Every year, the Ministry of Education brings into effect another bright idea for improving education in Thailand. This year's bright idea is to force every Western teacher teaching in Thailand to take a Thai Culture course. Regardless that many teachers have been here for years and are well-versed in Thai culture, in order to get a teacher's license or renew one, they will be forced to take this course. As the course costs between $110 and $300, money that has to be paid by the teacher, many teachers are saying they will not do it. I already know of two excellent teachers who have left Thailand to go to Korea and Japan to teach instead.
In most other countries in South East Asia, Western teachers are paid more, it's easier to get work permits with less hoops to jump through, and the Ministry of Education in these countries is much more forward thinking. Thailand already has problems getting and keeping good, qualified Western teachers. Implementing this new law will simply mean even more of these teachers will go elsewhere.
In most countries, government organizations are known to not be particularly effective. The Ministry of Education in Thailand though, is the worst government organization I have ever dealt with. When I was teaching at my last school, I was approached for help in English grammar one day by the Thai computer teacher who was very upset because he'd just been chastised by a representative from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry representative had seen some work he had been doing with the kids and had told him very rudely that he should make sure the English wording on the kids' Mother's Day greeting cards was correct. This coming from a representative of an organization that routinely sends forms in English to Western teachers that don't have even one grammatically correct English sentence on them. Some of them were so unintelligible my boss would just chuck them in the nearest garbage can.