Feel Free to climb the trees

Summer vacation is just around the corner for the students at the Forest School (森林小學) in Hsichih, Taipei County, but strangely that's not cause for celebration. If they could have it their way, and the kids here usually do, a lot of them would choose to stay through the summer.

As the kids explain it, their school is like school, but actually not like school at all. What they mean is that the boring, rigid and disciplinarian aspects that characterize school for most kids in regular schools simply don't apply here. To the farthest extent possible without generating total chaos, the students at this alternative education elementary boarding school are in control.

There are classes and teachers and administrators, textbooks, desks and chalkboards, but the similarities with regular schools stop there. The school aims to be the vanguard of education reform in Taiwan and it doesn't take long walking around the campus to believe there is no other school like it in the country.

Vive la difference

"Practically nobody is satisfied with the public education system, but there is a lot of hesitation on the part of parents and society to make sweeping changes. Most parents still think that if school isn't tough, then the kids aren't learning," said Feng Chiao-lan (馮喬蘭), vice director of the Humanistic Education Foundation, which set up the Forest School 13 years ago.

"Our purpose is not to weigh children down with education, but to empower them with it." The foundation sees its mission as convincing parents of this reactionary principle and destroying the widely held conception that alternative education options will leave their kids playing in the sandbox all day instead of doing their multiplication tables.

Forest School's fundamental difference from public schools lies in its golden rule that the teachers never scold nor hit the students. The kids are encouraged to understand the reasons why they made a mistake instead of being berated for having made it in the first place, and discipline is an interactive process instead of coming down from above. This concept is extended to all aspects of life at the school, where children are permitted to climb trees and clamber over tall walls as part of their life education.

"Kids will be kids and we don't need to restrain that. Let them climb the trees. That way they'll learn their limits. Kids need space for learning from the environment through trial and error," said Chiang Si-hao (江思好), administrative director of the Forest School.

Most parents, Chiang said, are overly protective of their children and schools cater to this tendency by restricting the movement and space of their students.

Forest School, in contrast, is high in the hills above Nankang on an expansive campus practically encased by dense vegetation and trees. There are a few traditional playground items but most of the kids seem content during their playtime to run around in the bushes, climb over stone walls and fawn over the 16 stray dogs that the 64 students collectively raise and feed.

"Nature doesn't judge children as right or wrong. Children can feel free to learn outside from the environment without the anxiety that there is ever a wrong answer," Chiang said.

For this reason, many of the classes are taught outdoors. Earlier this week the first grade class was getting a lesson in mechanics by using a discarded cable spool, a length of rope, a broom and a bucket. The children were asked to build a pulley system to haul bucket-loads of sand up a sharply inclined slope. The teacher watched and gave advice, but didn't interfere, mostly because the kids were managing just fine without her.