Recently, the Ministry of Education has proposed building a classification system of teachers through evaluation, suggesting that primary and secondary-school teachers be classified into several levels according to their academic background, further education and performance.
According to Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), under the proposed system, teachers on different levels will have different workloads and responsibilities in accordance with their competence, and be paid according to these levels. Tu said that this will boost teachers' dignity, motivate further study, improve professional skills and even raise their social status.
Today, teacher classification has become a global trend as more countries are adopting such systems, mostly based on teachers' seniority, academic background and further education. The ministry's intention was positive, as it attempts to ensure teachers' quality through the system. But it may lead to yet another education disaster if the system is launched without thorough consideration.
The biggest problem of the proposal is who should conduct the evaluation, and how to do it. Should it be conducted by ministry officials, senior school administrators, teachers and students, or an independent evaluation mechanism? If it should be conducted by the ministry, does it have enough manpower and resources? If by school administrators or other colleagues, will those who have better interpersonal relationships with their colleagues, and those who curry favor with their supervisors be rated much higher? If by an independent mechanism, how will it evaluate every teacher's performance throughout each semester? Not to mention that many Taiwanese schools tend to report good news while covering up bad news.
If it is conducted by students themselves, how can our elementary and high-school students objectively judge their teachers' performance without any emotional interference? As more and more schools, especially private ones, are treating students as "customers," school administrators are attaching much greater importance to students' opinions. However, I know that some outstanding teachers were actually punished after a few students complained in teacher's evaluations about having too much homework, or that their teachers demanded too much. Also, it is common for ill-behaved students to purposely lower the evaluation scores of those who teach strictly. It is therefore unrealistic to ask students to conduct such evaluations.
My suggestion is: When developing the evaluation method, the ministry should employ more concrete criteria -- including teachers' seniority, academic background, further education, special licenses and professional experience, along with their general performance. There should be a student-opinion section. But such opinions are for reference only.
Meanwhile, an evaluation should be conducted by an independent school committee formed by administrators and teachers, and education experts from outside the school, or even parents. They should honestly follow the ministry's evaluation standard so as to play this game fairly, and not be influenced by school administrators' manipulation during the evaluation process. The results should be confidential, and be available only to school administrators and teachers themselves in order to avoid unnecessary comparisons.
Education is the foundation of a nation, and it is absolutely necessary to monitor our teachers' performance. Nevertheless, when designing the new system, it is crucial to view a teacher's quality from a broader perspective, fairly and objectively.
Chang Sheng-en is a lecturer of English at Shih Chien University and National Taipei College of Business.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers