According to a survey released by Business Weekly (
What are the reasons for the qualitative decline of Taiwanese students? I would like to offer some personal observations.
First, there is no overall objective. Although the University Law (大學法) and other school laws stipulate educational goals for each level of schooling, these goals are flawed in their lack of consistency and in the manner in which they are pursued in practice. The biggest problem is simply that there is no overall objective. We then need to develop curricula that can help students survive in the society of the future and which support this goal. But it will take an understanding of global trends and estimates of manpower needs to accomplish this. Are we designing our school curricula with these considerations in mind?
Second, students and parents prefer diplomas to actual academic proficiency. The results of a questionnaire I have conducted show that today's students and parents believe that earning a diploma is a priority task. Whether they actually learn anything is considered an issue of minor importance. Also, teachers in Taiwan are usually required to accommodate themselves to the level of the students so that none of them has any difficulty graduating. If students don't perform well, it's all their teachers' fault.
Third the direction of Taiwan's education reforms is wrong. The goal of education reforms should be to reduce the pressure currently faced by our students. Can the problem be solved simply by integrating school courses? Obviously, the source of this problem has not yet been identified, right?
Fourth, teaching aims and types of examination are inappropriate. In Taiwan, the purpose of learning is to pass tests -- mostly multiple-choice tests. But these tests kill the student's creativity and general capacity for thought. To give a high-profile example of the consequences of this in practice, Mainland Affairs Council officials claimed recently that Taiwanese consumers will shift much of their expenditure to China after the opening of direct links across the Taiwan Strait and thereby increase Taiwan's unemployment rate. But it didn't occur to them that Chinese will also shift some of their consumption to Taiwan and thereby reduce our unemployment rate. Obviously, this is a result of the traditional multiple-choice tests. Isn't this just like a victory of style over substance?
Fifth parents express their concerns in the wrong way. Many parents in Taiwan worry endlessly that their children are not getting ahead quickly enough. So they desperately force them to attend cram schools.
This problem exists in Taiwan because our education policy-makers are stupid, our educators are lazy and our parents are ignorant. This may sound harsh, but the truth often hurts, doesn't it?
John Chang is an associate professor at the General Education Center, Chang Gung Institute of Technology.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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