In the wake a string of high-profile brawls between vocational school students, the Royal Thai Navy drafted about 100 Bangkok-area college students into a month-long camp aimed at teaching them discipline, morals and ethics.
Former Navy commander and now Education Minister Narong Phipatanasai presided over the Oct. 16 opening of the camp with top navy officers and students from Kanchanaphisek Mahanakorn Technical College, Kanchanaphisek Samut Prakan Technical College, and Samut Prakan Polytechnic College.
Education Minister Narong Phipatanasai inspects the barracks where college students will be interned for a month-long camp aimed at teaching them discipline, morals and ethics.
Students were shown where they will live, study, attend courses and eat at Chumpon Navy School. Courses cover reconciliation, discipline, ethics, integrity and harmony. The results of the training this year will be used to test and improve the courses to use as a model for realistic training that is going to take place in November 2015.
Narong emphasized the “boot camp” is not to turn the students into military personnel. But it is hoped that it will eliminate or greatly reduce the fights that have grabbed headlines this year. There have been so many brawls between warring colleges that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha has threatened to close down colleges that don’t rein in their students. Two schools have been closed for a month already.
