The Cabinet reshuffle has raised eyebrows. Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) is staying, despite criticisms that he failed to introduce any meaningful reforms or provide professional support in the field. However, the problems in education go beyond structural issues and would remain no matter how many times the minister is replaced, unless those issues are addressed.
About a week ago, I received a comment on Facebook which said that during the summer vacation, a group of teenagers, aged 11 to 16, broke into a private swimming pool and damaged the facilities. The pool’s owner called the police, who questioned the teenagers. Police found that most of the youngsters came from single-parent households or families with inadequate childcare. The parents agreed to pay compensation for the damage, which the owner accepted.
Although mainstream media did not pay much attention to this issue, the incident showed that many children lack adequate family care and proper guidance from educational institutions. For one, there are not enough facilities for young people to engage in summer activities. Without appropriate arrangements and support, children might be susceptible to developing bad behavioral traits.
In July, the ministry formulated policies to provide sports equipment to schools and designated the seventh period in class as time for extracurricular activities, but these ultimately came to naught. The policy only allowed access to equipment and required school teachers to manage them. The mindset behind such a half-baked policy is the main reason why education and social welfare policies often end up “patching an irreparable net” that repeatedly leads to incomplete measures and constant attempts at compensation.
In Hong Kong, there are youth service centers open all day from Monday to Saturday. These centers are managed by social workers or educators, and are equipped with facilities such as pool tables, badminton courts, online games, board games and music classrooms. However, in Taiwan, while there are many canteens and community centers for older people, there is a significant lack of dedicated spaces for young people, especially for teenagers.
I run the Masai Community Collaborative Learning Center in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳). The center mainly provides after-school care for children and young people during winter and summer vacations. It also offers learning programs, and a series of interpersonal communication courses and activities. It costs about NT$5 million (US$163,239) per year to run the center, which is located within a public junior-high school district. If similar centers were set up near about 700 junior-high schools nationwide, the total annual cost would be about NT$3.5 billion. That would be a small fraction of the overall education budget of about NT$300 billion.
With the nation’s declining birthrate, the government should invest more resources into supporting young people, especially those from underprivileged families.
Teng Ming-hung is a director of the Masai Community Collaborative Learning Center.
Translated by Lai Wen-chieh
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