Yesterday was cram day for the sixth graders at Bangkhonthiinai school.  Next Tuesday they have their National Test and so Tod, Ken, Khruu Somchai and I spent the entire day working with the ten sixth graders, reviewing sample test questions.  By the end of the day, the poor things were dazed and it was clear that the three boys don’t have much of a chance of scoring well.  The girls are in better shape, though.

In the morning I told Ajarn Yai that a friend is visiting from New York later in the week and would like to come down and teach, but wouldn’t be here next Wednesday.  Would she mind have another English class this week – an especially good offer since only the sixth graders received English instruction this week?  Of course, she was fine with that and said she’d like to have me come teach every day.

Over lunch, Ajarn Yai asked Tod why so many people knew about her school and Tod replied by “outing” this blog, explaining that I keep a website and that people around the world read about the school and see pictures of the event there.  This caused a bit of a stir – not in the way that it would in a litigious society like the United States, but rather in an “Oh, really? We’re famous?” sort of way.  Khruu Somchai wrote down the address and then fired up the one working computer and started the dial-up connection.

Slowly, slowly, slowly the first page loaded.

My mind raced as I tried to think of what content on this page would be deemed inappropriate for young children.  Nothing too bad.  A picture of Tawn, his mother, and I at the Italian restaurant, a little red-faced.  Some “huggy” type pictures.  If the students actually browse much of the website they’ll form a more well-rounded picture of me.

The real question, though, is how this will affect their behavior in the future.  Just like contestants on a reality TV show or subjects of a documentary film, can you ever really forget that you’re being recorded and be completely yourself?  I would assume that, children being children, they’ll continue to be themselves.  But maybe it won’t quite be the same again.

The first sign that things are changing: Ajarn Yai hiring a media consultant.

Speaking of documentaries, last night Tawn and I went to watch “Final Score,” a Thai documentary by Soraya Nakasuwan that is currently in mainstream release (even English subtitled at some cinemas) about a group of grade 12 boys in their final year of secondary school and the pressure they go through preparing for and finally taking the “A-Net” or “O-Net” tests. The major exams to access universities.   

While it wasn’t perfect, it was certainly a world-class documentary and had many particularly well-constructed scenes.  It was especially nice to see a film by a female Thai director, which is quite the rarity.  Having a female director made it even more interesting that the film focused exclusively on a group of four boys and provided almost no exposure to the story of similarly-aged women, even though one of the main characters, Per, breaks up with his girlfriend right before the tests, leading him to the edge of a breakdown.

The challenge with the documentary genre, of course, is that you can’t script out what happens and you may or may not end up with footage that charts the story you expected would be told.  In this case the director encountered a few hiccups, but generally extracted very interesting stories and told them effectively.  I’d assume that the film will get some play overseas, at least in film festivals.