They asked for "cooperation". But as every meerkat knows, this is the age of euphemisms and contortionists' talk, and "cooperation" is menace cloaked as courtesy; it means an instruction, an order even. It means we're watching you so you should behave because if you don't, well, we can never be sure what our next instruction will be. So yes, you should watch out. Yes, you students.
Last week, the Office of Higher Education Commission issued an internal letter to deans of universities requesting cooperation in supervising students' political activities, especially the staging of politics-related plays. The Office, under the Ministry of Education, believes that a number of politically active students have received distorted information which can lead them to produce plays that deviate from the truth, never mind whose version of truth it's referring to.
For the record, this is the same agency that got itself mired in a controversy about the recent university entrance exam, which perplexed children and philosophers with some of the most brilliant questions in the history of Southeast Asian schooling: e.g. (to paraphrase) if a pretty young girl goes clubbing and becomes pregnant, why does she get pregnant? No, this is not a biology question. Or: if a student becomes pregnant while in university, what should she decide to do? This is a multiple-choice question, with only one correct answer. Teachers, I wish life could be that simple.
Let's not delve too much into old news; teachers, in this country we've been told since age 6, are entitled to rationalise, and students should just listen, watch and learn. That way you'll get good grades and become a politician and then the pride of the nation, amen.
Regarding the recent request for "cooperation", Education Minister Chinavorn Boonyakiat came out three days ago to defend his agency, saying the letter didn't mean to prohibit students' democratic right to express political views, and the state had no intention of controlling or censoring the content of plays produced by undergrads. But of course, but of course: this is the time for "reconciliation and harmony", and the minister asked universities to try not to "hold activities that do not correspond" with the reconciliatory effort.
For our sake, he should've given us multiple choices to tick which activity corresponds to what and which doesn't.
If young people can't have a passion for change, then who can? Youthful activism, here and everywhere, used to be a form of hope; now that it has become rare, since modern Thai students have no time for politics because of their BB activities, it presents a half-lit torch that is threatened to be completely snuffed out by powerful, cynical adults.
The Office of Higher Education might simply be performing that classic bureaucratic function: pleasing its superiors, meaning politicians, and not the people. And the undercurrents of menace in that letter might speak as much about their naivete as it does about malice and knee-jerk reactions to suddenly become authoritarian.
But then, how do you explain the fact that, in July, a group of students in Chiang Rai were arrested for brandishing anti-government placards?
The Education Ministry has nothing to do with this.
Yet no matter what associations these students might have with law-breakers, the state's bitter, undemocratic action was beyond excuse, for no one should be in detention for holding protesting placards.
Especially when - and this is almost too obvious to repeat here - the People's Alliance for Democracy could stage a mass political rally featuring many more placards and got off totally scot-free. It's bewildering. Or more to the truth, it's sad.
Perhaps the kind of ideal youths the Ministry has in mind are not those with ideas. In July the government revealed its dazzling project of Cyberscout, a joy division of under-aged vigilantes who would roam the internet looking for dangerous content that threatens national security and report back to Mothership.
PM Abhisit Vejjajiva, who used to be the Education Minister and who's always expressed his concern in educational policies (as any Oxford grad would), presided over the launch of the project with an earnest face.
The Cyberscout, to me, is a disgrace, and at a time when the nation yearns for everything but another disgrace.
The talk of reconciliation, the request for "cooperation", becomes the epitome of hypocrisy if the PM endorses this league of young watchdogs whose WWII counterparts I do not need to name.
It's tough being an adolescent, but maybe it's toughest being an adolescent these days in Thailand, even if you have a BB.
Published in "Opinion" The Bangkok Post, 14/08/20
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/190993/shut-up-youths
