The outdated factory system
Annie Chen’s letter “Exam system fails students” (Letters, Dec. 27, page 8) raised some fantastic points. I believe that in order to fully understand the structure of Taiwan’s educational system, we have to look a little more at its history.
The educational system that exists in Taiwan is based on the idea of preparing people for society. A large part of that society is based on the types of jobs that predominate. Taiwan still has a strong factory-based economy. A large part of the economy and workforce here is in factory jobs. If we’re going to look at the problems of education, we have to start by looking there. Schools are designed as factories because they prepare students for factory work.
Schools operate on set time schedules, often signaled by a bell. They treat classroom subjects as separate from each other. They group students together arbitrarily (age being the main qualifier; not ability). They seek to standardize the finished product. They try to get students to work alone, even though collaboration brings about better learning. When this system of education started to become popular, it was described in terms of a factory model that saw the students as a final product that needed certain skills to work in factories. Many books actually label this the factory model of education.
There is a valuable idea educators use called Bloom’s Taxonomy. It can be thought of as a way of understanding how we process information. At the very low level, it simply involves remembering and recalling information. What I see, in almost every school I have taught English in, is that this is as far as most of my students are able to go. They might read a story about slavery and be able to tell me what color shirt the man was wearing or what his job was, but not link it to any relevant information to bring about a discussion. Many of the English storybooks used in cram school classes are often so dull and unengaging that students only write stories looking to practice this level.
What scares me about this style of education is simple: I do not believe it can prepare most students for Taiwan’s future. The businesses that are growing now grew out of a creative passion for new ideas: Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Apple are just a few examples. The people who are successful in today’s world are those that think creatively and develop new ideas. People I talk to who are happiest in their jobs are happy because they have a certain amount of responsibility and creativity to come up with new and better ways of doing things. Tomorrow’s leaders are certainly not the ones who can pass a meaningless standardized test and nothing else. Unless we face this fact, we will continue to harm our students.
MATT BRONSIL
Changhua City
What does the KMT claim?
Recently there has been a lot of debate on the existence or non-existence of the so-called “1992 consensus.” This states that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) agreed that there is “one China,” but that they held different interpretations of its meaning. While it is quite obvious what the CCP’s interpretation of “one China” is, I can find no clear interpretation from the KMT. Is its interpretation “one China, one Taiwan”? Does its “one China” include Taiwan, Tibet and the various other islands that the CCP currently claims? Without clarification of what the KMT’s interpretation is, the argument of the existence or non-existence of the consensus seems meaningless.
BILL MCGREGOR
Fengyuan
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS