Wai Khru Ceremony
By Richard Barrow 
Thursday 7th June, 2007 | 187 words | Category: School Life | 5 feedbacks »
I think one of the highlights for us during the first semester in schools in Thailand is the Wai Khru Ceremony. This is when the students pay respects to their teachers and present them with flowers or jasmine garlands. I have tried to explain this ceremony to some teacher friends from America and they found it difficult to comprehend. They said that no way would American students prostrate at the feet of their teachers. But, that is exactly what happens here. The students are making merit in order to gain good fortune over the coming academic year. When we receive the flowers we are not supposed to say "thank you" though I am often tempted to do so. We should take this opportunity to give them some good advice for their future and also to wish them good luck and say that we hope they will get good grades. These are pictures that I took at Sriwittayapaknam School this morning. Other schools will hold their own Wai Khru Ceremony this month. It doesn’t matter which week but it must take place on a Thursday.
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5 comments
that is why more and more the native people are moving back to they home land including me and my husband.
But I've heard that Thai schools have big problems with cheating and that students in practice never fail classes (even those that know very little) which harms morale. Is this true?
And while I do think that respect for teachers in this country is refreshing, I find too that teachers need to earn this respect by finding more creative and effective ways of teaching -- death of rote learning.
Also, teachers in this country are not the selfless wonders many make them out to me. They -- speaking of those in government schools (and other civil servants -- get FAT health benefits packages that are the envy of everyone else in the country. And which all other taxpayers' pay into.
This is off topic a bit. The ceremony described here is nice but let's hope that the real day to day interaction between students and teachers is resulting in a new generation of intelligent, inquisitive minds. That's more important than ceremonies.
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