Page 51 - การพัฒนาบทเรียนและสื่อการสอนภาษาอังกฤษ
P. 51
การอ อกแบบบทเรียนภ าษาอังกฤษ 13-41
TEXT
Please help explain two-tier pricing
It has been a long time since Bangkok Post has given bad publicity to companies charg-
ing Thais and foreigners different prices, and I feel that the issue should not be forgotten. Like
corruption in the government, it is not going to go away if we keep quiet about it. Indeed, very
often bad publicity makes companies conform to higher ethical standards.
During the Songkran holiday my six and eight-year-old children urged my wife and
I to take them to Safari World in Bangkok. In order to find out the entrance fee, I asked one of
my children to telephone Safari World: Thai adults pay 250 baht, foreign adults 400 baht. Thai
children 150 baht, foreign children 200 baht.
My eight-year-old girl asked me what the difference. The conversation went basi-
cally like this.“You have to pay more because you are foreign.” After an explanation of the
word foreign, she said,“ But we were born in Thailand and Mummy’s Thai.” “No, you’re still
foreign even though you were born in Thailand and Mummy’s Thai. You’re foreign because I
am foreign. I was born in Scotland. This makes you foreign, and so you have to pay more than
Thai children who were born in Thailand.” But we are Thai and British, and we were born in
Thailand.”
I succeeded in confusing my children as well as myself. Anyway, it gave us a chance
to talk about what is right and wrong, honest and dishonest, before going back to play hide
and seek. Needless to say, we didn’t go, and shan’t ever be going to Safari World, and we all
agreed to that. I feel, however, that Bangkok Post could perform an invaluable service by once
again giving negative publicity to such companies in an effort to make them change their
ways, and also to help foreign fathers who have to explain their Thai children why they are
foreign when they are not.
Peter McAlpine