Roles of Monk Teachers in Buddhist Subject Teaching in Thai Basic Education Curriculum

Abstract

The project entitled, “Monk Teachers in Teaching Morality” which receives financial support from the Thai government aims to encourage Buddhist monks to take part in teaching morality to Thai students. In this respect, the general responsibilities of Buddhist monks are to 1) teaching Buddhist described subjects in basic education curriculum, 2) leading the practice of meditation, 3) conducting Buddhist ceremonies, 3) giving tutorials to students who prepare to take access exam into the Buddhist Education Program of Buddhist clergy curriculum, as well as 4) supporting Buddhist oriented schools through teaching subjects that Buddhist subjects which are integrated into everyday life of the students. 

Currently, however, it has been witnessed that only the one role of classroom teaching has been focused. This leads to a question, “whether this way of moral teaching is follow the project objective or not”, because teaching for measurement and evaluation system improve only student’s memory skill not the process of creating or developing their morality.

Having a teaching role in schools, it is suggested that monk teachers should create student’s learning activities to develop their morality by creating their critical thinking skill and motivating them to criticize on moral issues, not just tutorial Buddhist content only.