We had the chance to visit the city of Ayutthaya which was once the capital of Bangkok. It's a modern city surrounding ruins of sacred structures that date back 1000 years. In the 1700s, Burma invaded the city and destroyed the Buddhist temple, removed the heads from the Buddha statues, and set fire to the temple. Many parts of the structures remain.
We had a great school visit to a high school. This school was an all girls private school and has a strong focus on learning English. I don't have pics to post now but I'll add some in a few days. There were many differences from our schools - more teacher-centered rote learning - but it was amazing how well prepared students were and how independent they were. The students were even tending to their own garden as part of their class. We went to the library there and I took a picture of the Hunger Games book in Thai for you!
Keep your fingers crossed that we get off to the airport fine tomorrow. The headline of the Bangkok Post this morning was "Farmers to descend on Airport" so who knows what tomorrow will bring!
(sorry, I couldn't flip the images on blogger)
Hi Professor! Your experience looks like it has been beyond incredible and I hope I get the chance to do something similar someday! This statue must have been breath-taking. Ever since reading Siddhartha in highschool, I have been fascinated by Buddhism and would be so interested to delve deeper into such ideas as well, especially that of meditation. Where you able to learn any techniques while you were there? If you have any tips I would love to hear about them! I was also wondering about the high school you visited, as it sounds like a place that runs very smoothly, however, I am interested to hear whether or not you felt the English language was being taught in a way that still preserved the value of the Thai language? Did you think that in this focus to teach English, students ever felt impossed upon or culturally devalued? I'm sure that is something that is very difficult to ascertain after one day of visiting, but I wasn't sure if you noticed anything concrete about the attitudes held toward the languages being used. I hope the airport has been farmer-free as of late! We cannot wait to hear about the rest of your trip!!
ReplyDelete-Brittany Burke
Thanks for your post, Brittany. At the school I got the sense that students really wanted to learn English because they saw it as an opportunity to advance Thailand. Tourism is a huge sector of the Thai economy and the students knew that there were jobs if you knew English. (Our tour guide told us that the unemployment rate in Thailand was just 1%, but I'd like to double check that stat.) I was really surprised how many people we encountered knew English and many of the signs that I saw had English and Thai. The tourists we ran into were from all over the world and English was the common denominator for communicating.
DeleteIn terms of preserving Thai culture, I think there was also a strong desire to preserve and respect tradition. From what I observed, students were required to take many classes on their history, and there were pictures of the Thai royal family everywhere, including displays at the schools we visited. We saw students in PE class and they were learning Thai sword fighting, as well as volleyball, basketball, table tennis, and Thai kickboxing.
Hey Ann Marie! I'm not sure if my last post posted, so if this is the second time you are hearing from me on this post I apologize in advance!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this trip looks so amazing! I can't believe how beautiful everything is and I'm seeing it second hand! I can only imagine what it was like to be there in person. I really loved being able to see this temple and the statue. I don't think I've really ever seen or learned about Buddhism temples and I definitely did not know there were different Buddha poses!
With that being said, I definitely agree that I should learn more about Buddhism. I also think that teaching students about Buddhism would be a fun lesson! The only questions I have would be do you think it would be worthwhile to go a little outside the state standards to teach students about different religions and cultures even if it isn't really explicitly laid out in the standards? Also, would you have to teach about all religions if you taught about Buddhism? Is that allowed? Because I know I learned about Buddhism in a class in high school, but I went to a private high school and we didn't really have the same rules as a public school does. I'm not sure, but it definitely seems like a worthwhile topic of study!
I also think all these pictures you have taken would be awesome to share with kids! They would love to see what you saw and would probably be more invested in the topic if they felt some sort of connection to it!
I can't wait to hear more about your trip on Thursday! See you then and thanks again for sharing your amazing experiences with us!
Katie, I'm sorry if you had issues with posting to blogger and thanks for taking the time to resubmit your post.
DeleteWe're going to talk about teaching about religions in a few weeks, but I wanted to initially address your questions. You can teach about religions if your study is connected to something that you're teaching. For example, it is absolutely ok to talk about Buddhism when teaching about Thailand. It's the official state religion (95% of Thais are Buddhist) and practice of the religion is evident in almost everything you see or encounter in Thailand. Buddhist temples and shrines are everywhere there. You could teach about Buddhism in relation to Thailand without teaching about other religions, but you'll most likely end up touching upon other belief systems; many of the Buddhist temples have Hindu influences and we definitely saw Christian churches and Muslim mosques during our visit. What and how you teach all depends upon your overall goals. Take a look at how this third grade teacher in a public school who traveled with me talked about Buddhism to her students: http://kidblog.org/MissHartsClass-5/cd711ff4-56c6-44b2-bf4f-e222d6e8df62/bangkok/. You might look through her other posts as well because she mentions Buddhism a number of times.
Hi Professor!
ReplyDeleteYour pictures are so amazing, I especially loved the ones on this page so I decided to respond to this post. I do not know much about Buddhism either, but my was Buddhist for a while and she actually got married in a Buddhist temple which was pretty awesome. It was both similar and different to a traditional wedding that we usually have today. I definitely would love to learn more as well.
Also you visit to the school must have been pretty awesome. Did you see a bunch of different grades? Also I'm not sure if you have already answered this question, but do they teach religion in schools in Thailand. I remember when I was in Ghana I was placed at a Catholic school and they did not teach religion but they had church in the morning usually. And when they wrote, they included phrases like; "may God bless you and your family"- phrases like these would be included in a typical essay they might be writing for school. It was really interesting to see that. And then in a different section of the village was a Muslim community that was very exclusive, and one did not really go there unless they had to. So I guess my question is, what is religion like there? I see that you said 95% of Thais are Buddhist, but are they tolerant of other religions?
I know religion is definitely something I am interested in exploring how to teach. I work with Somalian refugees at the Hennigan School is Boston, and they are predominately Muslim, and I have gotten comments from them before about "being crazy" because I might have a cross around my neck. I think that is definitely an issue because there are so many religions that make up the world, and it is important to respect one another's beliefs. Sorry I'm beginning to ramble, but I am really looking forward to our class coming up on religion and hearing your thoughts on how you would think about teaching it.
-Kerry Collins
sorry my aunt was Buddhist for a while***
ReplyDeleteKerry, thanks so much for your really thoughtful post and for sharing your experiences related to religion and education. As you may have read in the comments, we will talk about teaching about religion in public schools in class in another few weeks and if I don't answer all of your questions then, make sure you ask them again because they're important.
DeleteWe weren't in the schools long enough to get a good sense of how Buddhism is taught in school in Thailand. The UNICEF supported school that we visited was located on the grounds of a Buddhist temple and there were young boys dressed as monks in training. So I would assume that the students there had some formal education about the religion. The other school we visited was a private girls school; we didn't talk about the role of religion at the school but I think I recall seeing a small statue of Buddha. One thing I did see was that a Muslim student was wearing a hijab and what struck me was that the headscarf had the school logo on it and was an official part of the school uniform. I definitely got the sense that all religions were tolerated and accepted in the country. We saw a few churches and mosques. Hinduism was predominant at certain times in Thailand's history and Hindu temples were not typically destroyed when a new power came; in fact, many Hindu elements were integrated within Thai Buddhism. So religion seemed to be very fluid, although I can't say for certain. More research to do!