The media can be “poisonous,” making media literacy all the more necessary for civil society. Sensational headlines, logical fallacies, indiscriminate reasoning, issues created for their own sake, ad hominem attacks and smears disguised as righteous moves have almost become the norm in Taiwan’s political and media culture.
Sensational headlines emerged in news about construction at Hsinchu City’s Guanpu Elementary School. For example: “The budget has increased sixfold and the building cannot be finished in six years,” and: “The parking lot is used as a playground and the stairs used for physical training.”
Anyone with a minimum amount of discernment would know that NT$200 million (US$6.53 million) is not even enough to buy one floor of the buildings around the school.
If it were not for the school’s reputation, why would new construction projects advertise that “Guanpu is just across the road?”
As David Robert Grimes says in his book The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts us all at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World, common reasoning fallacies, flawed logic, digital myths, prejudice and conspiracy theories are often used by the media to create arguments.
For example, “The budget has skyrocketed from NT$200 million to NT$1.6 billion, increased sixfold, and the building cannot be completed in six years” shares the typical fallacy of the syllogism that “all humans are mortal, and Socrates is mortal, so Socrates is human (you can see the flawed logic by substituting the word ‘human’ with ‘dog’).”
The reporters must have been aware that the “NT$220 million budget” was only for the first phase of the project. How did they come up with the ridiculous conclusion that the budget had “increased sixfold?”
In traditional schools, the classrooms are boring and you cannot run around in them, so children look forward to going to the sports field after class. That Guanpu Elementary School has no sports field confuses anti-educationalists who have no idea about child psychology, and many parents would be surprised to see more than 10,000 steps per day logged on their children’s smartwatch pedometer.
In the school, which follows the New Campus Movement, children can run freely in every corner of the campus, which is far more fun than running around a sports field.
The students educated in this school do not run only in the playground, growing up to be the kind of person who falls on the sidewalk and then files a claim for state compensation.
The school is highly regarded among education and architectural circles. For example, Google results show an article titled: “Is this really a public elementary school? Hsinchu’s Guanpu Elementary School, a school built with the spirit of 108 Curriculum Guidelines,” published on the Flipped Education Web site in 2019; and a CommonWealth Parenting special report published in the same year: “Guanpu Elementary School: Turning the campus into a creativity textbook.”
Moreover, The Educator Bimonthly made Guanpu Elementary School its cover story in 2020, with the headline: “New thinking in literacy-oriented school architecture.”
This year, La Vie’s April issue featured a report on the campus buildings’ “beautiful space that creates diverse environmental perceptions,” and said: “Why did this happen? Because the birth of Guanpu Elementary School was highly anticipated, and was full of ideals.”
“Space is not only a container, but also a medium, allowing teachers and students to unleash their creativity and start a process of mutual dialogue and mutual understanding,” the report said.
A feature article, titled “School buildings are architecture classes: An elementary school that opens classrooms and widens horizons,’’ published on the public online forum Independent Opinion@CommonWealth Magazine in 2019, is another example.
The architecture of Guanpu Elementary School might make it the most groundbreaking educational building in Taiwan.
It won the 2020 Taiwan Architecture Award, despite only the first phase of the project being completed, and the comprehensive achievement award in last year’s FIABCI-Taiwan Real Estate Excellence Awards.
It even attracted famous Japanese architects and academics for visits and experience exchanges.
During campaigns ahead of last month’s local elections, when politicians were busy playing dirty tricks, Guanpu Elementary School and its architectural team worked to create a better learning space.
It uses the building and the environment as a classroom to conduct innovative teaching, and even led students to find out about candidates’ political agendas, guiding them to think for themselves without influencing them with any political position.
This encourages students to debate which candidates’ policies are better and more feasible, and cultivates the civic literacy of rational analysis. Many adults should be ashamed of their behavior and should reflect on themselves.
Grimes writes in his book that 60 percent of articles shared on social media are reposted by people who had not read the content carefully. Many people “like” and share posts just because the title is eye-catching, and see red when they think the headline is outrageous, venting anger on the keyboard.
The way many politicians use statistics is similar to how “a drunken man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than illumination,” he writes.
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt used the phrase “the banality of evil” to remind the world that they should avoid moral and political “non-thinking” — blindly obeying authority, and becoming complicit in the persecution of humanity and justice.
Education is a hope project to create the future. Instead of scorning the ugly election culture of adults, I would like to support educators who create “politics of hope” for the future.
They hopefully would keep spreading light and love, upholding conscience and professionalism, and continue to lead children to become better citizens through educational innovation, creating positive changes for the world.
Along Chen is an associate professor in Taiwan Normal University’s Department of Civic Education and Leadership.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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