All parts of Taiwan have been experiencing very hot weather, with temperatures soaring close to record highs. While hot weather is a torment in classrooms with no air-conditioning, it is all the more risky for classes taught outdoors.
As a physical education teacher, I have to speak out about some of my on-the-spot teaching experiences. Compared with subjects taught indoors, where direct sunlight can be avoided, physical education classes at Taiwanese schools are mostly taught outdoors on sports grounds and basketball courts. Even though some schools have indoor sports facilities, teachers and classes must take turns using them. All this adds up to make summer the toughest season for physical education teachers and their students.
The Taipei Department of Education cares about risks due to high temperatures in schools. A document circulated by the department reads roughly as follows: If Taipei repeatedly experiences temperatures of 36°C or higher, as announced by the Central Weather Bureau with “orange” heatwave warnings, schools should provide extra guidance about how to prevent heat stress. They should also adjust the way outdoor classes are taught or move them to shaded places, the department says.
Because of climate change and the extreme weather that it causes, average summer temperatures in Taiwan are rising. The urban heat island effect makes it hotter indoors and out.
To make matters worse, Taipei is located in a basin, which makes it difficult for daytime heat to disperse. Even if doors and windows are kept open to allow for airflow, it often stays hot and stuffy indoors. As a result, even if physical education teachers move their lessons inside, there is still the risk of students suffering heat stress.
The school where I teach is in the Muzha (木柵) area of Taipei’s Wenshan District (文山). With plenty of trees on campus and mountains nearby, the school’s natural environment should be cool, but by 10am, when the sun is high in the sky, it gets hot enough to make someone faint.
Physical education lessons involve activities that cause students’ core body temperatures to rise. Besides, students are not as fit as they used to be. If they went to bed late and did not get enough rest, or if they did not drink enough water, it makes studying in a hot environment all the more worrisome for their health.
Some might say that physical education teachers could design less demanding lessons, but such classes would stray from their original purpose. This is a quandary for teachers.
The Australian Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union last year called for “high temperature leave.” In Australia — where I used to live and study — workers would have the right to stop working when the temperature reaches 35°C and their bosses would not be allowed to refuse.
Of course, Taiwan has different conditions from Australia, but the protection of human life is a universal value, so the nation should also have concrete and practical education policies that regulate classes held in high temperatures.
The school closures implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the end of the semester for primary and secondary schools until the middle of this month, with summer courses starting soon thereafter.
Those in charge should not just issue notices that remind teachers and students to avoid excessive exposure to sunlight during outdoor lessons. With a long summer ahead, policies — drawn up in advance through the integrated actions of the ministries and agencies involved — should outline in detail what to do in the case of high temperatures. The nation’s long-suffering school staff should receive practical resources and support from the government, or at least a set of flexible complementary regulations that allow teachers and students to have their lessons in cool and safe conditions.
The Ministry of Education will hopefully come up with concrete support measures for keeping schools cool in the baking summer heat — all concerned would be truly thankful if they did.
Tao Yi-che is a teacher at the Affiliated High School of National Chengchi University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS