I have been here for most of 10 years now and each day I face more and more examples of how little I understand about this culture.

My life has been preoccupied for the past few weeks with dealing with the implications of these differences.

Copying is endemic in Thai culture. I know two respected academics who plagiarized their Master's theses. I can sometimes imagine that if you removed cheating in Thai culture that the whole system would collapse. Students copy answers because to admit that they don't understand to the teacher is insulting to the teacher and implies that the teachers are incapable. Teachers do nothing about the copying in part because the classes are just too large to try to deal with it.

The corruption problem in Thailand is at this point in time almost legendary. And there are more and more people who are recognizing the problem of it - ridding the country of corruption is what is driving all of the demonstrations happening here now. But somehow corruption is only a problem on the part of the people buying votes and only a problem with powerful people taking bribes. They somehow do not see the equivalence of the act of the rich person taking a bribe for a favor and the farmer taking 500 baht for his vote. They don't see the corruption involved in allowing teachers to slack off and not teach in class but run tutoring centers after school and then teach their students. "Pay me extra and I will teach you in the after school-school what I should be teaching you as a function of my job."

Rule of law? Forget it. The law is not enforced most of the time.

My Faculty has in the past few years established itself with goals lifting honesty and diligence. In part because most of the western teachers in our program won't tolerate the cheating and because of this new emphasis, a faculty academic misconduct policy was written and announced. There are only two of us who have implemented it to the point of enforcing it. 3 weeks ago I caught 24 of the 29 students in my class copying either from the internet or from each other. I had every one of them documented. I issued their first warnings. It is a strong policy and because of that, I brought in the director of the program to speak to them in Thai so that there was no doubt that they understood the implications of their actions. They all signed the warning letters and apologized for cheating and said they would never do it again. The Thai faculty led me to believe that I was over the edge and being unfair and harsh.

I was hurt by the lack of faculty support and considered carefully what I would do if any of the students in my class committed the second violation. The second violation means that I recommend that they be removed from the University. Earlier this week I informed the Dean that if that eventuality happened, and I did not have faculty support on enforcing its own policy, I would resign effective immediately. This was a radical decision to come to. 1) There is no one on faculty to finish teaching he classes I am teaching short of the Dean coming in and finishing the semester himself. 2) It will mean that I have no place to live - effective immediately- and that I have 7 days to either get a new position or leave the country.

It was particularly drastic as both the dean and I were fairly confident that there would be at least one student who would cheat before the end of the semester.

Yesterday afternoon I was grading and got about half way through the homework and had 2 students who had copied definitions from the internet for a question that they were told had to be in their own words.

So badly I wanted to be wrong.

The whole thing with the political demonstrations right now are similar. Rather than deal with the wrong doings of the current administration through the rule of law and proper channels, they want to force another coup and military take-over to oust the democratically elected (albeit, likely with bought votes) administration. They can't see that the problem is primarily and most importantly with the system and somehow think to address that is disrespectful of someone.

I'm sorry. I think sometimes it is important to call a cheat a cheat and when something is bad, face up to it and get about fixing it.

I might need someplace to stay before the end of the week. Anyone have a refrigerator box I can live in?

EDIT My blood pressure is out of control and the doctor wants to know why?