The young foreign volunteers were asked to reflect on their year of teaching in Thailand’s schools and to recount what had most surprised them. The answer came quickly.

They had been, well not surprised, more like shocked at the beatings administered to Thai schoolchildren by their teachers. There was an immediate stiffening among the Thai host teachers who were present (some of whom, it was later quietly revealed, were inveterate child-beaters themselves).

The legal position was clarified. All the Thai teachers present were aware that physical punishment of schoolchildren is now illegal in Thai schools. But the change was so recent (6 years ago) that there are still kids in the system who have been beaten, legally, in the past. And of course there are even more teachers still in harness whose teaching practice has long made use of the cane, the ruler and the fist.

And everyone acknowledged that while a law can be changed in a moment, changes in behaviour may arrive more slowly. But the foreign volunteers were not talking of an exasperated clip round the ear given as a last resort to some disruptive 16-year-old thug. They had witnessed kindergarten children beaten on the legs. They had seen collective punishment. And the violence was carried out repeatedly, openly, and without any apparent institutional effort to stop it.

The first attempt at a justification by the Thai teachers was the one that is always trotted out whenever a foreigner questions some of the dirty linen in Thai life: ‘It’s Thai culture’. One teacher came up with the Thai version of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’.

Just to assert that something is ‘Thai culture’ explains nothing. Why is it Thai culture? And if Thai culture, supported by some hoary aphorism, says it’s OK to inflict physical pain on children, but Thai law says it is not, then culture wins and the law can be flouted with impunity?

No, no, the teachers said. But the volunteers must understand (and how many times are the shortcomings of Thai behaviour blamed on the failure of outsiders to ‘understand’?) that corporal punishment yields good results. The old argument of ‘I was beaten by my teachers and look what a good person it made of me.’

But it’s still illegal, and the volunteers wanted to know why teachers didn’t seem to use other methods that also yielded good results without having to resort to physical violence against smaller, defenceless human beings.

Well, said the teachers, the parents tell us to do it. Now this used to be a get-out loophole, but it was closed years ago. And in any case, if you are ordered by someone in a position of responsibility to commit a crime, it is still a crime. It’s just that the criminality is now shared.

If a minister orders his staff to embezzle public funds, it’s still embezzlement. If an army officer orders his subordinates to torture a detainee in some camp in the south, it’s still torture. And if parents tell a teacher that it’s OK by them to hit their child, it’s still common assault.

The fact that you have been in some way coerced into criminality would make a strong case for mitigation when it came to sentencing, but you’re still guilty. And teachers normally don’t take orders from parents (and if they do, it concerns kids they would never dare touch).

The situation was looking hopeless. The Thai teachers, in defending physical brutality by teachers inflicted on their pupils, in defiance of the law, Buddhist teaching, best educational practice and the most elementary moral scruples, were defending the indefensible.

So they had to resort to the Thai mega-argument, against which there is no answer. Simply deny reality.

Remember ex-Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s claim that only one person was killed in the ‘massacre’ at Thammasat University on Oct 6 1976? Remember then Army Commander-in-Chief Gen Anupong Paochinda’ insistence that the 1 million baht empty black plastic boxes called GT200 actually did detect bombs after the Ministry of Science and Technology proved they couldn’t? Remember the contortions of DSI Deputy Director-General Yanaphon Youngyuen to explain the need for the world’s most draconian lèse majesté laws and mass recruitment of spies, while asserting that every Thai loves the monarchy? Remember Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd’s assertion that despite expending thousands and thousands of bullets last April and May, the Thai military killed no one?

The senior teacher present told the volunteers, in all solemnity, that apart from an insignificant fraction, something less than 1%, Thai teachers did not hit children.

When people lose their grip on reality to this extent, and put their faith in fantasy, then further discussion becomes futile. The volunteers fell silent.

Which the Thai teachers took as evidence that they had won the argument.