Gladwell talks about a concept called capitalization. In this journal blog, share what you understand by this term. What we also learn
is that in the United States, Carlos is not that unique. There are a lot of very smart kids in poor circumstances. And these poor circumstances tend to prevent these poor smart kids from reaching their potential.
The second question to consider for this journal blog is... Do you think there is a similar case in Thailand, or for other places you come from? Despite what we have read so far in this course, Thailand has some great schools and universities. And they tend to be reserved for the privileged kids. Do you think Thailand (or consider your country) could do a better job of capitalizing on the real resources of the country?
Please respond to the blog by Sunday night. Respond to 2 classmates by before next class. Remember to include your ID# in your post. Aj. M
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ReplyDeleteCapitalization, from my understanding concluded from the podcast, is giving the opportunity to gain better education no matter the student's financial background, either with support of the government or from private sectors. Gladwell's point in EP6 of season 1 was really well made as to make a difference in education, you don't focus on making the best "better" but rather making the "worst" bester. Addition to that from EP5 of season 1, making such education accessible is also important as an investment in producing educated human resources.
There's definitely a huge problem in Thailand regarding education. For example, to enter most private schools, you are required to pay what they call a "donation". These donations usually are paid 3 times the amount of the student's first semester's tuition fees. Personally I don't know how these "donations" contribute to these school's development, however most of these private schools tend to be famous for having hotel quality food served in their cafeteria. There are also schools famous for high quality students, providing educations at low fees (all Thai kids probably know what I'm talking about). However the dark secret of this school hasn't really been explored. For example, most of the professors/teachers involved with this schools would take bribes or open their own tutoring school outside, forming connections with students and eventually got the students in this elite school, no problem. In the end, majority of students in this school are rich kids who could effort to "make the connections" required to enter this school. Even worse, the education provided within this school is almost mediocre but given the name it has in the country, the teachers forces impossible exams to force the students to out source their study. Ironically this lead to students in this school learning in tutoring places associated with such teacher. The tutoring business is a whole loophole on it's one with the initial objective of providing additional materials for education to a gray market for shady teachers to conduct business.
Our government is also not doing a good job capitalizing our resources for better education in general. For example, the Thai education has been using the same text book for their studies for the past 20 years, each year with the book having a slight cover reprint for "esthetics". It also saddens me that our ministry of education lets the shady tutoring business be conducted as hard quizzes like university admission placement exams for tcas 3-4 rounds are practically designed so students are REQUIRED to visit tutoring places to prepare for these ridiculous exams. One instance of such case was a question I encountered requires you to know a theorem that's only accepted within Thailand called เลขเป็นเพื่อนกัน, direct translation being, "numbers are friends". Tcas, O-net, GAT and PAT exams are often leaked to number of tutoring places, with ridiculous questions, students that aren't going to these places are ensured to not get any university they want. As these tutoring places are like "the only place that has the leaked info" their price are also staggering, ranging from 70k baht per 3 month course to even 100k for a 4 month course. End of the day, education has become a huge loophole for making endless cash and the very fact that ministry of education or our government aren't doing anything to better the education or stop these shady business models scares me.
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DeleteThank you for enlightening my on these issues, I thought I already knew a bit about the negatives of Thai education, yet I have never heard of this. You will find it hard to disappointed when expecting shady or sketchy things off the Thai education system. It seems as if this can't be fixed without a dramatic reform of the whole system.
Knowing this saddens me. Low-income students are just not able to choose their own lives, due to the unethical practices of certain individuals and organizations. I wouldn't be surprised discovering similar grey-area behaviors exist outside Thailand too. I surmise one would have to be as lucky as Carlos to be able to escape such a system for themselves, and their future children.
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DeleteI think capitalization should not be limited to only education as there are other requirements for one to be able to maximize their potential and that Gladwell used a student as an example because it is much more common to see a student suffering financial issues than a tradesman lacking the infrastructure to carry out their trade. I thought the Thai education was a joke before I read your input on it. After reading what you have written I believe that the Thai education can be a really good Netflix standup special with how laughable it is.
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ReplyDeleteFrom Gladwell’s explanation, capitalization is the act of providing opportunities for people to make the most of their abilities and hard work. A society’s capitalization rate is the percentage of people in any group who are able to reach and “capitalize” on their potential. In countries with high capitalization rates, socioeconomic status and cultural background wouldn’t be hindrances to someone’s ability to progress in society. I definitely agree with Gladwell that this would be a stronger measure of a country’s development than GDP, but I’m curious about whether or not it could be measured as accurately as the latter.
Having only been in the international school system, I genuinely don’t know enough about the state of regular Thai schooling to give specific comments on its capitalization. I assume the problem exists; I would honestly be surprised to find a country where social status isn’t a barrier to education. From listening to family members and friends’ anecdotes, I do believe there is an issue concerning students “falling in with the wrong crowd” (I’ve also witnessed this firsthand in international schools). The local news certainly isn’t short on any stories about teenage crime and street violence. As for the whole “strong-link” vs “weak-link” issue, I think the problem would be universal to any country. Public backlash and morals aside, there just isn’t any incentive for wealthy philanthropists to donate to less recognized institutes. Regarding international schools in Thailand, most belong to larger networks of school systems owned by multinational companies, so their funding is on a whole different level to public schools. I’ve never heard of any international school providing free tuition, and since they are all privately owned, I doubt there would be any way to change this. Anecdotally, my old high school genuinely had a problem regarding its finances. “Baffling” is probably the best way to describe some of the administration’s spending decisions. It wasn’t that they were spending frivolously (aside from a barely functional touchscreen display in the main corridor that nobody looked at twice), the problem was that no significant improvements were made, despite the yearly increase in tuition fees. I distinctly recall how the toilets in the fourth floor of the secondary building were in a near-constant state of disrepair and how our chemistry department paid for the science equipment with their own salaries. The money wasn’t being used on financial aid programs either, like what Gladwell describes at Vassar. While the school did support many local charities, all the donations they sent came from separate student or teacher-run initiatives, not from our tuition fees. From off-the-record conversations I had with my teachers, I suspect that an unreasonable sum of our money ended up lining the pockets of the owners of the school chain.
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DeleteI couldn't relate more to the comments on spending decisions. Even though I also attended an arguably wealthy private school, which also increased tuition fees across the board frequently, the quality of education and science facilities never got improved. My school seemed to be more concerned with sports and building a bunch of football fields and other things like that.
I like how you're quite introspective of your own opinions and comments and seem to think about them before saying them (or in this case typing them). Social status is definitely a barrier to education wherever you go, but hopefully we can reduce this barrier significantly, though I'm quite innately pessimistic and doubt any change would be made, especially considering the country we live in.
I remember back in 2015, Bangkok Prep offered me a 25% scholarship on my tuition if my IGCSE Mock Results met their criteria of "excellent". While this is very anecdotal, I remember other friends who also received this scholarship and other modes of financial aid at other schools. It is rare, but it does exist. The fact remains that international schools have the capability to do a lot more, and yet as you pointed out, can barely keep their own facilities up to the standard that you would expect from their high tuition. Tax-incentives could be given to wealthy benefactors who support these students' educations. Then again... that responsibility would fall on the government. And we know this government too well to hope for that.
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ReplyDeleteBeing able to fully maximize and optimize one’s own talents and skills must be a dream come true. Such a place would be a utopia. Someone who would be able to do this would probably experience such a constant stream of all feel good hormones and internal fulfillment would ascend out of humanity. Fortunately for us, we get to stay on Earth as human beings.
This seems to be my understanding of what capitalization means, albeit in a quite tongue-in-cheek manner. Paraphrasing Malcolm Gladwell, capitalization is the ability of someone in a society to be able to realize their potential and talents. Of course such a thing would be desirable to the highest degree, why wouldn’t you want to live in a place that could more easily drive out your inner talents. Not only that, but also a place that also could use those talents and reward you while you’re at it. I fully agree with Gladwell on this being a better metric than GDP on assessing a country’s or city’s development and success. An issue I see arising is how do you measure this? I guess it would probably correlate with the population’s happiness. It’s hard to imagine how you could quantify with numbers rather than words, thus making it hard to compare among different places.
Does this exist in Thailand? No doubt about it. Thailand can barely be called a developed country, in my opinion there’s only Bangkok city that’s really the only developed area that is on par with other developed countries. Of course this is assuming that developed countries have a higher degree of capitalization, which I don’t think is such a far-fetched idea, as they tend to have more access to high-quality education and all the other good stuff. From what I’ve heard of Thai public schools, which I believe more than 90% of all students in Thailand attend, the good ones are few and far between. Most seem to almost mess around and don’t take education seriously. Another issue compounding onto this is the wealth inequality that exists in Thailand. Many people are quite poor, not being able to afford to go to International schools or private schools which can provide better education. This leads to them facing problems similar to Carlos. The government here could definitely do a much better job. It’s high time to invest in the young generations.
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DeleteOn the topic of Thailand’s infrastructure, you’re definitely right about how the developed areas of Bangkok are incongruous with the rest of Thailand. It’s quite jarring to have large buildings be so close to pastoral rice fields. Despite Bangkok being essentially being a first-world city, I’m pretty sure that Thailand as a whole is still considered a developing country rather than a developed one though. Unfortunately, I think your comments about most Thai students lacking motivation are true. My parents have told me this is because how Thai education does little to inform students about the real-life applications and significance of their studies. Students aren’t told how about how the material will impact them in the future (perhaps because most of it is arbitrary and outdated anyway), so they don’t see the point in studying.
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DeleteI agree with your statement on Bangkok being pretty much the only "developed" city in Thailand. Most of the country's budget is spent on messy urban expansion instead of actually expanding into the other provinces. It has created such a situation where every important infrastructure is located in Bangkok. This again leads to how poorly resources are distributed to other provinces. For example, if Bangkok were to have an immovable traffic for a day, our military, government, finance would all be on a halt NATION WIDE. Perhaps this could be one of the factor stopping better education from reaching other provinces as well.
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DeleteThere is a phrase that I found on the internet that fits the description of Bangkok that fits in with what you said about the city: Bangkok is like Singapore but with a country. Thailand as a whole desperately needs fix its.... well everything at this point. Education, transport between provinces, government, immigration/practically slave labor in the country ect. So I agree fully with your statement here, the problem is where do we start?
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ReplyDeletePrior to this podcast, the word capitalization didn’t mean much to me. It was a word that I’ve heard numerous times but never bothered to search up. In episode 4, “Carlos Doesn’t Remember”, the word was defined as people being provided the opportunity to reach their full potential despite their background. The host of the podcast feels that how well a country does has everything to do with their capitalization rate, or how much the people reach their potential.
I don’t think I know enough about the Thai education system to comment on it too much, but from what I know and heard over the years, it feels like there are plenty of smart students in Thailand who are not able to reach their full potential just because of a different education. Skill sets that they have from a young age would be average if not developed. Often, Thai educators are more traditional minded and would stunt students’ growth, despite it being unintentional sometimes. Aside from the Thai education system, I feel like other systems in Asia are like this as well because of an outdated mindset. I do think Thailand could do a better job capitalizing on the real resources of the country. From my perspective, the way that this can happen would be to start the change at a young age, not wait until higher education provides opportunities. To me, gifted students can lose their talent when the education is lacking. In my experience, Thailand does not lack gifted students, but what makes it so is how they educate their students. Seeing Thai education suppress the thoughts and ideas of their students is sad to see, especially since many of them have bright ideas, just not enough confidence to express themselves. This is a huge problem I see, which contributes to the students not being able to reach their full potential.
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DeleteYour comments about how the Thai education system suppresses individuality echoes the sentiments of my family and friends. They’ve told me that the curriculum is archaic, using teaching methods that have changed little over the years. For high school at least, everything seems to be exam-driven; life skills or career skills are barely taught. Also, critical thinking skills are discouraged, with teachers usually ignoring students’ comments or suggestions. If this is as widespread as I’ve been led to believe, it’s easy to see how gifted students end up losing their talents as you say. I think this issue has been worsened by aspects of traditional Thai culture. Conservative family values are to teach children never to speak up/criticize/comment on the statements of their elders, no matter how wrong or deserving they may be. With such a mindset, students wouldn’t see any reason for change, or even regard it as problem. Luckily, it seems that these beliefs are becoming rarer in the current generation, with increasingly more families adopting progressive ideals.
Archaic perfectly describes the Thai educational system as it only teaches us to follow rules and never to think for ourselves and to only understand the assignment, question nothing obey everything. We have a few good teachers who are young, passionate and qualified. As the eldest(In my opinion) are in control of administration and how the school runs the old traditional mindset is so delusional and put their focus in stroke their egos and whatevers gets the most money from parents wallet. 6381073
DeleteMost definitely. Thailand's youth - aka my peers - are intelligent, capable, and hungry for the chance to prove themselves. Unfortunately, similar to Carlos' case, many cannot jump over the hurdle of the circumstances that surround them. Growing up in an abusive household, I definitely empathize with the youth of today in difficult environments; their future is theirs, but their present situation prevents them from seizing it as they should be able to. Whether it be an economic hurdle or bad parenting, every child is either a victim or a benefactor from the day they are assigned to a womb. The family that raises you - whether it be a single parent or two - dictates the overall quality of your life beyond your education. You could be the type of kid who walks into a store, points at everything you like, and walk out with every toy in your cart. On the other hand, you could also be the kid who has to choose to take the non-AC bus to school so you can afford lunch within your allowance.
ReplyDeleteThe Thai government needs to realize this opportunity the way the US has mobilized magnet schools for low-income students. Carlos may not have been able to overcome his hurdles, but there are several examples of students who HAVE been lucky enough to become a success story. For example, colleges and universities in America give priority admission to those children who are the first in their family to attend higher education. This is a system called affirmative action that recognizes the financial challenge going to college represents for poorer students, and rewards them for making such an expensive and time consuming choice.
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DeleteThe idea of affirmative action is really cool as it is likely to result in a bigger positive than a negative. However, this should not have to be the case as everyone should be able to receive a high quality education and not only those who are desperate for it. Though this system seems more realistic as having an education system where everyone gets what they want is near impossible to pull off. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, a corrupt government only thinks in the short term as they are clearly selfish and worry only about what happens in their lifetime which is why those with money would be given priority and those who can grow the economy but don't have the funds to fill the pockets of officials (directly or indirectly) would be ignored. Scholarships costs money which affects profits. Try convincing a selfish person to accept that they would get less money for the same amount of work even if it leads to a net positive.
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DeleteAffirmative action seems like an interesting idea, and would work in the short term, but wouldn't a systemic change to the education system here in Thailand be better? Carlos himself was receiving help when he was in grade 4, which just goes to show that focusing on the university level alone will go nowhere. In my opinion, I do not think that we should be proving financial aid for poor students to attend better education, I think we should expand better education so that all students can afford it.
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DeleteWhile affirmative action does sound tempting, I feel like it doesn't solve anything. If we continuously reward poor people for taking higher risks without fixing the issue itself, the issue just stagnates.
I have never heard of the affirmative action before, and it does sound interesting. However, I don't think it would be very sustainable in the long run. I think it's kind of unfair to other students who may not be the first in their family to attend higher education. These people want a good education as well, and it's not fair to them that someone else in their family gets financial support while they don't.
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The idea of affirmative action is definitely a good start in terms of schools recognizing the financial hurdles that many students face, however, I do not think this is enough for the long run as there are so many students, each with their own unique stories that are in need of financial help. I think what we need as a global society is for every single person to have the same opportunities of being able to get a high quality education. However, this is an idealistic statement as I do often question if it is even possible to end this gap between the privileged and the underprivileged. Nevertheless, we should never stop demanding for change and always strive for a better society.
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DeleteFor sure. Circumstances outside of education such as household environment could really stop intelligent kids from going their full potential. Although there are programs to support them, it's already too late.
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ReplyDeleteI understand capitalization as the ability of a country to provide its population with the required tools to maximize their potential. For example, Carlos received the opportunity to enroll in a private school which would enable him to apply his intellect as thoroughly as possible when other windows of opportunity open, which would have been unlikely if he remained in his previous school. I believe no country on this planet will ever be able to perfect their capitalization rate. There is no such thing as “perfect” in this world so Thailand would always have areas to improve upon. However, the distance to a perfect capitalization rate in Thailand seems to be much further than what other countries have been able to manage. I once read a statistic that the English proficiency of an average Thai person is lower than the average Cambodian. For a country with 20 times the GDP of Cambodia, that is rather embarrassing but some may argue that Thai people should learn Thai and not English. When you Google “Thailand education”, the third suggestion is “Thailand education problems” which indicates the insufficiency of the Thai education system. So yes, Thailand can do a better job, virtually effortlessly.
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DeleteYour reasoning is quite strong. Certain details that you mentioned were new to me. However, I believe that Thailand's stats are sometimes misleading and do not reflect its performance. Thailand, in my opinion, should place a greater emphasis on its educational system than on achieving favorable statistics and GDP.
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ReplyDeleteThailand definitely has this problem with capitalization. If you have the money or wealth to enter into a school, you will get into that school. For example, I was fortunate enough to go into an English Program school in middle school, and an international school in high school. In middle school, my class scored the worst out of the 3 class of my grade, with some subjects having half the class fail. In high school, they had to disallow the option for students to take summer school, because it was filled to capacity thanks to the poor quality of students they accepted. There were too many rumors of bribery for me to count. It further compounds the issue when the fact that the top universities need foreign standardize tests such as the SAT or IELTS which just adds to the money issue. This is a problem that starts from a young age, lower school level. This wouldn't be an issue in say, Finland, where the quality of public schools vs private aren't that different, but in Thailand? It makes a world of difference. If the country can fund its schools better, if it focuses not just in Bangkok (An issue with being the most primate city in the world), then we would see a vast improvement compared to what we see now.
I think I can relate to what you have stated above as schools in Myanmar are basically the same. Almost all the "good schools" are private international schools based in the biggest cities in the country while students in rural areas are forced into an education system that is lacking in every way. If governments would focus on funding the public education system, countries like ours could definitely tap into the talent that has been hidden within the system which would result in the overall development of the country itself.
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DeleteI absolutely agree with you; the wealthy are unwilling to study and prefer to get away by bribery, lowering the quality of education for other kids. I've also seen that happen at my school, where wealthy students didn't have to pay for summer school, causing teachers to show favoritism and neglect the hardworking students. This, I believe, has a negative impact on the poor bright kids in Thailand, necessitating the need for bigger and more effective capitalization in Thailand.
Definitely a case for our country. I spent years in the Thai education system and encountered many determined, hard working people. From online tutoring to eight hours of studying a day, many went to great lengths to make it in a reputable institution. Their relentless work paid off- but at what cost? Money. Lots of it. In Thailand, there isn’t much hope for people in a similar situation as Carlos. Although the country has some programs for financially struggling students, gifted kids may not make it that far along. Free basic education may be provided, but the quality of it is questionable. Even then, they could have circumstances beyond their control prohibiting them from studying altogether. And the expensive college admissions process hasn’t been mentioned yet. Not many could afford to take the SAT four times like my friends did. As stated in the podcast: poor students only have one chance. A field of opportunity would be opened if Thailand were to capitalize its resources on education. We may need a larger budget, but current funds should be shifted towards quality education for low-income students and financial programs. In order to make it to the top, Thailand’s intelligent youth need a stronger foundation to lift them up.
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DeleteIt's a huge shame that many students miss opportunities simply because they have no money.
That part about your friends being privileged enough to take the SAT 4 times really hit home for me. I spent many years surrounded by people who had more opportunities than I did and it feels like you have to work twice as hard and only get a half of the way forward.
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DeleteFrom what I could gather from the podcast, capitalization is the idea of providing equal opportunities to everyone in society regardless of their background so that they are able to improve or grow their lives. In an ideal world where the capitalization rate is high, people are able to make the best out of their talents and hard work in order to create a better life for themselves, however, in the modern world, especially in developing countries, this, unfortunately, is hard to achieve.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know much about the Thai education system but I can definitely say that where I come from (Myanmar), so much talent and potential has been wasted for decades and is still currently being wasted today. Similar to Thailand, Myanmar also has a wide variety of amazing schools with the best facilities and resources, however, these schools are specifically reserved for the top 1-5 percent (privileged students) of the entire population (These might not be the actual statistics but you get the idea). This is mainly due to the fact that we have been under a regime that fears education as a whole as it is a deadly weapon that could push them out of power, that even when we declared ourselves a democracy, they made sure that the country stuck to a system that favored their goals. As a result, if you do not have money in Myanmar, you are either forced into doing a low-paying government job or you work whatever work there is out there (mainly labor). So to answer the question, Myanmar definitely could do a better job at capitalizing on its resources of 54 million people that have so much hidden potential, and hopefully, in the near future, this can be achieved.
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I definitely agree. I've also heard that a lot of other education systems in Asia have the same problem. Lets hope Thailand doesn't follow the same path as Myanmar :(
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ReplyDeleteCapitalization is capitalizing on a student's true potential regardless of the barriers that stand in the way. It's a morally good concept and one that will be highly sought after in a perfect world. However, since we are in an imperfect world, capitalization proves difficult due to multiple different factors.
My parents often told me tales of their lives in the Philippines. They usually described the school system as one that's divided by the rich and poor. The rich students obviously have everything while the poor have nothing. It's a sad thing, but it's something that can't be helped. The nation itself is poor and has other issues to focus on rather than education. I believe that once the Philippines fixes its economy, it should invest heavily on its education to capitalize on the students who miss opportunities simply because they have no money.
It is interesting to read about how similar the education in Philippines is to Thailand. I have also heard from people who have been in Thai schools about how it is divided by the rich and poor. It is unfortunate how education is not a priority in many countries, and this should definitely change. I believe that these countries can make a change, even if it takes time.
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DeleteIt's really interesting to see your experience with this. To me, this is sad to see because this just means that there are even more problems with education than we are generally aware of. To solve this problem, we don't only need determination, we also need time to fix the economy and then mindset of the people. Education is one of the most important aspects of a society, but often, it is also the most overlooked. I think your story highlights that really well.
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ReplyDeleteAfter listening to the podcast, I've concluded that capitalization means receiving an opportunity to access high quality education despite one's income background. Usually this is through recognition of intellect in a person.
From kindergarten to senior year, I've studied at a private international school. Only hearing about Thai public education from news outlets has led me to conclude that Thai public education is inefficient and full of problems. In Thailand, I'm sure many people have stories similar to Carlos': the inability to maximize their potential and contribution to society as a whole due to circumstances stemming from one's socioeconomic status. The Thai government does not place a great value on providing high quality education to students. In Thailand, it seems that there is a lack of financial aid programs to students in elementary and secondary education. I've seen many stories on social media of young Thai public students receiving scholarships in foreign countries such as China. Ultimately, I don't think Thai society and government care much about students in public education.
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DeleteOur government has determined that Thai kids are to be educated from grade 1 till grade 9. On one hand, these kids are being educated, however, is the government doing whatever it can to provide the best they can, provide equally among the poor. There are still many questions left to be answered and it seems that Thai ministry of education hasn't really been efficient toward the education of the younger demographic but rather focused on making money off grade 10 entrance exams and college entrance exams.
From my understanding of the podcast, capitalization is the act of a society providing opportunities for everyone to reach their full potential. This means that regardless of a person's background—rich or poor—they should be provided the same opportunities as their peers. Paraphrasing Gladwell's words, capitalization rate is the ratio of people in a society that are able to make the most of their abilities. I agree with Gladwell, capitalization rates are probably a better way of measuring a country's success as opposed to GDP. GDP merely estimates the growth rate of a country based on a snapshot of its economy at a given time, whereas capitalization rates provide insight into the growth of successful people—those who are able to reach their full potential—in a society over time.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the issue with capitalization in Thailand, I may not be able to comment much as I've never been in the Thai public education system myself, however, I can say that there definitely is a problem. From what I've heard from my peers, there are plenty of students who are smart and determined to learn more, however, they aren't able to pursue higher education due to their financial circumstances. Take my mother as an example. My mother was born in the countryside to a family of ten children, raised by a single mother who worked three jobs in order to support the family after her husband passed when my mum was only a few months old. During her entire childhood, my mum lived in poverty. But, she had a strong desire to learn. She was motivated to get good grades and enter a college in order to pursue a career that payed well so that she could take care of her mother. Out of the ten children, my mother was the only one who ended up pursuing higher education. But it wasn't easy. She worked early shifts at part time jobs and attended college late at night as a part time student. She had dreams of studying medicine but had to settle with finance as she couldn't afford the former.
This is the issue with capatilization in Thailand. The lack of support given to poor students and the quality of education in the Thai education system is barely different to what it was three decades ago—when my mother was still a student. This needs to change. The government needs to start funding more on developing the education system in order to provide quality education to more students—regardless rich or poor—all around Thailand.
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I appreciate your ability to relate the story of your family to the issue of capitalization. The true measure of a country's performance is the support we give to citizens to succeed. Aj. M
DeleteI have studied in a Thai government high school and I have seen many rich kids getting enrolled by paying a large amount of money which they call as donation. Poor but smart kids can get enrolled easily because the tuition fees are low and there are scholarships offered by the schools and universities which is a very beneficial aspect for them. What is unfair is students who are not intelligent enough but have the money and high profile to get enrolled. I call this corruption and it is a shame for our country that allows illegal processes like paying under the table to occur. Additionally, having connections with teachers is also another way a rich student can get into institutes. Institutes are places where we get educated but to get into it, we act like illiterate people.
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A good perspective. There is access available to people with means, no matter the qualification. Aj. M
DeleteFrom my understanding after listening to the podcast, capitalization provides opportunities to people, no matter what kind of financial status they have. This sounds great, but I think it is rare for us to see this actually happen in the real world. And Thailand is a perfect example of this. I've never been to a Thai school, but even being in an international school in Thailand, I can say that money matters most. I have heard many stories of people who get a spot in school because of how wealthy their parents are. This can typically be seen in expensive private Thai and international schools. Other than just schools, I have also heard stories about how students get internships at famous companies because of their family or family friends' connections with the company. Even if the student is not hardworking or not 'deserving' of the spot, they get these spots due to their family background and income. This is obviously unfair to others who work hard and dream of achieving these things that kids from rich families get. However, I'm not saying that none of them deserve it or none of them work hard. There are students who work hard, and their families' connections and wealth are just other things that help them achieve their dreams. As we have previously talked about, the Thai government does not prioritize the education of its citizens. We are fortunate enough to be in an international university, but there are other students who can only dream of getting the quality of education that we are right now, and this needs to change.
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Yes you're right. I know so many people who get better opportunities because of their wealth not their potential. Here comes another inequality which the Thai society made. 6381040
DeleteI feel bad for you because seeing these kinds of situations just make it so that it's hard to trust the system. I've been pretty lucky in the sense that I've never seen wealth affect these things that much, but I feel like there are other problems that exist as well. Some systems, mainly Asian, choose to focus on more technical subjects, often ignoring the potential of more "artistic" students.
Delete"Thai government does not prioritize the education of its citizens. We are fortunate enough to be in an international university, but there are other students who can only dream of getting the quality of education that we are right now, and this needs to change." As I have gone through the educational system in Thailand and everything since kindergarten and been on the back end of many rulers, being taught many things. I still had the opportunity to get a certification saying I have finished school which will hopefully provide me with a better job than being a minimum wage security guard with no skills or passion to pursue.
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ReplyDeleteGladwell uses the term capitalization to define the rate at which members in a group reach their full potential. As far as I can tell, capitalization is the process by which investors provide businesses with capital (money and resources) in order for the recipient to maximize their earnings. In education, capitalization refers to the providing of resources and financing to assist students in achieving their academic objectives.
No amount of resources or financing will be able to eliminate the problem or meet the needs of every student. In terms of Thailand, I have no prior experience studying in a Thai school and am not a Thai citizen. However, based on my experience here and the conversations I've encountered, I believe the concept of providing has been misconstrued. When the purpose is to provide good education to pupils, they believe that delivering education is the goal. The focus should be on those who are poor and smart because they miss out on opportunities due to their financial circumstances. Despite their intelligence, they live in a restricted academic environment, and hence more capitalization and resource allocation are needed to improve their education of the needy and smart students. Thailand's capitalization system can be described as the following analogy. Those who know how to swim are given life jackets, while those who don't aren't given life jackets and are left stranded.
Furthermore, according to what I've heard in Thailand, capitalization has occurred on occasion. I know of schools that paid for a student's college tuition after he graduated since he couldn't afford it but was very talented. Contrastingly, they also accept special donations to guarantee certain students' admission to prestigious universities. This rips off the opportunity for another student to get that opportunity. Thailand, in my opinion, should do a better job of capitalizing by offering resources to the poor and smart students in need of it rather than rich students who are looking are a shortcut. Every student should be judged by their intelligence, not wealth, and given a fair chance at attaining resources to fund their education.
I couldn't agree more with you. Chances should be given to those who are hardworking and intelligent. Their financial problems should never be the cause of getting lesser opportunities. 6381040
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ReplyDeleteFrom what I could gather from Gladwell, the word "capitalization" is used to describe the pace at which individuals of a group realize or reach their maximum potential and in this case capitalization is used in terms of education which refers to the provision of resources and funding to help students achieve their academic goals. I completely agree that people are the most important resource that will keep human kind running for as long as we shall exist for. The face that the future is being hindered by those who by nature are going to cease to exist long before those who aren't only going to live in that future but are the future themselves and are responsible for all that is to happen such as dramatic change like climate change and etc.
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