Many educational theorists hold the view that education is the only channel through which poor children can rise to affluence.
Such a narrow view can put us in a fix. For example, many people advocate low tuition fees for higher education. Ostensibly, this is meant to help poor children, but in fact most beneficiaries of this policy will be rich children, because studies reveal that rich children are more likely to receive higher education.
We should look at the issue from a wider perspective. For many poor children, nudging through the narrow door leading to higher education is perhaps not a less expensive or more efficient way of rising to affluence. To allow poor children to climb the social ladder, we should pay attention to the question of how to provide opportunities for people with low educational backgrounds to rise to affluence.
In Hayao Miyazaki's cartoon movie Nausica of the Valley of Wind, a vicious forest exudes poison gas and monsters come out to attack whoever gets near the forest. One day, the female lead character fell into a place underneath the forest. She found that the grains of sand trickling down from the vicious forest were very clean and pure. It turned out that the forest was purifying the polluted land, and the poison gas was a byproduct emitted in the purification process. The monster was the guardian of the forest preventing human destruction.
Taiwan's "low-end sector" (the sector where people with low educational backgrounds work) are like the forest in Nausica. It appears ugly, but has the function of purifying society. Especially, it provides a channel for people to improve their lot.
How to rehabilitate people who have taken a wrong path is a rather thorny question.
Just by imagining the situation, we can understand the difficulty of resolving these problems via official means: "A" has a murder record, but his efforts to make good moves "B" so much that he wants to lend a helping hand to "A." Even so, "B" perhaps still does not have the guts to hire "A" as an employee.
Every time I see problems like these, I recall what I saw in my childhood -- my grandfather had a younger brother who had in his youth probably been a bum. He had tattoos of dragons and phoenixes. Later he washed his hands of such a life. He returned to the countryside to run a small business and live a quiet life. He bought some pork from meat vendors and hawked it on a motorcycle, making a small profit.
The main reason for his re-acceptance by society was his business. His interaction with the villagers was based on trade. Therefore the villagers could accept and encourage him, but still keep their distance.
Taiwan's low-end sector is quite marvellous in that it provides a channel to let people who have fallen to the bottom of society make good. It can transform a burden to society into useful people. Unfortunately, the low-end sector does not have a sleek, glamorous appearance. The media often see only its bad side.
Many bosses who call the shots in Taiwan's film and music industries came from the low-end sector. Some of them even had criminal records. They definitely represent a touching chapter in the history of Taiwan's economic development, because they show that our "social university" also provides a way for these people to stay alive, steel their will and finally transform themselves from "underlings" into "heroes." This is definitely a great help in preventing people at the bottom of society from giving up hope and acting with self-abandonment.
We should think again before we, for whatever reason, consider teaching the low-end sector a lesson (as the Taoyuan County government did a while ago when it cracked down on betel nut beauties).
Chang Ming-chung is a professor of economics at National Central University.
Translated by Francis Huang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and