An image of Anan moving into the prostrate position in front of the student after the director reportedly gave a 25-minute speech in front of students instead of his usual 20-minute speech on January 22 went viral on social media.

Some viewed the gesture as being unnecessarily polite to the point of sarcasm.

Deputy chief of the Office of Basic Education Commission Suthep Chittayawong heads a fact-finding team looking into the incidence.

“The incident, which is difficult to say if it is appropriate or not, happened,” Suthep said. “So Obec instructed the school to explain it to the students, the parents and the media, because people are interested in this case,” he said, adding that Anan had been warned over the action.

Education Ministry permanent secretary Kamjorn Tatiyakavee said Anan’s action was inappropriate because saying sorry would have been sufficient.

He said he was not sure what the school director’s intention was but if it was a sarcastic gesture to teach the student a lesson, the action was fruitless.

An alumnus of the school, who asked not to be named, said he believed Anan’s action was meant to teach students to be remorseful and apologise when necessary because children these days had changed and were difficult to teach.

It may have been partly due to the ministry’s policy of prohibiting student punishment and overprotective parents, the alumnus said, adding that as a result children had no patience and no sense of place and time.

He said Anan was a good and kind teacher who was respected.

Anan told Nation TV via an on-air phone interview that the speech in question went over time because he had many things to inform then and also had to answer students’ questions.

He said that when a boy yelled out that the speech was five minutes overtime, he told him step out to the front.

He said the boy did not ask him to prostrate in front of him. He said that on seeing his words had not lifted the boy’s mood, he told the student he would kneel and did so. The student kneeled in response.

Seeing that the student still looked upset, he offered to prostrate but the boy said there was no need to – hence the image of him halfway to prostrating.

“I think the student became remorseful of his action while I was about to prostrate so he stopped me, so I dismissed him from that spot,” he said, adding that the student later apologised by giving him flowers and there were no hard feelings.

Anan said he would explain this in detail at a school meeting so people would know it was nothing serious.

An informed source reported that the student in question would apologise to Anan in front of the school tomorrow after he admitted to yelling on impulse.