Thai Cheaters

Thai students like to cheat. They will do it during class time, and they will do it during exams. If you give them homework you can be sure that quite a large percentage of what you will get back will be exact copies of someone else’s work.

In a way it is not really surprising. Cheating actually seems to be far more tolerated in Thailand than it would be in say Ireland or the UK. There seems to be this belief in Thai society that the important thing is the piece of paper, and the means to getting this qualification is hardly ever questioned; that is except when some scandal reaches the national press because some powerful person’s son has been caught cheating on an important exam.

I seem to remember that there was a research study conducted on the Thai public’s opinions about cheating. This study found that the vast majority of respondents claimed that they saw nothing wrong with cheating to achieve a goal. I can easily believe this research paper, because everything I see in Thailand seems to support this conclusion.

This is not to say that everyone in Thailand cheats. I’m not saying that. What I would say though is that there is far more acceptance of it then elsewhere. The Thai national attitude of tolerance and ‘mai pen rai’ (nevermind) also applies here. Many students, who might otherwise do poorly in education, benefit because of this lax attitude. Is that always a bad thing? I’m not sure. But I do feel sorry for students who work hard all term and come out with the same result as somebody who has done nothing all year.

When I first arrived in Thailand some of the old-timers, who had been teaching for a while, warned me about the amount of cheating that went on in schools. I often scoffed and believed that these sounded too much like tall tales. My view soon changed though when I witnessed the full extent of this phenomena.

I remember when we first moved to my wife’s village a few years ago. I had already a bit of experience of teaching in Bangkok, and I had decided to help out in the local schools. Because of this offer of help I was pleased one afternoon when a group of students arrived at my door. They were led by my niece, and they all clutched pieces of paper. My niece explained that they had an exam, and they needed my help with the English paper. I thought it odd that they would be allowed to take their tests away from the school to elicit the help of others, but I decided to do what I could.

I sat my niece down while her friends gathered around, and tried to explain the questions to her in the hope that this would help her arrive at the answer. She looked at me in a very confused manner, and just pushed the paper towards me. She did not want to know how to answer the questions, she just wanted me to answer them so that she could share them with her friends. I tried to explain that there was little benefit in me doing her exams, but this seemed to only add to her confusion.

My reluctance to help these students cheat would likely seem a bit odd to many Thais. This is a culture based around doing favours for people and getting favours back in return. If a teacher leaves an apple for a teacher it is usually accompanied by the student’s conviction that they will later get some type of pay-back for this gift.


Of course I had seen cheating occur in my own school, and to be honest I probably would have had no problem doing it myself if I thought that I would get away with it. The thing was though that the only people who did cheat were the very brave or the very reckless. When I was at school the chances were that if you cheated you would be caught. It’s a different story here in Thailand. Students usually make little effort to hide their cheating and when caught they have this attitude of ‘hey, why are you making such a big deal about this’. When I cross out the copied work or deduct marks they will act as it it is me who is in the wrong.


The thing that I find most strange is that even when I spoon-feed the students the answers there will still be people copying off their friends. This occurs even when I highlight the correct answer on the board. It seems like that it is their instinct to copy even when there is no need.

When I receive homework the copied answers could not be more obvious then if the student’s had actually written in red pen ‘ this work is not mine’. They copy everything word for word with no attempt at disguise. The saddest thing though is that this work is usually copied from someone who is equally as hopeless at the task at hand as they are. Not only is the work a copy, but it is a copy of something that is wrong.

The internet has become a great tool for the Thai cheater. Students have no shame in copying and pasting large chunks of someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as their own. They really think that nobody will question why suddenly they are so competent in English when they usually struggle to answer the most basic question in the language. To add insult to injury they will sometimes forget to remove the telltale signs that it is taken from the internet. I will begin to read a students work and realise that it is full of Google ads and jarring messages saying ‘click here for link’.

The truth is though that cheating is rarely punished in Thailand. There is a lot of pressure in schools to ensure that students pass, and if they don’t pass it is the teacher who is seen as failing and not the students. Failing someone is a big deal, and can be a real uphill struggle with school administration putting pressure on to change a failing mark to a pass.

Despite whatever view the foreign teacher in Thailand might have it would seem that cheating is endemic in the culture. I don’t think that it is our place to try and change this, but instead to work within the system as best we can. If change is to come it will come from the Thai people themselves, and not due to what they would see as interfering outsiders.

I try to minimise cheating as much as possible, but have turned my focus towards just doing my best for the students in the hope that they will gain some knowledge and maybe even develop a love of learning. In the end this is what is really important; at least in my opinion.

Teacher, my arse!

Foreign teachers who work in Thailand seem to have a bit of a bad reputation; especially those from western countries. The harshest critics tend to be other westerners. Some of these criticisms can be very harsh, while others seem to me to be just plain silly. The attitude to westerners who teach in Thailand always puts me in mind of Jim Royle, from the UK sitcom ‘The Royle Family’, who would sneer at everything that irritated him by adding the words. ‘my arse’. I can easily imagine him responding to the news that a westerner is teaching in Thailand with the words ‘teacher, my arse!’.

The most frequent criticism that I hear about the western teacher is that they are only doing it to stay in Thailand. Opportunists. This is probably true for most, but so what? I think the criticism here is that our motivations for doing a job should be somehow more noble. We should have a calling to do it. Maybe we should have dreamed about it as a child and devoted our youth to obtaining the proper qualifications. Surely it’s not right that we should decide to become teachers because it suits our lifestyle in our thirties, forties, or older. Is it?

I think that there is a major misunderstanding here. The belief that people usually enter professions because of some noble calling. I am sure that some do, but many don’t. I know a lot of professionals. The reasons given for beginning their careers are often far from noble and are usually quite mundane and sometimes even strange. I know doctors who became doctors because their parents were doctors, I know nurses who became nurses so they could meet a rich doctor, I know people who decided to become teachers because they quite fancied the long holidays. Most people seem to just fall into professions, and their motives are seldom given much scrutiny from their peers. Why you want to be such and such, is usually a question reserved for job interviews.

I fell into nursing. I would not have even considered it a few months prior to applying to begin my nursing degree. This did not stop me being a good nurse who did his job efficiently. No one ever really questioned my motives joining for the profession, and no one accused me of becoming a nurse for the wrong reasons. Nobody cared. So long as I could do the job well, what did it matter?

I also fell into teaching in Thailand. I had left a job in Saudi Arabia and had nowhere really to go. A friend said I should try teaching. I did, and I soon found that I really liked it. It was a challenge, but I now believe on most days that I am good at my job. The fact that I didn’t plan to be a teacher no more matters to the quality of my work than the fact that I never planned to be a nurse. Life takes us places that we never planned to be and that is what is so great about it.

Another favourite criticism is that any white face can get a job teaching in Thailand; they don’t even need to be able to speak English! Is that really true? If you visit some of the Thailand related web forums you will see posts from people, almost every day, who are desperate to get a teaching job in Thailand. There are many who have tried to teach here but failed. I would actually say that most people who try to land a teaching job in Thailand don’t last very long. Ok, they might get a job, but teaching is not an easy thing to do. If you do not have what it takes then the job will be unbearable and most people will quickly give up.

Nowadays having a white faced English teacher is not so important in Thailand. Schools know that they can get two Indian or Filipino teachers for the wage they would need to pay a westerner. The level of English may not be as good with these non-native speakers, but at least most have had some teaching training, and their level of English is usually sufficient to teach Thai students. The schools still want to have at least one white face though for the school brochure, but I don’t think that demand is as high as it once was. The need for native English speakers is falling in my opinion so jobs are harder to come by.

It is now more difficult to get a job in Thailand without at least a university degree. Moves are underway to make an education qualification mandatory as well. People do still get jobs without degrees, but I think that most would agree that if you want a future teaching in Thailand then a degree is the bare minimum. The parents expect it, and it seems to me to be a reasonable expectation. I don’t think that a degree necessarily makes somebody a good teacher, but it does at least demonstrate an interest in learning.

I enjoy teaching in Thailand and believe myself to be a professional educator. I believe that the same can be said about most other foreign teachers here. Still, I believe that the stereotypical image will linger on. It can’t really be helped. Luckily we don’t need to look to other westerners for affirmation of our worth. The greatest reward for a teacher is going to a class where you have struggled with motivating the students and suddenly realising that they are getting it. You are teaching, and they are learning. When this happens I leave the class convinced that I am one of the best teachers ever, but knowing later another class will make me feel like the worst teacher in the world. Best teacher, my arse!

Three days in hell - Part 3

The next morning was another early start. We were beginning the day with exercise on the beach. The students arrived in dribs and drabs with many still wearing their pyjamas. By six the beach had brightened up enough for us to get to work.

My friend Punit was the PE instructor, and so he took the lead in warming-up the students with jumping-jacks and light stretches. I wandered around trying to encourage everyone to get involved. Many of the students were just sitting in the sand looking miserable and claiming, “too tired, Ajahn”. Most joined in after a bit of coaxing, but a few needed to be scolded or threatened into exercising with the rest.

A buzz of excitement spread through our congregation with the arrival of our Chinese maths teacher who had decided to go for an early morning swim. The fact that he was wearing a pair of speedos meant that he had lost his usual image of sternness. The kids all cheered as he dove into the sea and began swimming parallel to the beach.

We finished off the morning work-out with jogging. Three hundred students running along the beach was a chaotic scene. I ran behind. I needed to stop every few metres to pull up fallen students. Some had legitimately slipped in the sand but most were just diving in an attempt to get out of the exercise.

After breakfast we set up our activity stations. Prior to coming to the camp all the attending teachers had planned their own activity. I had decided on a type of ‘go fish’ game where I provided over a hundred words on small cards, and the aim of the game was to form as many sentences as possible. All our stations were spread out around the resort. I had been given my own bar in which to set up. This outside bar was empty of all alcohol so there was no need to worry that the other resort residents might mistake me for the real thing. The bar-top provided an ideal space to set out my word cards.

The students had been divided into twelve groups, and they spent twenty minutes at each activity station. Upon arriving at each station they would begin by shouting their team ‘boom’ while performing a group-hug. When the chanting was finished it was time for them to get to work. Almost all the students seemed to enjoy my ‘go fish’ activity and most seemed really eager to win as many points for their team as possible. The twenty minute sessions passed quickly, but by midday I felt completely shattered and bored with the game.

After lunch we had beach activities. We were now completely out of kilter with our schedule, but our head of department was still determined to salvage something from her plans by getting the students to complete all the games that she had set for that afternoon. We were only on the beach a few minutes before she realised that the students had no interest in following our programme. They just wanted to swim and getting three hundred students to co-operate in games on a beach felt near impossible. Our head of department admitted defeat and decided that everyone could just swim. The students cheered their victory.

Despite my colleague’s early morning swim in his speedos, we had been warned by management that we were expected to wear respectable clothing at all times. If we wanted to swim we would need to wear out clothes. I had on my track-suit so bottoms and a polo shirt, and so jumped in the water and began swimming around Thai-style - fully dressed. I joined the students who had swum out the furthest and attempted to supervise their safety.

The students were loving the water, and I worried that the over-excitement might lead to accidents. I tried to stay near the more troublesome students whose energy threatened to put them in danger. We played a game called ling which means ‘monkey’ in English. One of the students had removed their t-shirt, and we used it like a ball by throwing it to one another. One student was the ling, and it was his job to stay in the middle of the group until he could catch the improvised ball. It was great fun, and for a while I forgot that I was their teacher and became just one of the group.

A western couple were walking along the beach and stopped in apparent amazement at the sight of our group. We must have looked like some spectacle; three hundred students acting like they had never seen water before and a westerner swimming with them while fully clothed.

We spent about two hours in the water. I began to worry that we were in danger of heat stroke, and I was beginning to flag in my job of supervising. I felt relieved when the bosses decided that we had enough, and we left the water without sustaining any injuries.

In the evening we were joined by our school principal who is also a Buddhist monk. This was to be the official grand finale of the cam; although we had planned a few more activities for the next morning.

The Filipino teachers began the evening’s entertainment by teaching everyone a dance which is popular in their country. They called it the ‘papaya dance’, and it looked great fun ; although I did everything I could to avoid actually joining in. I explained to them that. “Irish men don’t dance”, and when this didn’t convince them I used the excuse that I wanted to take photos of the event.

After the ‘papaya dance’ it was time for the balloon dance. Here the students needed to dance around with balloons tied to their feet. The object was to burst everyone else’s balloons. If all your balloons were burst you were out of the game. It turned out to be great fun although once again some students almost caused injury in their over-enthusiasm.

We ended the night with a ghost story. We turned down all the lights and put on a sound effects CD that I had compiled which contained some very scary sounds. One of our school committee read a ghost story, while some of us teachers crawled around the seated students occasionally firing things into the middle of the group in an attempt to further increase the tension. We realised that we had gone too far when a couple of the younger students became upset with fright. Still, our head of department thought it had been a great success. Despite how upset they can get, Thai students do still seem to love ghost stories.

Despite our lack of sleep the students were still reluctant to retire early so it was well after mid-night before we got everyone to bed. One of my home-room students managed to fall on some glass, and my nursing experience meant that I was left to tend his wounds. Once the blood was cleaned there was only small cuts underneath, and so there was no need for hospital.

The next morning our head of department made the final departure from the schedule by declaring that we could all have a free morning before heading back to Lopburi in the afternoon. We went for a walk along the beach. At one point I found myself separated from the main group, and for my first waking moment in a couple of days I found myself completely alone. It felt odd. I made my way back along the beach and joined the Thai students and teachers who were queuing up to buy some plaa muck which is dried fish and a speciality in Rayong. My wife had made me promise that I would bring some back for her.

In the afternoon we all boarded our coaches and were ready to leave the resort. Once we got back to school I would begin two weeks holiday. I felt happy and remembered how much I had yearned for this moment on the day we had first arrived at the resort. My three days in hell were over; although now that it was over it didn’t seem so hellish. Thinking back it had actually been enjoyable for the most part. I felt relieved knowing that the responsibility for taking care of and entertaining all these kids would soon be over, but I also knew that in a strange way I would miss it. I also realised that come next year I would once again await this trip with dread.

Three days in hell - Part 2

A loud cheer greeted our arrival at the resort. The head of our department was there to welcome us and she was accompanied by some of the more eager students and teachers. Our leader appeared very tense; likely due to the fact that her well-made plans were already becoming unstuck. She herded us to the reception area of the hotel where everyone else was waiting.


The hotel reception looked like something from a disaster movie with students sitting or lying on their luggage in every available space. This group also gave a cheer for our arrival but without much enthusiasm and most students quickly returned to bored facial expressions.


We were now over an hour out of sync with our schedule. The plans had been very tightly time-tabled with no room for delays so activities would need to be removed from the programme. We had an impromptu meeting and by the time we had made some decisions another fifteen minutes of the day had been lost.


Our first task would be to put the students into teams. We had already decided the importance of mixing the teams up and not just allowing students to stay with their friends. Our Chinese maths teacher had devised a method which involved assigning students with numbers and asking them to stand in groups and then changing groups depending on a mathematical formula. This method had seemed clever and innovative when mentioned in staff meetings but now turned out to be chaotic and confusing. The students were tired and bored and this was making the whole process even more complicated, but after about half an hour the students did somehow magically end up in groups which seemed to resemble the image which we had planned.


Now that the students had been put in their groups they were given coloured headbands to identify them with their fellow members. Throughout the rest of their stay the teams would be awarded points for their behaviour and performance at different tasks. They were given the first task of creating their own team ‘boom’. Each group would need to demonstrate this chant later in the evening on stage, and the most unique one would get a prize.


Our leader decided that it would be fruitless to do any further activities until the students had a chance to freshen up. She gave us all an hour to check into our rooms and have a shower. Many of the students tried to go to the beach, but the Thai teachers had planned for this eventuality and were there to block their paths and send the students in the direction of their rooms.

I knew even before arriving at the resort that I would be sharing a room with two of the other foreign teachers. I also knew that I would be sharing a bed with one of these teachers. Sharing a bed with a man was not something that I was looking forward to one bit, and I sort of resented the fact that the school should expect it. When I mentioned my dislike of sharing a bed with a man, during our weekly staff meeting, I was told not to worry as there wouldn’t be much sleep anyway as we would be expected to patrol the resort regularly throughout the night and make sure our charges were behaving themselves.


We had been given a bungalow, and it turned out to be quite comfortable despite the fact that there were three of us. We took turns in the shower. I felt a whole lot better once I was clean and in fresh clothes. I still had a bit of time before we needed to reassemble so I decided to check out the resort and make sure that the other students were behaving themselves.


The youngsters were all excited with their rooms and showed signs of having livened up once again. Everyone seemed desperate to go look at the sea and most were already heading in that direction. I reminded as many as I could that they were expected back in reception in half an hour.


The next activity was pass the hula-hoop. The students had all arrived promptly and now stood with their groups in line holding hands. Two teams lined up at a time with the goal of passing a hula-hoop along the line without letting go of each other’s hands. The students soon got caught up with the excitement of this game, and when the teachers were forced into joining I too found myself enjoying the whole thing and feeling very competitive that our team should win.


We played another couple of activities before it was time for our evening meal. I felt starving and judging from all the complaints of ‘hew khao’ so did most of the students. The teachers were to be seated around the pool where we would be waited upon. The students had a buffet from which they could help themselves. Most of the dishes were seafood and while I normally avoid fishy-food I found most of it tasty.


After we had been fed it was time for the evening activities. The showpiece of this was to be the student’s booms. Each group had hastily arranged a small show which aimed to convince the audience why their team was the greatest in the world. Some of the groups put a lot of effort into their shows and it was impossible not to admire their originality. Thai students seem to always revel when they are given the chance of being creative.


At just after ten o’clock the official days activities ended and the students slowly made their way nearer to their rooms where they formed little groups in which to talk and sing. I joined the other foreign teachers for a chat, but we would frequently need to break up to check on what the students were up to. By midnight all the groups had dispersed and gone to bed.

Three days in hell - Part 1

At the end of last term my school arranged to have a Bi-lingual camp. This would involve three days staying at a beach resort in a beautiful part of Thailand - as soon as the idea was suggested I began to dread it. Not that I dislike beach resorts. Far from it. The idea though of spending three days entertaining almost three hundred students is what was getting me down. I approached the up coming camp with a sense of gloom.

As usual our head of department, in a fit of optimism, had provided a schedule. It was like she had forgotten for a while that she was Thai and that this was Thailand. If you want to make the gods of Thailand laugh then show them a schedule. Still, respecting authority is an important part of Thai culture so I arrived at the school at four o’clock in the morning with my back-pack and in my hand a piece of paper which I knew was practically useless.

It felt strange arriving at the school at such an early hour to find the place so busy. The sleepy-faced students were all hanging onto their bags as if they were life-rafts. They looked completely shell-shocked by the experience of needing to leave their beds in the middle of the night. I cynically asked a couple of them if they were having fun yet? They didn’t reply but gave me the ‘how could you be so cruel’ look.

The school had arranged for four double-decker busses to take us the 300 km journey to Rayong. Each of the foreign teachers were assigned to a bus; each bus with their own particular version of hell. I looked at the students around me on the bus for signs of which particular torture they would inflict on me. Would it be full-volume Thai pop? Would it be five hours of Thai comedy? Would it be just students running around the coach screaming? It was far too early to tell.

The first part of the journey started off well. It was still dark outside and the students still seemed drowsy. I could see many were asleep or fighting to stay awake. I had ensured that all the bad travellers had access to travel-sickness tablets; this medicine also has wonderful sedative effects. I slipped on my iPod and just relaxed knowing that this would likely be the last bit of time to my self there would be on this trip.

We made our first pit-stop outside of Sariburi at a large petrol station. It was now six in the morning and all signs of sleepiness was absent from the student’s faces. They mobbed the 7eleven, and returned on the bus with bags full of soft-drinks and sweets. They were ready for fun. I looked across at one of our other busses which was parked next to us and could see that the students there had found the karaoke machine. Please no. I earned a reprieve when my students decided that they wanted to watch a film. They had brought their own. My sense of reprieve disappeared though when the title ‘Transformers: The Movie’ came up on the screen. The bus was soon on its way again.

The next pit-stop was at the service-area on the motorway between Bangkok and Pattaya. This place seems to have every type of fast-food outlet and reminds me of a little town. I made my way to Starbucks and let the students pack into the KFC and McDonalds. I needed a coffee. When I returned to the bus it was stinking of fast-foods.

As the bus pulled out of the service area the party went into full swing with loud dance music. The students began pumping the air with their fists while swinging out of their seats. It was hard not to get caught up in their enthusiasm. A loud cheer went up as the students spotted the sea and like them for a few seconds I also felt excited. It would be good to spend time by the sea again.

This sense of excitement left when one of my colleagues, a teacher from India, pointed out that all the other busses had disappeared. He was right. All the journey so far we had travelled as part of a convoy with the other busses. This convoy was headed by a police car which our school had paid a lot of money to procure. Why were we now on our own? Surely the bus driver wouldn’t keep driving if he was lost. We continued our journey for another half an hour before the driver finally admitted that he was indeed lost. He would need to swallow his pride and ask for directions. He turned the bus around and headed back the way we had just come.

Eventually we found a sign with the name of our resort. As we were heading in I noticed another coach full of students leaving. I saw a smiling western female teacher inside. I really envied her. It was all behind her now. I knew that in a few days I too would be equally relieved to be leaving this resort.

A teacher's nightmare

Throughout my life I have worked at various jobs and each of these occupations have been accompanied by their own recurrent nightmare. When I think about it though, all these dreams have actually only been variations on a theme; I am screwing up and I’m helpless to do anything about it.

My first job at sixteen was as a check-out attendant in a supermarket. I wasn’t long at this job before I began waking up in the middle of the night with feverish dreams of endless food items moving along my conveyer belt towards me; I would be unable to keep up by entering all these items into the check-out till. In this dream I would be surrounded by impatient customers who were becoming vocal in their condemnation of my lack of skill.

In my late teens my job changed to that of a barman, and this time the customers in my dreams are angry because I am not serving their drinks fast enough. When I became a nurse in my late twenties my nightmare changed to that of being unable to find the correct medication during the drugs round and everybody becoming angry and impatient.

This type of nightmare has followed me into teaching. I am standing in front of a large group of students and have no idea what I am going to say. They are becoming noisy and impatient. I feel trapped and helpless. The really scary thing about this nightmare though is that unlike the bad dreams associated with my previous occupations this one has occurred in my waking life; it has actually occurred more than once.

I don’t think that there is anything worse for a teacher than standing in front of a group of students and realising that you don’t have anything to say. You check the time and see that you still have forty minutes left in the class. You become suddenly very uncomfortable and feel vulnerable in front of this group of learners - it actually gives me the willies just thinking about it.

I suppose the main reason for this embarrassing pause in the flow of teaching is inexperience and lack of preparation. I must admit that now that I have a few years teaching under my belt it occurs far less, but occasionally it does still happen; the students manage to work through the fifty minutes of work I have planned for them in just ten minutes. How am I going to keep them interested for the remainder of the time?

My saviour has been the lesson-filler. These wonderful games and activities which can be used to fill the embarrassing silences. The old favourite ‘hangman’ or my personal favourite ‘mime-a-word’. In my early days of teaching these would often be needed to fill up the class time, but as I became more experienced I found myself using them less and less. Now I hardly ever have a problem filling class time, but instead find it hard fitting in all that I want to teach during the fifty minutes.

I remember when I first began teaching in Bangkok that some of the old-hands would tell me that these lesson-fillers were all you needed to become a successful TEFLer; after all as long as the students remained entertained your job was safe. I never felt comfortable with this approach and decided that signs of my progress could be better evaluated by my lack of need to waste class-time. I still get the nightmare of standing in front of the class with nothing to say, but thankfully it seems to be in my waking life less and less.