On a rainy morning in New Taipei City earlier this month, 500 students from Shu Lin High School’s affiliated middle-school division (樹林高中附設國中) were sitting in an indoor sports facility, witnessing a paradigm shift in the nation’s public education system — one that could have long-term ramifications.
“During the journey of life, I hope you can think about what you truly want to do,” principal Lu Hung-ching (呂宏進) announced.
“Studying isn’t the only thing. Good grades aren’t everything.”
Photo: Enru Lin, Taipei Times
The focus on personal fulfillment is the latest message being sent to students — a new tune for a public school that previously urged young children to stay on the path of academic scholarship.
Since 2011, Shu Lin and other junior-high schools across Taiwan have been exhorting students to explore their interests, abilities and personalities, and to think about what careers truly suit them best. The push has become part of the new 12-year compulsory education plan, a byzantine reform to the nation’s schools that comes into effect in August and is made up of 12 separate projects. At the same time, another change has been rolled out quietly, with its own major implications.
For the past three years, instructors have been required to provide career counseling at the junior-high school level. While counseling has always been available for students who sought it, under the 12-year education scheme, the service is integrated into the school day and mandatory for the entire student body.
A second and more significant change to the counseling is its underlying message. In guidelines sent to school instructors and administrators, the Ministry of Education (MOE) urges them to help students “develop according to their disposition” (適性揚才).
‘ACCORDING TO THEIR DISPOSITION’
Across Taiwan, teachers have begun encouraging students to explore vocations that best suit their interests, abilities and personalities — even if these vocations do not lead to college.
At the Shu Lin High School presentation, professional animator Kent (肯特) told the assembly about his career and the alternative paths of education that could lead to it, while Lin Tsung-hsien (林宗憲), the day’s host, asked the children to share their wackiest aspirations.
“What is your dream job for the future?” he asked.
Lin himself listed sausage-making or cosmetology, with a specialty in sunspot removal, as possible answers.
The push to “develop according to disposition” is partly about filling a national shortage of skilled blue-collar workers. In addition, it’s about easing academic pressure on students, who power a cram school culture akin to South Korea’s.
This new policy also comes amid a falling return on an investment in a college education. Today, college graduates face diminishing career prospects. According to a new poll by National Taiwan University’s Center for Public Policy and Law, 70 percent of college-aged youth are currently enrolled in universities, but only 40 percent of available jobs require a college degree.
EXPERT ADVICE
In one respect, the new counseling program is consistent across Taiwan. Upon entering junior high, students each receive a Career Development Education Manual (生涯發展教育工作手冊), a blank workbook that their teachers later consult before offering vocational recommendations. Students record volunteer work, club experiences and results on personality tests, fitness tests and school exams.
But though these program requirements are constant across public schools, implementation has varied.
At the heart of the workbook are the pages on career exploration events (生涯試探活動). Schools are required to send children to events where they can explore certain specified fields, which include food and tourism, the chemical industry and agriculture.
Since 2011, the MOE has hosted a few career exploration events, but most schools have been left to their own devices.
Some schools, such as Lin Yuan Junior High School (林園中學), are sending students to nearby vocational schools for hands-on experience in different trades.
Other schools are hosting lectures by professionals — called “career experts” — in the targeted fields.
In Greater Kaohsiung, Youth Junior High (青年國中) has recruited its career experts by contacting alumni who have excelled in the workplace.
Other schools, like Greater Tainan’s Houjia Junior High (後甲國中) and New Taipei City’s Shu Lin, have gotten experts through the Eball Foundation (超越基金會) — a non-profit that handles the entire career exploration event from start to finish.
Eball was established by former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and is directed by his daughter Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧).
Since 2012, she has coordinated over 20 career expert workshops, mainly in rural communities. The foundation also offers workplace experiences for students and a set of supporting textbooks.
It’s unclear whether this version of career advising, or any of its counterparts across the country, could truly convince students that they are free to explore their vocational interests.
It also remains to be seen how far-reaching its effects are on parents, who bear a main influence on the path of young learners.
But Su Chiao-hui, in a rare instance of cross-party amity, says the foundation is committed to working with the MOE on pushing career advising in its new direction.
“It’s just starting out — we do not know yet if the results are good or bad. We have no criticism,” she said at Eball Foundation’s career exploration event at Shu Lin Senior High.
“Still, the basic mission of the 12-year education program is guiding students to develop according to their disposition, and that goal is correct, we affirm it. The only question is how,” she said.
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Asked to define sex, most people will say it means penetration and anything else is just “foreplay,” says Kate Moyle, a psychosexual and relationship therapist, and author of The Science of Sex. “This pedestals intercourse as ‘real sex’ and other sexual acts as something done before penetration rather than as deserving credit in their own right,” she says. Lesbian, bisexual and gay people tend to have a broader definition. Sex education historically revolved around reproduction (therefore penetration), which is just one of hundreds of reasons people have sex. If you think of penetration as the sex you “should” be having, you might
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist