Teaching Children to Be Good People: Moral Myths in Thai Schools

Abstract

In Thailand, students are currently taught virtue in morality programs devised by the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC). This study investigates preconceptions related to morality in Thai schools using Critical Discourse Analysis as the framework. The research gathered information from moral school project documents released by OBEC and focus group discussions with 12 model schools’ teachers and administrators. The dataset also included case studies from five schools. The data underwent thematic analysis to investigate discourse and discursive practices. Results were that three good student preconceptions existed: 1) good students exhibit no problem behaviors, so teachers underestimated issues and stressed virtuous behavior by assigning moral projects in which students behaved well without understanding why; 2) good students were expected to perform religious activities, so they paid tribute to monks, meditated, and chanted as good deeds; and 3) good students must behave like role models, so the teaching strategy eliminated good students who were not immediately role models, failing to address any student issues. These preconceptions were motivated by a discursive practice embedded in morality school operating guidelines from the OBEC Moral School Project Operating Manual according to evaluative and school-related preconceptions. These recommend persistence and that moral education must be tied to nation-building through a top-down command mechanism, ignoring community factors with related sociocultural contexts, history, and traditions in individual ethnicities and communities. These findings suggest that education management aiming to educate virtuous students should allow their community to determine what virtues and identities are suitable for their people.