Learning with happiness | Jon Jandai | TEDxChiangMai

In his second talk on the TEDx stage in Chiang Mai, Jon Jandai focused on education and how to raise children. He suggests that the Thai education system prevents children from actual learning, using their imagination, and being creative. Thai children are transformed into robots that aimlessly join the economic system. Jon proposes raising children through home schooling and self-learning, illustrating his ideas with real life experiences raising his son at home. He draws attention to the importance of giving our children meaningful and natural learning opportunities and for parents to spend more quality time with their children.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I'd like to share with you my experience

about education.

It may be different from
what many of you may expect.

I once though like everybody else that

education makes our lives better;

Education leads our lives

to succeed.

I once had that idea and tired hard

for advancement

by learning as much as I can.

However, with I discovered
is just the opposite.

My classmates,

60 of them whom I had gone to school with.

The brightest one of our class

is now a government official
who has lots of debt.

For many of them, their parents
had to sell a whole herd of buffaloes

to get money for their tuition fee.

Some sold their farm and got big debt.

Their kids, once graduated,
couldn't even find a job

and got money
to recover their parents' farmland.

They are unskilled workers

who continue to work
untill they ache their bones.

It make me realized
that education for poor

is like a gamble, especially now.

I have seen them working so hard,

spending more than 10 years
of their lives,

to get their kids' tuition fee covered.

But their graduated kids
can't get any job,

or only get an odd job.

From the poor people's point of view,

education tortures us a lot.

We study alot

but what we need in lives
is not what we have studied.

Why should we waste so much time,

about 20 years of our lives,
and so much of money,

to study something we're not going to use?

I remember that I hate maths so much

but I tried to understand Sin, Cos, Tan;

pi radius squared, and so on.

Today, I still don't know anyone who
finding the square root in everyday life.

(Applause)

Many of my classmates
had been studying English

since they were in primary school
until they were in college.

Out of that 60,
none of them're able to speak English.

There's only me who can manage it poorly.

How could they?
Since our teacher barely can?

So why should we study?

Why should we waste our precious time,
the time of our precious lives?

Every minute counts,

but we wasted it shamefully.

When I have child of my own,

I started thinking more about education.

What the education really is?

I have learnt that there are two things

that education takes away from our lives.

First, love.

Love starts when we are close,

bonded, and share.

But when we go to school,

love has gone.

Because the bound is broken.

Do you remember
the saddest day in your life?

It is the day your parents send you
to school for the first time.

Yes, it is.

Why do we plan the start of a child's life
with sadness?

Since this world has so much fun.

We can make things fun.

But we force our child to be sad
since the first day.

Why do we put them in pressure,

and study things they don't want to.

When I was young,

communism had been introduced into
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietman.

The rumors went something like:
If we were communist state,

kids would be brain-washed;

adults would be forced to be a labor;

and our parents would allow
to eat only a cup of rice per day.

I was terrified. I cried alone very often.

Every time when I though of it, I cried.
Why?

Because I love my parents so much.
I don't want to be apart from them.

But today, what scares me the most

is normal event in everyone's life.

I don't understand.

Why thing that I used to scared
becomes normal.

Why we separate child from parents?

Love is not only an instinct.

It is a legacy of life
that has been developed

and passed on through generations.

But now, we stop passing on that legacy,

to our children.

We separate them from us

to avoid bounding,

to be independent,

and then we're all alone.

This is the first thing
that I think it's taken from our life

by education.

Secondly, creativity.

Creativity is something
that popup during your lifetime,

especially when you're under 10 years old.

This is the period that the brain is free.

Children start to develop their creativity

by playing with sand, dirt,
leaves, and sticks,

creating them
into various sorts of things.

That's the development
of great creativity.

When we grow old, we have less creativity

because our brain is filled
with information.

So we are more imitating

or following other people's thought.

See our Thailand for example,

when we want to develop something;
election, democracy,

government official, politician,
you name it,

we have to study it from other countries.

Why?!
(Applause)

Copy them, follow them,

because we can't think by ourselves.

Because we haven't trained
to have creativity.

Children can do that
when they are not older than 10 years old.

So, at this age, they shouldn't study.

They should have fun, play,
and feel the happiness;

feel the freedom;

feel the creativity;
feel that they can do anything.

That's the most important.

But we send our 3-year-old children
to preschool,

force them to go to tutor school,
taking a lot of courses,

carrying a schoolbag heavier than ours.

We put them in great pressure

from their very earlier day.

They wither before they yet to bloom.
Why we're so cruel to our kids?

Will they become smarter,
if they study more?

Look! There are so many universities
in our country.

There are so many graduates.

But today, flooding in Bangkok
becomes a major problem.

Flooding used to be normal,

but now, it becomes a problem;

Clean water is in short supply,
and people need to buy bottles of water.

This is a mentally crisis,
an educational crisis,

that we can't resolve.

We study just to make normal thing

turns into problem.
(Applause)

When children can't use their creativity,
they got stress.

Then they get use to that

and grow up to be a stressful adults;

Life is like this.

I'm born to work, to get paid,
to pay, and that's it. Nothing more.

They don't think much

because the school has
several main purposes these days;

Train them to be obedient, conformable,

and stay in the bordered line. That's all.
(Applause)

How? Everyone wear the same clothes,

have the same haircut,
the same answer for the same question.

No thinking! There're only 4 choices;

A, B, C and D. No thinking! (applause)

After school, we don't know how to think.

So we can only obey and conform.

This becomes a social problem

Graduates have knowledge, but no job.

How can that be possible?

Is that means that
what we study is nonsense and useless?

Look at everything we have studied.
Everything is so far away from us;

the earth, the moon,

the president of that country,

granite, lignite,
and other kinds of rocks.

But we haven't learnt anything
about ourselves.

We don't know how to make fire
or how to cook.

We have no idea which plant is edible.

When we are sick, we can't do anything
but see a doctor,

who is very busy, by the way.

We can get sick; It's normal.

Why didn't we have taught
how to take care of ourselves?

Anything that relate to ourselves,
we haven't learnt about it.

We studied about radioactive, uranium,

but we hardly know anything about MSG

that we are taking daily.
(Applause)

This makes me feel

that the education system
is causing a great damage

in many people's lives.

Many people lost the opportunity
grudgingly.

This makes me think very much of child.

My child who is coming to this world;
I don't want him or her to be like others.

When I see kids go to school -

Watching them walking into the school

makes me feel like they are walking
into the factory,

to be processed into industrial products

which have sames good standard
per industrial aspect.

So for my own child,

I think the most important things
to be educated about, at least,

is the ability to take care of ourselves,

to manage for 4 necessary living factors;
Food, shelter,

necessities, and medicament.

This is the core life lesson
that we need to learn.

If we have a good foundation,
we are ensured and will not be scared.

We can live our lives proudly.

But the education system has cut this out.

No one have learnt
these 4 necessary factors.

So, we're so scared,
when we're graduated.

We all feel that
we haven't learnt anything.

We know nothing, aren't we?

And we are so aimless.

When you feel so insecure, so afraid,

you will desperately seek for security.

You will need money.

So you're going to work hard,

spending all your life working.

So when I have my own child,
I think of alternative education.

In Thailand, you can have home education.
So we choose to homeschool.

The process is quite straightforward.

You need to contact
local education authority,

develop curriculum,

submit it, and then you can start teaching
once it's approved.

To please The Ministry of Education,

create the curriculum in anyway you wish.
(Applause)

But we can teach differently,
like I teach my kid.

I show him how to plant vegetable.

Preparing a garden plot teaches him
maths, sciences,

as well as, vocation, and technology.

I spend several hours a day teaching

mainly on Thai and English languages,

and maths.

Apart from that,
it's all in his daily life.

I don't need to teach him at all.

He can manage by himself.

My son is 9 years old.
He has his own house.

He builds it by himself.
(Applause)

I remember that since he was born

I gave him less than 10 pieces of toys.

He hardly wants toys

because he can find something
to play with in the garden.

If he wants to buy something,
he can earn money himself.

He used to do baking sale
to get money for his LEGO.

He used to make a flashlight
from old phone battery,

then sold it for 150 Baht.

This is what he do.

And I hardly need to pay him anything.

I think it's very convenient.

And I can see that my 11-year-old child

can manage to learn by himself.

He started to design his own house.
He can do many things himself.

And I think this is so interesting.

We mainly teach him
about 4 factors necessary of living.

Let him take care of himself,
for if he can do that

parent like me can die in peace.

He can survive.
(Applause)

We have many example.

Here's our friend, Tonkla.

Tonkla is 13 years old.

When he was 12, also homeschooling.

From the beginning, his main task,
his main subject is duck farming.

His dad does farming.
He does duck farming.

Duck farming teaches him all subjects.

Two years ago,
he went to USA with my son.

They are not asking me for a dime.

He gets all 60,000 Baht,
air ticket, and other expenses

from egg sale.
(Applause)

So, education shouldn't be hard;

It shouldn't be a great burden.

It should be easy and fun,
not stressful and frustrated.

It shouldn't be a burden for parents
and for the students themselves.

It should be a burden for government.

Children should study
what they're going to use for living;

That's a kind of education
that creates sustainability,

and happy proud life.

Different from our education system
these days,

we have to depend on so many things.

So, now we can create our own lessons.

I think it will be create magical ideas,

diversities,

and sustainability.

The education system

which is tightly controlled
by The Ministry of Education,

try to develop the same way of thinking.

Having the same ideas, same actions,
lead us to failure.

Diversity, on the other hand,
is security and sustainability;

Diversity is beauty.

So, education should be free
from tight control

of The Ministry of Education.

It should be human rights.
(Applause)

Communities must design
their own lesson

in order to response to their needs,

and not to enslave themselves
to the system

like what it is today.

I'd like to encourage you to think:

Should we continue torturing our children?

or should we find them an alternative?

Thank you very much.