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Education reform requires vision

`The creativity of an economy, in fact, lies in an environment that allows people ... to live according to their ideals and bravely realize what they really believe.'

On July 20, many academics jointly proposed a 10,000-word "Education Reconstruction Declaration," demanding that the government end the chaos of education reform. They also believe that if we examine reform measures one by one, we may focus on trivialities and therefore take one thing into consideration to the detriment of others. Therefore, a better strategy is to focus on the fundamental ideal of reform.

Now, let us review the fundamental ideal of the nation's education reforms from the experience gained from our industrial development.

Reformists believe that our traditional education method is a "cramming-style" method, which makes students adopt rigid learning methods without learning creativity.

It's true that our traditional education method is a "cramming-style" education. But will this kind of education really make students rigid and uncreative? Although this claim appears to be reasonable on the surface, it's clearly denied by the experience gained from Taiwan's industrial development.

First, in the global industrial competition theater, Taiwan's businesses are often praised as flexible, with great capability in dealing with emergencies. Most foreigners who have had contact with Taiwanese people will never think that we are rigid.

Next, more surprisingly, Taiwanese people's creativity is outstanding. This is clearly illustrated by the large number of patents issued in the name of Taiwanese citizens in the US. From 1996 to 1999, Taiwan ranked No. 5 in terms of the number of patents obtained in the US, after the US, Japan, Germany and France. Moreover, the nation ranked No. 4 in that respect from 2000 to last year, after only the US, Japan and Germany.

In terms of the number of times Taiwan's patents were used in the US every year (the frequency of being used can be taken to measure the significance of a patent), Taiwan ranked No. 4 in 1999, after the US, Japan and Germany. Later, it ranked No. 3 from 2000 to last year, second only to the US and Japan.

Theoretically, perhaps we can explain from the following aspect why Taiwanese people still have excellent creativity after receiving the "cramming-style" education. The creativity of an economy, in fact, lies in an environment that allows people -- especially young people -- to live according to their ideals and bravely realize what they really believe.

It's generally acknowledged that starting a new business in Taiwan is easy. Under these circumstances, if someone believes in his sense of judgment, which may not be accepted by his supervisors, he may choose to leave the company and start a new business.

Hence, the following scenario is often seen here: a young employee chooses to leave his company due to a difference of opinion. When he leaves, he creates a new company, or even founds a more successful enterprise compared to the previous one. Barry Lam (林百里), the chief executive officer of Quanta Computer Inc, serves as an example. Thus, young people are able to say "No" to their supervisors because it's easy to start a new business. This is exactly the driving force behind the nation's prosperity and creativity.

This theory can also explain why the overall creativity of Europe is relatively low -- in spite of its "inspirational-style" education. It's difficult for young people in Europe to leave their companies and start their own businesses. They can only be obsequious, or even curry favor with their supervisors.

The above analysis shows us that the division of labor between education and society is indeed necessary. The purpose of education is to initiate students; the duty of society is to provide a suitable environment for them to realize their potential. For the former, "cramming-style" education has an advantage -- it's able to pass on basic human knowledge to students in a systematic way at lower costs.

We can say that one of the biggest mistakes of education reform is the lack of all-round and in-depth comprehension of our own characteristics. We are especially not confident of many of our own systems. As a result, we blindly strive to learn from advanced countries.

In fact, this problem occurs not only in our education reforms but also in many other areas -- for example, the Labor Standards Law (勞基法), the skill-certification and social welfare systems that Taiwan copied from the West.

Chang Ming-chung is a professor of economics at National Central University.

TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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