Taiwanese children are spending most of their leisure time on activities that do not require interpersonal communication at home, going outdoors for physical exercise or playing with their peers, a survey released yesterday suggested.
The Chinese-language magazine Education, Parenting and Family Style surveyed 3,996 fifth and eighth-graders and 1,206 homeroom teachers from May 26 to June 17.
The survey of students showed that 59.1 percent of the respondents often played at home rather than outdoors. The nature of their leisure activities was mostly static, with surfing the Internet and watching TV or DVDs topping their activity choices.
“These children spend most of their leisure time at home when they are supposed to be enjoying their youth,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief Ho Chi-yu (何琦瑜) told a press conference.
Ho said she was also surprised to learn that 28.2 percent of the students complained that they don’t have enough time to play.
The survey of teachers showed that 70.5 percent believed their students had serious problems with interpersonal relationships.
A cross-analysis of the answers regarding free time and interpersonal relationships showed that those students who did not have enough time to play had more difficulties making friends.
A total of 61.8 percent of the students said they attended cram schools, while 34.2 percent said they spent more than three hours at a cram school every day.
Ninety-three percent of teachers said their students had a low motivation to learn.
Ho said the large amount of time pupils spent at cram schools every day might be the main reason they were not motivated.
Joyce Feng (馮燕), chairwoman of the Child Welfare League Foundation and dean of National Taiwan University’s Office of Student Affairs, told the conference that adults should respect “children’s basic human right to play.”
“When they play, they feel happy and their potential increases,” she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,