An annual poll found that nearly 80 percent of schoolchildren are happy although the skyrocketing divorce rate and increasing academic pressures have made a strong impact on them, the monthly magazine Better Life said on Thursday.
The survey, conducted on students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades in 42 elementary schools around the nation, found that 79 percent of schoolchildren said they felt happy. A total of 2,107 valid samples were collected in the survey.
Surprisingly, only 76.2 percent of schoolchildren in central Taiwan said they were happy, the lowest among the three regions and down 5.8 percent from last year.
Southern Taiwan showed the highest percentage of happy children at 80 percent.
"The deterioration of public order in central Taiwan is one of the possible reasons," said Chai Sung-lin (
Fifty-four percent of the respondents thought their parents were happy. However, 33.2 percent -- up from 17.2 percent last year -- of those who felt their parents were unhappy said their parents' separation was the main reason.
"Forty years ago, Taiwan had one of the lowest divorce rates in the world. Today it's among the highest ... In six or seven years it will be the country with the highest divorce rate, which will undoubtedly affect children," Chai said.
Meanwhile, "academic performance" and "scolding by parents and teachers" ranked as the top two reasons for unhappiness among schoolchildren.
"It tells us that, after all these educational reforms, academic pressure is still mounting and taking its toll on schoolchildren," said Tsai Wen-che (蔡文哲), a psychiatrist at a local hospital.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching