Sat, Sep 30, 2017 page8

• Some reflections for Teachers’ Day

  • By Herbert Hanreich
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  For more than a decade, the reputable Times Higher Education World University Rankings have been published each autumn, eagerly awaited — or feared — by university administrations around the world, despite the highly problematic endeavor of translating academic quality into quantity.

  Several prestigious universities in Taiwan were downgraded in this year’s rankings, confirming again the downward trend.

  National Taiwan University Office of Research and Development dean Lee Fang-jen (李芳仁) attributes this trend mainly to the fading attractiveness of local universities for talented students, citing insufficient funding, a lack of concentration of gifted students at a few elite institutions and an unattractive academic environment (“NTU ranking falls to 14-year low,” Sept. 8, page 4).

  I think the dean makes a good point in the latter aspect, although it requires further elaboration.

  As for the first reason, I doubt that additional financial impulses would sufficiently help stem the drain of talent. Reports about “creative” handling of public funds by influential professors at “elite” institutions do not support confidence that additional money would benefit the talented.

  What would universities do with more money? Buy all the Neymars, Messis and Ronaldos of science and research to attract more excellent students? This would only confess that the domestic faculty lacks international competitiveness.

  Besides, luring more — usually foreign — prolific professors with additional financial incentives does not necessarily create a more competitive environment, especially among colleagues who are not showered with such incentives.

  However, increasing financial support for graduate and doctoral students or the number of international scholarships might add to a university’s competitiveness — but this does not necessarily require additional funding.

  The amount of money available for talented people from the nation’s top research institutions could be easily increased if some of it were not wasted for useless projects funded by national research agencies or through dubious subsidies granted by the Ministry of Education (“Devious ways to supply ‘students,’” Sept. 24, page 6).

  What would be even more attractive for ambitious and gifted students is an intellectual world that optimizes talent. Excellent students wish to exchange ideas, discuss results and question or propose theories and approaches. They need critical feedback — that is, intellectual challenges from their supervisors and peers — and an invitation to challenge in turn.

  Students flourish within a departmental culture of permanent dialogue, debate and discussion about research by them and others. They need the encouragement and freedom to try out new things or to test curious, even unconventional hypotheses with uncertain outcomes.

  Research is an open process and this openness must be reflected in the way it is organized.

  However, such a learning and working atmosphere is in short supply in Taiwanese universities, even if it is elite. The entire culture of learning and teaching is not designed to breathe that spirit of openness and freedom that attracts talent. Here are a few examples:

  One of the most noticeable features for those who have also worked at Western universities is that many professors seem to have little or no interest in engaging colleagues in substantial debate related to their fields of expertise.

  Regular departmental meetings to critically discuss ideas and research hardly take place. Professors simply do not like to expose their ideas in front of a critical audience if sufficient time for inquiry is available. It is as if they have something to hide. Why would highly motivated students join such departments?

  Since attending professional meetings has become part of many schools’ teacher evaluations, their numbers have miraculously increased.

  However, these meetings are often only jovial get-togethers for amicable conversation, photograph opportunities, free lunch boxes and, most importantly, an accumulation of points for evaluations. Some teachers just sign in and leave. A veritable professorial kindergarten, often cosponsored by taxpayers.

  There is little academic life within departmental walls. Departments often resemble intellectual deserts, inhabited by hermits busy with themselves.

  Hierarchical thinking, an essential feature of the general culture, is also present in academia: Full-time professors do not easily accept criticism from their juniors, no matter how persuasive the argument is, and the latter do not easily criticize their seniors, fearing consequences in case the criticized loses face.

  Among such demotivated professors, talented students would be in the wrong place; among the latter, those professors would be in the wrong place.

  Unacademic behavior can be found on all fronts. I have spoken with my friends’ talented 17-year-old son, who is attending an elite high school in the south. He and others have been invited by a prestigious European university to present some of their ideas to scientists.

  Teachers there generally try to find out how students’ minds work when solving a problem, he said when commenting on the differences between teachers in Taiwan and Europe.

  Their suggestions aim to improve students’ thinking by picking them up from where they erred to intellectually reorient them toward a more promising direction. This way students learn as they err: the beginning of pedagogy.

  In Taiwan, he told me, things usually work differently: Teachers just check results and then tell students which ones are right or wrong — whenever a student errs, they are wrong and that is it. There is no further explanation, no pedagogy, just fact-checks that anyone can do when given a solution.

  Teachers are interested in results, not in how a student thinks, my friends’ son said.

  This is also true at universities.

  Teachers’ attitudes make a difference. Young people are generally treated the same by the culture as well: They are to produce only what they are expected to produce. Minds do not matter.

  The prevailing culture around learning and teaching is the problem in Taiwan. It is intrinsically anti-academic and anti-intellectual, cements social hierarchies, punishes inquisitive minds and honors its reproduction. This is not very attractive for the young and talented.

  No amount of money can solve this pedagogical malaise.

  My young friend, by the way, is determined to study abroad after graduating from high school.

  Herbert Hanreich is an assistant professor at I-Shou University in Kaohsiung.
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