Friendly LGBT school and Anti-Bias curriculum in Thailand?
In terms of education, Thailand could improve greatly. Yet, Thailand somehow leads the way towards a more modern and tolerant education system, reducing biases and sex gender orientation stereotypes.
LGBT Schools: the way to a more educated and open-minded world
Indeed, lots has been said about Thai education and surely for good reasons. However, I would like to point out something major which is often forgotten -if not totally forgotten! To my knowledge, Thailand is the only country in the world which welcome Transsexual teachers as they are; and whom are fully considered as female teachers.
Transsexual teachers teach and work in Thai schools and are requested to wear the same dress code as any other female teachers (at least, in what regards the Thai staff). They use the female bathrooms, wear a knee-long skirt along with the school’s top – designed especially for female teachers. They are always referred as “she”, should a coworker, student or a parent be talking about her.
So, should you be looking for a job or already teaching, no gender discrimination here!
LGBT friendly schools: Thai and Foreign teachers
I have met much more transsexual Thai teachers than foreign, but this is surely due to a cultural barrier which has not been widely crossed by Westerners nor by western societies.
Government, Private and International LGBT friendly schools?
Are all the Thai schools that LGBT friendly? In a way it is, as it appears that Thais in majority do not give that much value to defined genders at birth — except perhaps when it gets to the Thai ID card. Nevertheless, this is really up to the school and it seems that it applies mostly to Private Thai Schools only. For a matter of fact, I am totally unaware of any transsexual teachers working in other establishments and institutions like government schools. Nor have I heard, or met, any working for international schools in Thailand. I did ask around and tried to get information from the Thais themselves and it seems that public and international schools do not hire transsexual teachers unlike some private Thai schools
Transgenders and Thai Universities
As of today, June 10th 2015, a major Thai university of the Bangkok area has decided to change his guidelines regarding students’ dress code and which new guidelines allows transgenders (male and female) to choose the uniform according to their chosen gender. Once more, Thailand show the way towards a more LGBT friendly education and society.