Supplemental English Term 2 Midterm Assignm

On 28 September 2011, Bangkok Post, an English-language daily newspaper in Thailand, uploaded an article on their website titled "Anger over Nazi show. " The article tells the story of a school in Chiang Mai, Thailand, performing their annual sports day festival. With the students dressed as Nazis while walking in a parade. This caused outrage both in Thailand and outside of Thailand. Surprisingly, according to my teacher, this is not the first time something like this is happening in Thailand. This makes me wonder why something like this happens in Thailand. This is the reason why I wrote this essay. I want to analyze and find reasons why things like this happen. So, let's look at why something like this happens in Thailand. Let's go through the details of what's happening in the story. On 23 September 2011, at Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the school celebrated its annual sports day and had students walk in a parade to start their celebration. The students are dressed as Adolf Hitler, Nazis, and SS guards while walking in a parade. The event was highly criticized after photographs of the event were posted online, and everyone got angry about it. On 27 September 2011, the school then apologized for the action that they were doing. Chanwit Tubsuphan, secretary-general of the Office of the Private Education Commission (Opec), said the director of the school had expressed regret and apologized for the incident that was happening. He got information that the school's teachers were not informed about the students' theme for the sports day event before it took place. The students also didn't realize that the use of Nazi topics would have any negative impact, and was said by Chanwit that they had no intention to express any hidden agenda and that the teachers were sorry for what their students did. Mr. Chanwit also said that lessons on the history of World War II had been one of eight core subjects provided to the children by the Education Ministry. Now, since we know what's happening, it's time to analyze it and see why this happened. After reading the article and the entire story, I seem to know the reason why things like this happened. The main reason this happened is because of how ignorant the students were. So, we knew the main reason for it, then who's to blame for what's happening. In my opinion, society was the one to blame more than the students. Yes, the students are ignorant, don't think about the consequences of their actions, and don't tell the teacher if what they're doing is good or not. But their ignorance comes from a society that didn't educate them at all. This reminds me of Bruno, the protagonist of the novel, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. In the book, Bruno was a 9-year-old boy growing up in Berlin during World War II, in which he moved into the house near the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he thought it was a place where kids played together, and everyone lived there happily without knowing the horrors inside. Some people would say that Bruno was just a kid, and those students should have known better. If that's the case, then why Bruno doesn't even know what's kind of place outside his bedroom window, his father's job (which is a Nazi soldier), and the people who're wearing striped pajamas. This is due to Bruno's ignorance of a society that didn't teach him well enough about the Nazis. Some people may say, aren't lessons is the history of World War II a core subject for students to learn? Well, yeah, but here's the thing, even though history was a core subject that students study they still don't teach them well enough and only teach them surface-level information that everyone could find on the internet. Just like with Bruno, who's asking his father who're the people who wear striped pajamas, but his father only told him that those people aren't people at all, which surprised Bruno but could make him interpret the way his father told him. In conclusion, people would blame people's ignorance as to the main cause of the problem, without asking them the cause of their ignorance. This article helps me realize how the statement that I said earlier is becoming more and more a fact. And how bad society is in educating people. This article teaches me that I should find more reasons why something like this is happening other than just blaming it on people's ignorance because the reason for their ignorance could help improve society even more.