Print

Mail

wiki links

Schools need not be battlegrounds

When taking a look at our educational system, a question often comes to my mind: Should our classrooms be compared to battle fields, execution grounds or factories?

Today, in the eyes of students, classrooms are like factories. Students are the unfinished products on the production line, while knowledge forms the machine parts that are incessantly crammed into students' heads.

The reason why classrooms are like battle fields is because students must "not trail behind at the starting point," and must fight their way through many obstacles. Even before they graduate from junior high school, they have already been put through all sorts of competitions and examinations.

At the same time, classrooms are similar to execution grounds because immediately after a student makes a minor mistake, he or she will inevitably be reproached. After making a major mistake, he or she will suffer various humiliating punishments.

The analogy between classrooms and "battle fields, execution grounds and factories" also applies to teachers. Teachers are like assembly line workers, given their teaching schedules of more than 20 hours a week. They not only have to face large classes of over 40 students, but every year the required syllabus seems to get larger. Moreover, teaching is like fighting a war because teachers can be blamed for students' poor results in competitions and examinations, or for their poor conduct, and this is used as criteria for judging the teacher's overall performance.

Today, school principals are afraid of being antagonistic toward legislators, and legislators are afraid of reporters. Given that parents are backed by legislators and reporters, teachers are put in a weak position since they are not allowed to make any mistakes without facing ignominy and punishment.

Instead of making these comparisons, we should instead ask why we cannot make Taiwan's classrooms a place for practice, a place where mistakes can be made and where there is room for performance and enjoyment.

A practice venue implies that students can fully display their talents and learn through their mistakes. Enjoyment implies that students can discover what interests them and receive self-affirmation from the results. Performance implies that by means of music, arts and other creative activities, students can learn how to overcome and transform their anger, pride and other negative emotions while at the same time developing empathetic understanding, self-esteem and other positive emotions.

People may regard this as overly idealistic, because parents generally believe that corporal punishment is required to teach children. But parents who are experienced in educating their children understand that, for example, the best punishment for a child who likes to watch television is a prohibition on watching TV, rather than corporal punishment or verbal abuse. More importantly, this approach allows students to reflect on the reasons behind the punishment.

Today, what is the most worrying in our society is the rapid loss of a sense of honor. In fact, this phenomenon is not strange at all, because our educational system, being like a factory, a battle field and an execution ground, constantly strengthens students' sense of fear, and does nothing for their sense of honor. If the price to pay for making mistakes is being verbally abused, then students will work hard simply out of a fear of being punished. But this thinking can lead students to give up their positive identities and lose their ability to be creative.

For kindergarten and elementary school students, most classrooms are areas for practice, play and performance. But as they grow older, more and more of their classrooms become battlegrounds, or occasionally execution grounds. Although learning through trial and error and through performance may not make all children happy all of the time -- they will still face numerous challenges and frustrations -- it will at least not smother their creativity and will uphold their sense of individual dignity and honor.

This will not only liberate students, it will liberate teachers.

Bob Kuo is a professor of Information Systems at National Sun Yat-sen University.

Translated by Lin Ya-ti
This story has been viewed 1605 times.