The vast waste of brainpower in rural heartland

I was pleased to read that Dan Krayenhagen was able to find a solution to the lack of educational opportunities in Thailand by moving his son to the US and putting him in the public education system there. If he had stayed in Thailand, he would have continued to be labelled an inattentive troublemaker with near-failing grades instead of being allowed to attend university classes via an Internet link as a 13-year-old, as he is now doing in Virginia.

It is important to point out that the problems Dan’s son faced here were not at a Thai public school but at a private international school. Imagine what must happen to gifted Thai children born to rural families! Their only option is to stick it out at rural schools with under-trained, underpaid teachers forced to present an archaic, rigid curriculum imposed by the mandarins in Bangkok. If Dan’s son were born to a rural Thai family, he would probably have dropped out of school or been expelled as a troublemaker and ended up in a terrible job. What a waste of precious human resources!

George Morgan