There is one ritual that many Thai men will undergo if they are privileged enough at the end of their secondary education. Or so it is intended. It is an open secret that most who sign up for the course do not have the slightest desire to see action. They do so because successfully completing three years of training waives them from military conscription.
The military probably believes that sending generation after generation of Thai men to these camps is beneficial for building discipline and indoctrinating a lasting admiration for the army as an institution. Classes involve both practical lessons in areas such as marching and shooting, and lectures on various topics related to the military and patriotism. What the generals may fail to grasp, however, is they are also year after year exposing the inefficiencies and outdated mindset of the military.
Students, carrying around guns and equipment that were produced during the Second World War, are taught techniques in conventional warfare that now sound hopelessly obsolete today.
I still distinctly remember a lecturer, trying to grasp the attention of his easily distracted class, exhorting everyone to sing a nationalist song together. The only problem was that no one knew the lyrics, probably written decades ago in a context unimaginably different. Many students go through these three years learning the extent to which the army has failed to keep up with the times. They see an army still stuck on teaching discipline to a new generation aware of the need for critical thinking and innovation, still pursuing a project of nation-building considered largely complete by those born decades after they have passed into irrelevance.
Most recently, army commander Gen. Immunizing the population against dangerous intellectual pathogens is a concept that inescapably reeks of the Cold War. In his mind, the communist disease never died. It has merely mutated into this new nation-hating form. But if the army thinks that it can act as some Ministry of Intellectual Health, it is bound to be disappointed.
