If the education reform could be defined in a simple fashion, it might be as follows: Parents, educators and students ought to allow every student to develop their diverse interests without allowing purely worldly values to dictate what paths students' minds may follow.
This is the vision that has led 16-year-old Lee Chih-wei (
Appearing in a mini-documentary which the Democratic Progressive Party is using to showcase the progress of the education reform, Lee demonstrates his active participation in extra-curricular activities.
Unlike a typical high school student who groans about the pressure to achieve high marks, Lee indulges in insect collecting, fishing, photography and writing.
Since he was a little boy, Lee has fervently observed and collected insects, making him the owner of about 1,000 specimens, most of them coleopterans, and author of numerous entomolomy journal entries published in his school magazine.
"I would like to do anything having to do with insects in the future because it is what I love to study the most," Lee said.
Lee went to Chih-nan Elementary School because of the school's proximity to the mountains in Mucha District, Taipei City where he collects specimens and plays.
"He was born with a special love for Mother Nature ... I always call him a `fanatic' because he shows a true eagerness to pursue whatever interests him.
"He collects insects, raises them as pets, writes about them and paints them. Except in wintertime, he always comes home with bug bites on his legs and hands," Lee's mother Deng Chun-chun (鄧純純) said.
Lee was born to a blue-collar family. His father is a truck driver and his mother a full-time homemaker. They encourage Lee to develop his diverse talents. They do not believe in the mainstream values that demand good study performance and high grades.
"Not everyone is First-Girls'-Senior-High-School and Chien-kuo-High-School material. There is not just one kind of value, and there is no need to follow blindly what all the people say you should do," Deng said.
The two schools are the top girls' and boys' high schools in Taipei.
"In so many of the so-called star high schools, noted for their strong training of students to get into top universities in Taiwan, only a few geniuses are created while the rest of the common students are buried in a rigid and stressful life of study.
"Chinese parents usually expect too much from their children. They dictate that their children follow a predestined path. It's weird, parents here don't go to see their children compete in the school's athletic fairs, but when the joint entrance exams for high school or university come, they all accompany the children to the test[ing venue]," Deng said.
Lee currently is a member of an experimental study program initiated by President Chen Shui-bian (
Being educated in an alternative learning environment, Lee sometimes found that he was concerned whether he'd be able to make a decent living some day.
"Although I didn't follow the path that everyone follows, I believe what I got is something very unique. My friends who didn't participate in the program always said to me that they should have done so.
"I am not standing in the main stream of the river to catch fish like everybody else does, because in a tributary, I can still catch fish. There are all kinds of possibilities," Lee said.
Education reform, a big term that had politicians, educators and parents fighting over what's right, doesn't affect the family because they believe any changes in the education system are futile.
"I knew nothing about this education-reform stuff. I learn what I want and except for this, nothing of those education changes would ever concern me," Lee said.
Li Ya-ching (李雅卿), one of Lee's teachers, said "these students [in the program] take responsibility for their own learning and they are trained to make independent decisions for their own good, and I think that prepares them to become better citizens as they grow up."
All the hassles brought about during the education-reform process are derived from society's inability to reach a consensus and single-minded inability to recognize that there are many sets of values at work in the fabric of humanity, not just one, Li said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods