In the middle of this month there were three suicides in five days at National Taiwan University (NTU). This has led many people to start talking about the difficulties faced by so-called “top university students,” which generally refers to students attending the “top universities” of NTU, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), National Chiao Tung University, National Chengchi University (NCCU) and National Cheng Kung University.
Many people have also been saying that the “label of success” should not be given to these “top universities,” because such labels are among the things that put students under undue pressure.
However, just a few days earlier, seven universities — NCCU, Huafan University, Shih Hsin University, China University of Technology, Jinwen University of Science and Technology, Tungnan University and the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts — announced a plan to form a “Wenshan alliance.”
The announcement has been hotly debated on online campus forums, and many of the posts and comments show how disdainful and prejudiced some “top university students” are with regards to other universities.
This is not the first time there has been such a reaction. In 2016, when National Hsinchu University of Education (NHUE) merged with NTHU, there were many NTHU students who mocked NHUE as a “degree mill” and said that NHUE was harvesting NTHU’s accomplishments and academic record.
It is true that labels such as “success,” “excellence” and “distinction” are among the things that cause pressure and pain for students, but the incidents show that these labels are also often what makes so-called “top university students” confident in treating others with contempt.
Maybe these tragic suicides will lead people to reconsider the existing system of competing to go on to ever-higher levels of education, and conventional Chinese family culture.
However, people cannot call themselves innocent unless they honestly ask themselves whether they have ever been smug about these labels and felt that they are superior to students in other “degree mills.”
When society says that studying is the most important thing and everything else is inferior, how much anxiety and pressure comes from the idea that “I do not want to lose my status of being worshiped by others” and “I do not want to become the kind of person I look down on”?
Yet suicide has never been a rarity at private universities.
However, if three people were to die in five days at a private university, it would only be talked about on forums about ghosts and the supernatural. The media and the public would not devote so many words of concern or discuss the troubles faced by students at “degree mills.”
As the saying goes, no snowflake is innocent when an avalanche strikes. Every one of us is in some way responsible for the pain caused by academic records and expectations.
One of the preconditions for not being restricted by the “successful” label is to stop looking down on others as “failures.” If you cannot peel off the labels you have stuck on other people, how can you expect others to peel off the labels that are stuck on you?
Huang Tzu-ning is a student in Chinese Culture University’s Department of Chinese Literature.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot
RSS