Internships should benefit all
Your article strikes a sensitive chord with this semi-retired public relations professor who, for nearly two decades, supervised an internship program that saw dozens of public relations students transitioning successfully into the “real world” with hands-on experience and industry knowledge (“Internships are not manual labor: MOE,” May 15, page 4).
One point that I consistently stressed with my internship supervisees, as well as with my academic and professional colleagues, was that an internship should be designed to give the student real-life experience while better identifying his or her own skills and interests.
Yes, on occasion, one will be asked (told) to “go pick up my laundry” or “clean out the office storage closet.” These must be one-off requests, not “business as usual.” As one corporate president for whom I once worked remarked when I asked him why he was washing dirty dishes in the staff breakroom: “If I don’t do it, how can I expect others to do it?”
I make it very clear with the internship on-site supervisor that the student is at his or her place of business to learn from the professionals there, with the hopes of possibly being offered an entry-level position if things work out as anticipated.
I also make it very clear with the student that he or she is being offered this unique opportunity to learn more about a specific career field and that I will be monitoring their progress closely.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is prudent in cautioning schools about the potential pitfalls of internship opportunities, but I will turn the spotlight back on the faculty adviser and the student to pay attention to the requirements of the internship and to monitor progress.
Internships are — or should be — a mutually satisfying partnership in which the school itself, the student and the professional organization offering the opportunity benefit.
The school can say confidently: “We prepare our students for the demands and the realities of today’s working world.”
The student can say proudly: “I learned my strengths and weaknesses as I prepared for my future as a professional; I know what will be expected of me when I enter the working world and I am confident I will succeed.”
The organization can say: “We offer a realistic environment in which the student is able to better identify his or her skills and abilities, and at the same time, we are afforded the opportunity to evaluate a potential employee.”
If managed and supervised correctly, internships should be “win-win-win” — hard work perhaps, but definitely not “manual labor.”
Kirk Hazlett
Tampa, Florida
Climate action needed now
Your editorial asked: “Does the central argument of the Global Climate Strike For Future movement — that adults and governments have not done enough to address climate change — hold true?” (“Give voice to climate facts, not fear,” May 7, page 8). The answer is yes.
The youth on strike are not stroppy teenagers rebelling without a cause. They are channeling what the scientists said in the UN report, summarized on the front page of Taipei Times: “To contain warming at 1.5°C, human-made global net carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall by about 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels and reach ‘net zero’ by mid-century” (“‘Unprecedented’ climate steps are needed, UN says,” Oct. 9, 2018).
I remember writing a school essay a quarter-century ago — hiding in an air-conditioned room from Taipei’s summer heat — about the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, then already poised to become a success.
I wondered how Taiwan could participate in the next worldwide environmental challenge against global warming. Alas, I did not have the fortitude of school strikers Chang Ting-wei (張庭瑋) and Greta Thunberg to put my thoughts into action.
The UN scientists’ report shows that the sooner we act, the easier it will be to arrive at a climate-sensible economy smoothly and equitably. Before reaching net zero, every generation that dithers by dismissing climate science leaves the next with an even larger carbon debt, requiring ever more drastic action.
Except Chang and Thunberg’s generation. Theirs is one that will face catastrophe if we do not act in the next decade, according to the scientists.
By the time they are allowed to vote, it will be too late.
This is why they were on the streets on Friday, stating the facts, telling everyone that “the Emperor has no clothes.”
Grown-up talk of an “economic crash” is fear-mongering, which aims to silence climate facts and science.
Unlike with human interlocutors, the only way to negotiate with the climate is through the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and in this negotiation, the whole of humanity is on the same side; we are all in it together.
If Taiwan wants to take its rightful place in the international community, there is no room for complacency or special pleading on climate action.
Te Khai-su
Helsingfors, Finland
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei, former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) proposed a “Chinese commonwealth” as a potential framework for political integration between Taiwan and China. Yeo said the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is unsustainable and that Taiwan should not be “a piece on the chessboard” in a geopolitical game between China and the US. Yeo’s remark is nothing but an ill-intentioned political maneuver that is made by all pro-China politicians in Singapore. Since when does a Southeast Asian nation have the right to stick its nose in where it is not wanted
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and
More Taiwanese semiconductor companies, from chip designers to suppliers of equipment and raw materials, are feeling the pinch due to increasing competition from their Chinese peers, who are betting all their resources on developing mature chipmaking technologies in a push for self-sufficiency, as their access to advanced nodes has been affected by US tech curbs. A lack of chip manufacturing technology such as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) would ensure that Chinese companies — Huawei Technology Co in particular — lag behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co by five to six years, some analysts have said.
For Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military conquest of Taiwan is an absolute requirement for the CCP’s much more fantastic ambition: control over our solar system. Controlling Taiwan will allow the CCP to dominate the First Island Chain and to better neutralize the Philippines, decreasing the threat to the most important People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) space base, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. Satellite and manned space launches from the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers regularly pass close to Taiwan, which is also a very serious threat to the PLA,
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