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Politicians, schools get failing grade

In the hot examination season of July, long-running educational problems have been put under the spotlight once again. The expensive tuition fees of colleges and universities are closely related to today's trend of attending cram schools and each family's economic factors as well. These problems were caused by mistaken efforts at educational reform over the past decade and the inappropriate methods of educational reformers and the authorities based on their closed-door, wishful thinking. I will briefly explain the development of these problems.

First, the education reform advocates "happy learning," hoping to improve the performance of all children. However, the Ministry of Education has simplified teaching materials, claiming that "knowledge is not important" while adopting some unsuitable teaching methods such as the controversial "Constructive Mathematics" for elementary-school students. As a result, students are unable to learn modern knowledge and lack the ability to learn on their own.

Meanwhile, schools are teaching three languages: Mandarin, English, and Taiwanese -- by different phonetic systems -- at the same time, which creates learning difficulties for students and reduces the effectiveness of learning.

Since students are unable to learn the skills and information they need in regular elementary and senior-high schools, most parents send their kids to cram schools, apart from the few who are capable of teaching their children by themselves.

Second, educational reforms have not only lowered the standard of the Nine-Year Education Program -- which aims to integrate our primary and secondary-education systems -- but it has affected the original curriculums that are still being implemented. As junior-high school students' performance levels drop, they have a hard time catching up with the scheduled curriculums after they enter senior-high school. To solve their learning problems, they have no choice but to attend cram school again.

Educational reform also advocates establishing more senior-high schools, colleges and universities, and therefore created numerous unqualified schools nationwide. To avoid entering such schools, students have to attend even more cram schools in order to get in better schools through the Diversified Enrollment Scheme.

Third, the number of colleges and universities has increased drastically over the past 10 years. But these schools have neither enough funds nor qualified teachers. As a result, they have no choice but to constantly increase tuition fees in order to slow down the decline of their academic standards -- or they will be unable to continue their school operations.

Also, due to the "knowledge is not important" slogan, the standard of our teaching materials is unable to compete with those of advanced countries. Affected by this, students' learning attitude is bad. Their academic performance is poor and they do not desire to advance. The level of our college education has naturally dropped under such circumstances.

Many students can never compete with others in the workplace if they do not attend graduate school. What a waste of educational resources! Plus, they also have to attend cram school in an effort to get into graduate school. So much money is spent on cram schools at every stage of the educational system. How can students from financially-disadvantaged families hope to compete?

On July 20, a group of educational and cultural elite established the Education Reconstruction Front (重建教育連線). They announced an "education reconstruction declaration," demanding that the government immediately review and improve what they said was the seriously-flawed educational reform of the past decade. However, regular education development should be based on the nation's long-term interests. It can only be accomplished when it's separated from politics or manipulation of specific ideologies.

According to my observations, the science and educational policies of both the KMT and the DPP governments over the past decade are not so different. The KMT government's overemphasis on the number of theses published in international journals remains unchanged. The DPP government insists on keeping the flawed Nine-Year Education Program, launched by the KMT. It even copied the KMT govern-ment's methods -- such as holding superficial public hearings and conferences to temporize those who hold different opinions.

Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect our politicians to have any positive impact on educational reconstruction, since they know how to cause a sensation but know nothing about education. Besides, as next year's presidential election nears, all parties are likely to make campaign promises recklessly to attract votes. How can we trust them?

During the 2003 Teacher of the Year Ceremony -- held at the White House on April 30 -- US President George W. Bush especially thanked senators and representatives from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party for supporting the government's "No Child Left Behind" Act. I hope that, in the near future, Taiwan 's education policy will no longer be viewed as any party's affair. Instead, it should be for the sake of the Taiwanese people and the nation's future.

Liu Kuang-ting is a professor in the department of chemistry at National Taiwan University.

TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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