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Stint at US school an eye-opener for local students

Children from low-income households do the ''thumbs-up'' sign at a press conference organized by the King Car Education Foundation yesterday. PHOTO: CNA

Hualien middle school student Peter Chang (張智凱) is afraid to talk out loud in class. Teachers and classmates alike tend to ridicule the precocious 13-year-old if, in his nervousness, he blurts out something erroneous, he says.

"They say to me, `Hey, what do you know?'" Peter says, adding: "But in the US, they let you speak your mind in class -- they won't laugh."

For Albert Liao (廖振翔), 10, who speaks with an endearing lisp, the US is where he earned his newfound confidence. Asked what his fondest memory of attending three weeks of elementary school in Washington State was, Albert replies, without the least hesitation: "Oh, Valentine'th [sic] Day!" He still has the Valentine's Day cards his "golden-haired," female classmates gave him, he gushes when his mother strays out of earshot.

Joined by 20 or so elementary and middle school students recently returned from Washington, Peter and Albert led the charge against the Taiwanese education system yesterday at a Taipei press conference hosted by the King Car Foundation, a non-government organization devoted to improving education in Taiwan.

"In Taiwan, we don't dare open our mouths in the classroom. We just cram for tests here. But in the US, the students there do stuff -- fun stuff."

Angel Chen, student

"In Taiwan, we don't dare open our mouths in the classroom. We just cram for tests here. But in the US, the students there do stuff -- fun stuff," said 14-year-old Angel Chen (陳婕婷), who, like the other children present, spent three weeks at Shahala Middle School, just south of Seattle, last month on a King Car Foundation-funded trip. "Every student [at Shahala] has the right to speak," Chen said.

Buried under books and pressured to churn out test scores becoming of an astrophysicist with total recall, Taiwanese children are losing out on vital aspects of their overall education, says King Car director Morgan Sun (孫慶國).

Yesterday's students were the first batch of youngsters to visit a US school to see firsthand what curricula devoted to fostering critical thinking skills and high "emotional quotients" -- not rote memorization and exam marks -- entails, Sun said.

"Education should be about teaching students to analyze and conceptualize rather than just memorize," he said, adding that subsequent groups of students to be bankrolled for similar overseas adventures would include many kids from low-income families.

"We need to give needy students more opportunities to get ahead," Sun said.

Students yesterday recounted tales of attending a raucous Blazers versus Suns match, hanging out with their American peers, sampling burgers and immersing themselves in a way of life they hadn't known before.

Although three weeks may seem like a short time, their travels to the other side of the world and straight into the fabric of small-town USA -- and back again -- have transformed them at their core, their parents said.

"Oh, he is so much more confident now," said Albert's mother, Yen Feng-ying (嚴鳳英), when asked how Shahala Middle School had changed her son. "He's more willing to talk to us now."

Yen blamed "tradition" for the focus on rote memorization and test performance in Taiwanese schools, saying that Albert needed to experience a less stressful yet enriching environment like the one at Shahala.
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