Author Archives: The SW Eden

Grading system is not something complex, but people in higher position in educational institute were those who try to make it hard. Teachers should be free to grade their students based on the actual quality of work, project, and exam results. However, there are those people who control the system. They have the idea that all students’ grades have to fit in normal distribution curve.

How to cite this post in academic journal
Eden, S. W. (2022, September 25). Normal Distribution is not the solution of students’ Grade. Sw-Eden.NET. https://swedenofficial.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/normal-distribution-students-grade/

Copyrights by the Sw Eden, 2022

Many times, normal distribution curve is impossible for project-based learning or online class, where teachers assigned more assignments, and let students do less examination or quiz.

Lately, these kinds of class activities were preferred by those who control the system, but they still need to see normal distribution. The location of where I am talking about is Thailand. These students were Thai students. None of them are international or foreigners.

As the results of changing in evaluation and class activities, the grading is affected, too. For example, I assigned students to create short films by speaking English, and each performed as 2 persons talking to one another. Since they are TV broadcasting and film students, they could do very good at this. They had time to practice as much as they wanted before they filmed themselves. Therefore, overall grades are somewhat high.

When I submitted the grades, most students received A and B, rather than B and C, as those class that more than half of the scores or points were based on examination results.

What I would ask or conclude here is that we must change attitude of the people with high positions in education institute, whether they are dean, president, entrepreneur, or manager. They must understand the nature of students and their ability, rather than rely on normal distribution.

Copyrights by the Sw Eden, 2022

I started to see the fact that most criminals are men, and most of the cases they took advantage from women, while in news reports in Thailand, they are more likely to report only female perpetrators, just because they need audiences to read it. Before I am feminist, I thought that men are smarter than women because most managers/bosses are male, but after I grew up and work for a while, these men stole my work without giving credit. When I try to fight back, they threaten me many ways. In my workplace, men like to team up to have more power in the organization, and start the corruption. Only women who can be the bosses or managers are those who are the mistress or sisters of powerful men.

How to cite this post in academic journal
Eden, S. W. (2022, September 25). What Thailand actually needs, patriarchy or post-feminism? Sw-Eden.NET. https://swedenofficial.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/thail-patriarchy-post-feminism/

In Thailand, I feel it is very bad right now. Do you see the fight between those teenagers with 3-fingered salute and our government during 2020-2022? These teenagers believe in anarchy (but they claim that they are pro-democracy) and they want to change the society to be post-feminism. Like, they need women to be sexually-objectified themselves serving men’s sexual need.

Because of this, most people in Thailand do not like these protestors. There are only few feminists in my country though. Because, we do not have enough scholars and teachers who can actually educate people with this. Therefore, right now, it becomes to fight between patriarchy/men-right-movement and post-feminism. Good people tried to protect/praise men, and bad people need women to be sex hungers.

These are not what I want to see. I want good people or even the current government support the diversity. I want to see the right feminism movement in my country, not these post-feminists who supported political party with corruption.

Please feel free to put my answer in your paper or your website. I am okay with that. You don’t need to let me sign or see the consent form.

Many people have found a difficulty in communication in some social network. Social network could be in the format of social networking site (SNS) or application. Some of them might be secretly monitored by non-governmental organization (NGO) (but it is government-back, you know). Therefore, there is something we can say, and we cannot. Some hate speech toward some group is considered as hate speech, while some is not.

Cite as: Eden, S. W. (2022). What the famous social network hates when we say? SW-Eden.NET. https://swedenofficial.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/hate-speech-double-standard/

I read research papers about expression in the form of misogyny and misandry The researchers found that misandry is not allowed in a social network, while misogyny is allowed and not considered as hate speech.

Gender-based discrimination is not only issue about double standard policy. Politics view is also a significant factor of who is going to be banned. They tried to control what we can speak and what we cannot. Whenever we support the countries that they perceive as their enemy, they will ban or delete our account. There is no real freedom of speech, including among those who say they have.

Politics view is not only about the conflict between different countries, but also different parties in the same country. We all know that a former leader of a country and his supporters got suspended or banned from some social networks. Can we call that freedom of speech?

In Asian, if you support gender equality, they will like your expression. This might be because they can use it as an anti-government tool. However, if you support the same issue in some western country, they will ban you. In the particular country, some found that only white, male, and rich people are the only group that really have liberty and freedom. Other people could experience oppression. Some experienced this greater than people in Asian, where they believe that we really do.

Before the open house event, some teachers and some students had to prepare their board and booth at school during weekend. The event I am talking about was held on Monday to Wednesday. A teacher and around 5-10 students were assigned to create a board or booth. There were about 50 of them around school.

Cite as: Eden, S. W. (2022). Shameless teacher in Open House Event. SW-Eden.NET. https://swedenofficial.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/shameless-teachers-open-house/

I would tell this real story in third person because I do not want to have anymore argument with anyone. And the actual location was not a school, but a higher educational institute.

Eden worked as a teacher, an ordinary teacher. Her boss was the head of department. In this department, there were 10 teachers. Eden was the only one in the department who had to come to school in the weekend to work with a group of students. Eden could work fast and know how to get everything done in one day, which was Saturday. Eden wanted the group students who volunteered to work with her to have free time on Sunday. Eden asked her students to design the booth. After design process, Eden suggested the materials and the way to construct it easily and quickly.

Eden’s boss planed not to come during that weekend, but he felt he wanted to help. Therefore, he asked Rapi, a former student, to come to help the current students.

Eden worked with her students, and everything went fast and well in the morning until at noon of the Saturday. However, Rapi came at noon. He tried to stop what those students were working on. Eden asked him to let her students continued working. We had argument and he tried so hard to win the argument without any good reason. He just wanted to do everything exactly the same as the last-year open house. He wanted to control the current students to do exactly what he did. He was loud and stubborn. Eden no longer wanted to talk with him. She had to let her students being control. They had to work more in useless detail of temporary booth. They did not get the booth done within a day as Eden had initially planned.

After the long hard days of booth installation, the open house began on Monday. A male teacher in the same department intentionally took a selfie photo of the booth and shared it on social network. He typed that he helped look for these students working. Everyone in the department said, Thank you, to him.

Because Eden was tired, she did not look at social network at the day. She found the post later. That man did steal her work and take the credit. Even her boss, who assigned her to come during weekend, also said thank to that guy. Eden posted the photos later, but that did not help. Everyone had already remembered that the guy did the work during weekend.

Eden had so many prior reasons to quit her job as teacher, but this event strengthens her decision. Eden wrote resignation letter following the end of open house event.

Cite as: Eden, S. W. (2022). Repeating Meeting, good or bad for employees? SW-Eden.NET. https://swedenofficial.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/organizational-meeting/

In an organization or company, sometimes, there are hundred employees and each of them is not assigned with the same amount of work. The employer or head of organization does not treat them the same. Some got into the company by using connection of some important people. These employees might not be excellent, and they have less amount of work. Some employees do not have any connection, but they work fully and diligently 8 hours a day.

In a meeting, where all people in the company have to meet, the lazy people with connection always like to show up for other to see, while people with a lot of work do not want to waste their time with unrelated topic in the meeting.

An organization, I and my friend had worked for, got so many kinds of employees with different hegemonistic support. These people do not need to work hard or work well, but they got promoted very well. However, people, who work hard and work good, will be assigned to do more work and more work every year. The head of organization or the lower level of boss or manager knows that we are responsible and we can get the work done on time. They think that we can handle every difficult task and hard work. Yes, we did, but we got more stress and depressive because of the unfairness.

In the meeting, we have to listen to those who have never work hard. They are loud, while we are voiceless and have to do everything according to what they think. Many times, the topic and content of the meeting are repeating. They talked about the same thing over and over again. They just need to take photos together and fill in the evaluation form or make a beautiful report for external auditor to see.

Once, they arranged a meeting for them to talk about a new group of stakeholders. My friend and I were very busy, but we still went to the meeting, because it is the thing to do. That day, 3 people in the board of directors did not join the meeting because they said they had family issues. Later, in the same week, one of those people could come, so all employees had to come to the meeting again. They all talked about the same thing, and we all had to listen to the same thing. Nothing was different. They just wanted to present about this group of stakeholders for the man to hear.

A week after that, they asked everyone to join the same meeting. They confirmed that this time all people in the board of directors could come. However, we, the people who have a ton of work, knew what they were going to say. We did not have anymore time to waste by listening to the same old sentences and watching the same old slideshow. Then, one third of employees did not go. Me, too.

Do you know how they had done to us? They took a lot of photos in that third meeting. They made a report based on that meeting. In the report, we were the absentees, regardless our present in first two meetings. They deleted all the photos they took from prior two meetings, too. More than 10 employees including me felt like we got betrayed. We are the ones who work hard and did not have time, but this is what they had done to someone like us.

I realize that we are just people who work hard, devote time and thought for the organization, but without hegemonic support. Without people like us, the organization will not be able to stand. However, we are worthless in the eyes of those with higher job position. What should we do? Should we still work for them? or just quit.

In this journal post, I would like to express my opinion about the grading decision of my co-worker in the same university. I would temporarily name him, Matt, to use in this post.

The same group of students often enroll to learn in my class and Matt’s class in the same semester. We both taught in the same field, media art. I know which students are skillful or responsible or excellent. And I also know the worst student in the group. Matt knows this student, too. Normally, this student got only F and D as his grade. However, when he became a senior student, he felt he had to be more responsible. He has higher class intention. His work was better, but not as good as other students. I graded his work with the same rule as other students. I gave him B and C in that semester. The quality of work and overall responsibility are not yet the level of grade A.

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➤When university lecturer gave unfair grade to his student

Matt was different. He gave A to that student. This is only because he saw the big different in him. I think it is not fair for other good students. Those students’ works were better than his. Those students attended the class more regularly than him. I had talked to Matt. He did not listen. I heard many students complained about Matt. I had never reacted or given my opinion about Matt, even I don’t like the way he treated or judged these students.

I was voiceless in my workplace, so I want to speak it here. I would temporarily name him in this post as Matt. Matt was a university lecturer as same as me. Both of us taught undergrad class. Many times, the same group of students registered for me class and his class in the same semester.

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➤Teacher is unfair, what should students do?

Matt always asked his student to finish a large project, such as a thick portfolio, a film, a research study with full research report, even his students were just undergrads and even his class was only 3-credit. Some students cannot finish the assignment within the end of semester, and they did not submit the assignment at the end of semester. Some tried to complete the assignment as much as possible and submitted whatever they had within the deadline.

What kind of students are better? I would vote for the one who tried to finish as much as they could. These students are more responsible than the other type. At lease, they respect the deadline. If they grow up, they will respect the laws and rule of their future organization.

Matt is different. At the deadline or the end of semester, he received the assignments of 90 percent of students in his class. Some can finish and some could not, but they still submitted it right away. He gave A, B, C, and D to these students based on their work. Later, the other 10 percent of students visited Matt during the summer vacation. They asked Matt to submit the late assignment. Matt allowed them. Because these students have extra time, much more than other classmates, their assignments were pretty good. Matt edited the grade for them and gave them A.

What do you feel? Is this sound right for you?

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➤Big plagiarism in Thailand education, story told by a good friend

After I finished my course work of a doctoral/PhD program, I came back to teach again, as a lecturer in a university in Thailand. I donated 10+ of my paintings to a Buddhist temple, because the temple had a charity project for people to bid the paintings. The day I went there, I met a monk, and he asked me to create a sticker set for social network. During that age, I was young and dumb. I thought that if the monk or priest asked for anything, I had to do it for him. Hence, I agreed to make a set of stickers for him.

However, as a university lecturer, I was too busy to finish it. I taught for 30 hours a week, I had to write research papers, and I had to go outside to check up many internship students in several organizations. Therefore, I designed the stickers, 40 drawings of cartoon characters, by drawing them on paper and painting roughly with watercolor. The stickers have to be clean digital files with PNG picture format. Hence, I hired one of my students to trace my drawings in an Adobe software.

I agreed with that student to pay an amount of money for 3.3 full day work. In fact, I thought he could finish all the tracings within 2 days. My 40 drawings were simple, small, and not so detailed.

However, when he finished them, I found the quality of work was not good. My original sketch by using watercolor was better than his complete work. I was so disappointed.

What was the reason that I chose to hire this student? I knew previously that this student was very good at digital paint, because he took a class with me earlier. Moreover, his major advisor told me that his parents just passed away, and he did not have enough money to pay for registration fee of the upcoming semester. These were the reasons that I chose to hire him.

Later, he told me, or made excuses that, he also worked for another lecturer. That lecturer hired him for a month, and that made him busy. (His major advisor might spread the words around about his lack of financial support from family.) This is the point! I asked my student, what kind of that job was. Seriously, that lecturer asked my student to do the plagiarism. That lecturer handed several books to my student. That lecturer did not have digital versions of those books. He needed my student to type many chapters of those books, and then he would put them together to make his own book.

Because they were all old books, and there were no digital versions available, if that lecturer put them together and put his own name on it, no one would know, and no one could check it. This was such a dirty thing I found in Thai education system. The rules of the university force each lecturer to produce a book or research every year. Those who do not have ability to conduct a research study, would need to write a book. However, they are not all honest. Many of them just do the plagiarism, copy and paste materials created by others. They are thieves!

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➤University Lecturer hire student to plagiarize

My friend worked as a lecturer in a university in Thailand. In order to get promoted, lecturers need to keep publishing their paper(s) every year. And this university is weirder than others, that it requires the book, very thick book, of full research report. If you are from any country outside Thailand, you may know that making of full research report is something old-fashion. People only make this kind of big book to get research fund from some organization(s), but not for each of published paper without any funding.

Let me talk about my friend, now. This friend is female, and she is very good in English. Her highest degree is Master. She is young and powerless. In term of powerless, I mean she does not have any other additional position in the organization but a lecturer of undergraduate students.

Once, she called me for help. A big man in the same organization asked her to translate a big-thick book of research report, from English language to Thai. When I mentioned, the big man, it means the powerful guy in her organization. He has the power to promote other employees and also the power to fire someone. This big man came up with that big-thick book. The author of that book is Mr or Ms Blah Blah Blah. It is actually written by some English speaker outside Thailand. No one knows the author in person.

That big man needed the Thai version of the particular research report. He wanted to put his name on the cover. No one is going to know if he did not write it or study it by himself. The real author will not know, because the real author is not Thai.

When my friend called me for help, I denied. She thought she could not finish translating the whole book within the deadline given by that big man. I did not want to get involved in this dirty work. My friend did not want, too, but she had no choice. She was afraid of that big man, so she had to do it.

I was sorry for her, but I really cannot help. Like, in this blog, I cannot provide the name of any, because that big man is powerful and able to treat my friend.

Patriarchy in Thailand Family is still here in 2023

In many Thai and Thai-Chinese family, when a women got married, she will become slave in her husband’s family. My mom has been working woman. She completed master’s degree and knowledgeable. When she married, she still worked in a large company, but when she got home (the house of her husband), she had to eat the dirty food left on a large dining table and washed all those dishes like Cinderella. She always threw up because of the dirty food when she got pregnant. At the same time, some men cannot live without sex and had side-chick when his wife could not offer him sexual pleasure.

Fortunately, my father died when I was 1-month old. It is not like in some movie or in Hollywood celebrities’ family. My mom did not get any legacy from her husband, but she got her freedom back. I was raised by single mom.

Nowadays, I do not expect to see soap-opera-like family, as my mom had experienced about 30 years ago. However, lately, I saw them. Both families are Thai-Chinese, living close to my place.

In the first family I saw, the wife has to do all housework, washing, cooking, and cleaning. She is also educated and has full-time job in office, 40 hours a week. Other family members have cars, but she does not. All of those men, who have cars, have never bought any grocery or food, but it is her job to buy foods for everyone every day. She has to carry many heavy bags while she rides the bus and walks from bus stop to the house. She does all these things for her husband and his family. His mom and his dad did not give her birth. She has no time to go back to her own home to take care of her actual mom and dad.

For the second family, similarly, the wife has to live with her husband’s family. She has to take care of his mom and dad, even she is single child. His mom and dad have a change to stay with their family and their sons, while her mom and dad don’t have that chance. She sent them to nursing home, and she has monthly paid to nursing home with her own income.

I feel sorry every time I see both women, I talked about. I cannot help, even I know the problem. Both women have full-time job. I know they have ability to live by themselves without any man, but they still serve their husbands’ family like being a slave. Out of few neighbors I know, two of them are obviously patriarchal. Men oppress women, older women (his mom) also oppress younger women (his wife), and women accept to be oppressed. And to accept this, the society calls them good women.