The annual celebration of Teachers’ Day on Sept. 28, the presumed birthday of Confucius, is an occasion to reflect not only upon the achievements of education in Taiwan, but also upon its darker sides. The latter are obvious for anyone who thinks that education should include the formation of the learner’s intellectual independence, which, however, is not considered an — if at all — important educational issue in Taiwan.
Much has been written about such apparent deficits. However, there are also other, less conspicuous hints that something is wrong with the education system. For example, the empty phraseology with which representatives of learning institutions express the educational goals they allegedly pursue; you may think they are talking about studying at Harvard. However, what they are obviously pursuing is to hide their professional incompetence behind the language.
A good example of such linguistic pollution is provided by the Ministry of Education. When describing its educational policies, it uses a cascade of pompous words that lack any tangible content. Yet, in a way this hollowness reflects the quality of education you often get in Taiwan: a surface without substance or, when graduating, an effect without a cause.
The substance of what happens in educational matters has hardly been of great concern anyway. No wonder that schools, universities, even kindergartens, copy this jargon by reproducing the same pretentious phrases when describing their own particular missions. None of them goes for less than excellence, life-long learning, global competitiveness, universal sustainability, etc, regardless the sobering realities in classrooms that turn those over-ambitious promises into a veritable farce.
When searching the ministry’s Web site (English version) for basic educational guidelines you get an accumulation of empty phrases and terms that seem to have been copied from the language used by marketing managers. Of course you can also find some useful policy measures there as well.
However, if seeking substantial educational paradigms you will be disappointed; you will not find them. Instead, the ministry’s phraseology pledges continuous commitment to “professional collaboration with multifaceted creative approaches” to “explore tackling our work in new ways, with new ways of thought, using new media, working with new people and new perceptions” to even seek to “revolutionize the education system” and “create robust quality educational strategies,” thereby “integrating its strengths in three areas — educational vitality, athletic vitality and youthful vitality” — as if ministry were marketing the launching of a health club that might also offer some obscure services.
Taiwan’s education is to be new, creative, innovative and even vital and revolutionary. What are those innovative ways? In which way and based on what evidence are the new ones better? What was wrong with the older ones?
Do not look for answers to these questions on the Web site — they are not there.
Just repeating the goal of promoting creativity, innovation and so on does not make students or teachers more creative or innovative; rather it makes them victims of false expectations. What such phraseology lacks is an interpretation of contexts in which those grandiose terms make sense.
There are other difficulties with those shallow phrases: If everything is always innovative, then nothing really is.
Moreover, those terms have no intrinsic value on their own that would allow their unconditional evocation — an innovation can be also a change for the worse, and sometimes it is so — just look at ministry’s “innovative” fiddling with history textbooks in recent months. Or e-learning: This type of studying, explicitly appraised by the ministry, can be considered as an innovation for the worse.
“Innovation” could also become a problem when, for instance, reforms are permanently followed by the reforms of the reforms and so on, without giving previous ones sufficient time to make a difference. Innovation in this way becomes ideological: Innovation must take place for the sake of innovation.
The dichotomy in making sense in education is being or not being innovative; it is doing the right or the wrong thing. A good teacher does not need to be innovative; it is enough to be good.
The crucial problem here is culture, ie, the traditional way of teaching and learning which does not really promote — it even suppresses — thinking, debating, criticizing, exploring, doubting, experimenting, etc — in other words, modern forms of education.
The prevailing academic culture in Taiwan is so strictly textbook-guided, exam-oriented and conformity-demanding that the quelling and, finally, the elimination of a student’s academic curiosity — a precondition for academic creativity — has become one of its most typical traits. Anything different from traditional expectations is considered to be deviant.
It is, in short, the “nature” of Taiwan’s culture of learning and teaching that is per se hostile to modern forms of education.
One would expect that the innovation-propagating ministry has already launched a cultural revolution against this dominating “un-culture” of learning. It would be truly innovative if ministry — and teachers — stood up and explained to the public that it is the local culture which palpably hampers the realization of modern education. This would be a revolutionary step indeed under the given circumstances.
It would be innovative and creative as well to secure access of modern methods of teaching and learning — globally practiced in excellent educational institutions for many years — to all classrooms in Taiwan.
“Innovative” in Taiwan would mean to remain conservative with regard to modern ideas and ideals, but can ministry officials understand such dialectics?
Herbert Hanreich is an assistant professor at I-Shou University in Kaohsiung.
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