Halloween invades schools
A couple days ago, I walked past a few cram schools and daycare centers and could not help but notice that the main doors and glass walls were plastered with Halloween images of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. At first glance, the displays could make you jump back in fright.
Halloween in Taiwan has evolved into a more recognized holiday, tied closely to the country’s growing ties with the rest of the world. Only a handful of years ago, schools opened up to more global viewpoints as they sought to give students a broader, more international outlook — so, they started adopting Halloween.
The activity planning and budgeting for the holiday is a bit easier to work around and schools do not have to do much more than hand out candy, put up a simple haunted house for students to dare each other through, and tack on a few English classes about the holiday somewhere along the way.
In the realm of international education, that suffices to hit the mark, yet adding some Halloween kitsch to run-of-the-mill cram schools and daycares to improve student enrollment and retention comes off as little more than a cheap gimmick. In any case, fun activities and spooky decor entices students, boosting enrollment numbers, so what is so frightening about that?
The decision to incorporate the holiday puts increased pressure on schools that previously did not do anything to mark Halloween.
Still, traditions and holidays are as numerous as the world is vast. It is only because of the rash rush forward of adults who are not thinking about the future that Halloween has become a beloved children’s holiday in Taiwan, albeit with a rollout that is just plain wrong.
If we could arrange the way it has come about more carefully, then it becomes a children’s holiday that we can prepare a couple fun activities around and not an advertising gimmick. As children’s holidays around the world differ in how they are celebrated, Taiwanese kids could use these activities to widen their worldview.
If we truly want a global outlook, then we should not be shortsighted, only look for quick gains and do all sorts of nonsense for convenience’s sake. I hope that in the coming years, our lessons on international holidays are no longer limited to the ghoulish door displays of a single holiday, but instead could don a much more diversified mask and costume.
Lai Yi-nung
Taipei
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
Behind the gloating, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must be letting out a big sigh of relief. Its powerful party machine saved the day, but it took that much effort just to survive a challenge mounted by a humble group of active citizens, and in areas where the KMT is historically strong. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must now realize how toxic a brand it has become to many voters. The campaigners’ amateurism is what made them feel valid and authentic, but when the DPP belatedly inserted itself into the campaign, it did more harm than good. The
RSS