our children are being taught by teachers who have failed in the most basic lesson — sufficiency.
This regime, like previous governments, has not seen the need for reform.