The Adventures of Miss X – Part 1
Follow Miss X as she exposes corruption, prejudice and inequity in Thailand and champions the struggles of regular people.

In Thailand surnames matter. Having a good surname can help you get a well-paid job in a big company or government agency where you will be trusted and valued. A low-quality name will push you to the back of the queue in your job application, and even if you get the job your employer will see you as someone of less value than well-named co-workers. High quality surnames derive from royal family connections. Ordinary, low-class surnames are derived from the geographical home of your ancestors. This arcane class system seems out of place in modern Thailand which in many ways is a very progressive country politically. For example, gay marriage was recently legalized in Thailand, and transgender people are well accepted. Thailand has a vibrant economy and excellent technological infrastructure. The roads are well maintained, crime is low, and tourism is thriving. Most westerners living in Thailand probably have no understanding that underneath the glittering surface there is prejudice and social exclusion which adversely affects people from the provinces who try to get ahead in life.

Discrimination over surnames has led many people from poor backgrounds to change their names after they graduate from university. It is not hard to change your name, but if you want to get a “good name” you must be careful not to appropriate the name of an existing family, which could get you into deep water. Name change has become a micro industry and there are services which you can find online to help you discreetly find a good name that is not already in use.

Prejudices over names are part of a broader inequity in Thai society which gives unfair advantage to organizations which can boast royal connections. In education, this can take the form of increased government assistance to schools and colleges owned by a person with a “good name”. In some cases, the salaries of teachers in such schools will be underwritten by the government. Sometimes the money from such disbursements can be misappropriated. Teachers at such schools might be hired without clear contracts and a paper-trail. They might not receive the full salary which is claimed by the school. These teachers may be people who don’t have a teaching certificate or even a degree, who feel lucky to get a job and won’t complain about anything. When they start work these teachers may find that the school lacks basic classroom facilities.

New teachers at such schools may find that their students have behavioral issues. This is because the school is taking on youngsters who have been rejected elsewhere. They offer the parents of such troubled kids a discounted fee. They represent what they are doing as charitable whereas in fact it is a ruse to help them to squeeze money from government agencies.

Today we bring you a true story about one such college, and one teacher who we will simply identify as “Miss X”.

Miss X comes from a disadvantaged background. In her village, growing up, she was a top student, but the loss of her father in a car accident took her life in a different direction. She was forced to move several times, and her education suffered. She completed high school, but her tertiary education was delayed for several years due to the hardships of her life.

Despite the difficulties, Miss X completed a bachelor’s degree in marketing. Her goal was to be a teacher. Growing up, she had great respect for teachers. She believed that teaching was a noble profession, especially when helping the poor and disadvantaged improve their lives. While scanning the job market she came across a vocational college for students aged 14-18, which had a curriculum which matched the subjects she had studied for her degree. The college advertised that they would accept applicants without teaching experience and that they would help their staff to become fully qualified and licensed.

She walked into the college one day without making an appointment and was introduced to a sharp-eyed man in his fifties man who we’ll call “Mr. Z”. She also met with the Director of the college, Mrs. V. Mr. Z had her fill out an application form and asked her about her background. She told him that she had no teaching experience but was very keen to be a teacher. Mr. Z told her that the college would be in touch with her again within two weeks. He gave the impression that he was very keen to take her on, but Mrs. V seemed much cooler. Miss X felt that they were not in total agreement.

Exactly two weeks after the initial interview the college called and offered her a job, starting immediately. They advised her to be at work the following day to teach a class for which she had no time to prepare. Although a little shocked, she accepted the challenge and went in the next morning bright and early. Upon arrival, she was sent straight into the classroom to teach a class. After the class was done, she was ushered into the staff room and informed they would engage her for a three-month testing period. No contract was signed, and she did not get a staff name tag like other teachers.  Miss X was puzzled by this but decided to trust the college as it had a “good name” with royal connections. The salary was low, but she was told that they would help her to get a teaching certificate. She was told informally that her salary was underwritten by the government. This gave her added confidence in the stability of the job and her prospects.

She was doing what she loved: helping people. She decided to overlook the lack of proper legal contracts and the low salary.

On her first day she was thrown into teaching four classes with almost no preparation time. When she came home from college, Miss X cried. She cried because her students were so sad and troubled. They clearly had a tough life, and it reminded her of her own tough life growing up. She resolved to be a good teacher to help these kids get ahead and overcome their difficulties. Despite the tears, she felt optimistic.

The first thing that struck her about the college was the impoverished condition of the buildings, classrooms and facilities. Walls were dirty. White boards were dirty. Students had to sit at old broken desks which were designed for small children. The teacher was not given a desk. There was nowhere to plug in her laptop. There was no projector for running presentations. There was garbage in the corner of the room. The students were ill-kempt and badly behaved. They brought hot food into class which they ate while she tried to teach them. The students played with their telephones and randomly got up and walked around, interrupting her and sometimes talking over her.

Miss X was disturbed by the behavior of her students. Despite coming from a poor background herself, she had never seen anything like this in her own schooling. She began to understand that some of these children were not just disadvantaged, they had behavioral disorders. Some appeared to be autistic, and some were juvenile delinquents. There were some kids who banged their heads against the wall and screamed all day.

Miss X talked about all this with a close friend after work. Her friend suggested that she should establish a set of rules for the class. Without basic rules of conduct it would be impossible for her to teach effectively. At the end of the first week, she typed up a set of rules which seemed reasonable - normal guidelines which would be expected in any educational institution. On the next Monday she presented this printed set of rules to Mr. Z for his approval. He seemed displeased. He said she should not “upset” the students, and that doing so may cause her to fail her three-month testing period.

Mr. Z had a stern temperament and would often remonstrate with his subordinates. Sometimes he clipped their ears. He occupied an office filled with young female teachers on a different floor from Miss X. Miss X learned from her colleague, who we’ll call “Mrs. Y”, that her predecessor had fallen foul of Mr. Z and was drummed out of the college under a cloud of accusations. It was said that he was forced at one point to kiss the feet of one of the senior teachers. It was not clear exactly what he did wrong.

Miss X received the information about her predecessor from Mrs. Y, with whom she shared a small office. Mrs. Y was often distracted and tired. She informed Miss X that she was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and would often be away from college for medical treatment. Sometimes she slept on the floor during the day.

Mrs. Y, who was the only other teacher in her faculty, didn’t give Miss X any guidance in teaching style or methodology. Miss X had to figure out how to deliver classes on her own. She occupied all her spare time preparing course materials and developing presentations on her laptop. Mrs. Y on the other hand didn’t seem to have much to do in between classes and would often listen to music in the office which they shared. This was annoying for Miss X who had a mountain of work to get through each day.

As noted earlier, the classrooms to which Miss X was assigned lacked even the most basic facilities. She was unable to plug in her laptop, and there wasn’t a projector or table for the teacher. When she raised these issues with Mr. Z, he seemed irritated and walked away in silence. Finally, at her own expense, she purchased a computer projector. Mr. Z saw that she was using this projector but said nothing. Mrs. Y quipped that she should have used a projector which was the property of her predecessor. Nobody had told her there was a projector that she could use until after she had already purchased a new one with her own money.

Many of the students who Miss X was assigned to teach would turn up to class with no books and no pens. They would sit in their chairs fidgeting and playing with their phones. Some of them seemed like they had been abused at home. Some students were being bullied by other students. Her heart went out to these kids, but she had no idea how to handle them and received no support or guidance from the college authorities. Her superiors largely ignored her, despite knowing that she didn’t have teaching experience.

She received no support from her direct colleague Mrs. Y, and after three weeks asked Mr. Z, if she could move to another office where the college Director and other teachers worked. She felt that if she was working closely with more professional teachers, she would learn more about how to do her job well. Her request was granted, and she moved into the new office the following week. For three days, everything went smoothly. She started to feel more comfortable and grounded and was developing a relationship with the other staff members.

Suddenly, on the fourth day working in her new office, Mr. Z burst into the room and began rapidly talking to Mrs. V about moving her again. She had received no warning about any changes. She was in the middle of heavy work at her desk, piled up with books, when she was abruptly told to get up and move all her things to another room. Mr. Z said that it was to “help her learn more about work processes”.

She was taken upstairs to the room where Mr. Z worked which, as noted before, was filled with young female teachers. She was given a new and much smaller desk. The desk was so small that there was no room to set up her laptop and books. The room was noisy at all times of day. It was not a place where she could concentrate on developing her course materials. The next day, exasperated by the difficulty of working in the noisy room with a tiny desk, she went above Mr. Z to ask Mrs. V to ask if she could move to a quieter room because she needed to focus on developing her lessons. Initially, Mrs. V agreed, but when Mr. Z got wind of her request, he became furious. He ordered her back into his room and chastised her in front of all the staff: “How dare you go above my ahead and talk to the Director! You are my staff; I give the orders, and you must obey!”. Miss X burst into silent tears, but nobody in the room gave her comfort. In fact the other teachers joined Mr. Z in his humiliating attack.

When she told her friend after work about these troubling developments, her friend suggested that she should quit her job.

Miss X found herself in a difficult situation at this point. She felt she could not work properly under these conditions, and there was an urgent need to prepare the lessons for her students. Let’s not forget that this was her first teaching assignment, and she was anxious to do her job properly. The next day, she put her foot down and insisted that she needed a larger desk. She told her colleague Mrs. Y she would resign if she did not have a proper desk to work on. Mrs. Y panicked and began gossiping about her with the other staff. Mr. Z heard the gossip and became enraged. He once again hauled up Miss X before the assembled staff, and in a cold, stern voice said: “Obey me and work at this small desk, and pass your testing period, or insist on a larger desk and face the consequences. Choose carefully and remember what you chose!”.

Miss X, in tears, chose the table over the prospect of passing her testing period. She chose the table because her main commitment was not to obey the capricious demands of a senior staff member, but rather to serve her students.

From that moment, Mr. Z ghosted Miss X.

Despite being shunned by Mr. Z, Miss X was fully involved in many college activities and excursions and her face appeared in many photographs of college events. She was given no meaningful feedback about her teaching. She interpreted this as meaning she was accepted by the college, despite the falling out with Mr. Z, who was not technically her boss and had no direct involvement with teaching. The only thing Mr. Z said about her, in a meeting with other senior teachers, was that she had a “low EQ”. Miss X was given no advice about how she could improve her teaching style. Miss X interpreted this as meaning that her performance as a teacher was acceptable.

Miss X spent every spare minute on planning her lessons and developing her PowerPoint presentations. Gradually the behavior of her students began to improve. There were no further unpleasant interactions with Mr. Z. When it came to examination time, she had to write the exam questions herself from scratch and was given no guidance on how this should be done. Her predecessor, who had left under a cloud, had not provided any handover materials to the new teacher. Despite all this, she completed everything on time and the exams went smoothly.

As the end of the three-month testing period approached, she was told that a group of senior teachers would visit her classroom to evaluate her. On the day of her evaluation there were about seven people watching her, including Mr. Z and the college Director. Mrs. V got up and left the room after twenty minutes. The other teachers stayed to the end of the class but gave her no feedback. They merely said, “we’ll talk to you later”.

After almost three months she had received negligible feedback about anything, other than being severely chastised for wanting a larger desk. She never missed a day’s work and always arrived extra early in the morning. She looked good and dressed well. She didn’t drink or smoke or use drugs. She was always polite, and she worked hard.

Miss X was not prepared for what happened next.

The following Monday she was summoned to the office of Mrs. V, with Mr. Z watching on. She was given an “evaluation sheet”. She was told that she had failed her testing period and would be terminated as a teacher.  On the testing sheet there were a few remarks:

1) Poor teaching style. The teacher merely reads from books.

2) Poor attitude. The teacher does not get along with other staff members.

3) Poor personality. This person is not suited to being a teacher.

They told her she must sign this document, thereby agreeing that she was a bad teacher, and then complete her last week of teaching to get paid. Miss X was numb and in shock. Despite everything that had happened she could not believe the cold and callous way she was being treated. She refused to sign the damning document or complete her final week. They threatened her with non-payment of her salary.     

On advice from her friend, Miss X messaged Mrs. V the following day, hinting that she would take legal action against the college if they did not fully pay her for the three-month period and provide a work certificate attesting that she had worked there for three months, fulfilling all her requirements. Mrs. V finally acquiesced and agreed to pay her full salary and give her a certificate but demanded that she supply all her teaching records and exam questions by the end of the week. Apparently, despite being a bad teacher whom they did not want, they still needed her services! Miss X brought in all the required materials at the end of the week and was paid in cash and given a work certificate. Mrs. V tried to make her sign a statement that she had voluntarily resigned from her job. She refused to sign the statement.

We may never know why Miss X was treated so poorly but we may surmise that it was because she failed to please Mr. Z, who, from the beginning, seemed to have an odd fixation with her. She was never officially on staff, which means that her salary was not accounted for in the normal way. The college is owned by a rich family which supposedly has “royal connections”. The upper management positions are filled by family members and the long-term staff members have a very close relationship with the inner family. Many of the teachers are very old. Working in such an institution is akin to being in a “royal court”. Obedience and obeisance is more important than diligence in one’s job.

We cannot rule out the possibility that the college is engaged in corrupt practices. The salary of Miss X was paid by the government, she was told, and yet there was no contract of employment or any record to show that she had worked there. Mrs. V tried to get her to sign a statement that she was terminated for being a “bad teacher” and when that failed, tried to get her to sign a statement that she resigned voluntarily. These statements are contradictory. This indicates malfeasance.

This is just the beginning for Miss X. Stay tuned for her next adventure!