Posted on August 15, 2008 at 2:51 pm by Stafford Palmieri
Taiwan at risk
Not content to have already won four Education Olympics medals, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei according to the Chinese government) is calling for an overhaul of its secondary education system! The Taipei Times reports that Premier Liu Chao-shiuan wants to see a plan in the next four weeks on how to improve exit exam scores of graduating students.
No, I’m not kidding.
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August 15th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’m afraid that outsiders only see the successes. In many high schools classes are triaged into two basic groups: those with an academic future, and everyone else. The kids who are the best get the best of everything, all other students are simply shunted aside. The result is across-the-board falling test scores. Some students actually scored zero this year on the Chinese test — couldn’t get a point tested in the main language of the system!
Remember that it used to be that the low end of students were removed from the system after 8th grade. Hence, comparisons between “taiwan high schools” in the 1980s and1990s and the US compared the upper half or so of Taiwan students with all US students. Naturally Taiwan appeared to perform better. Now after reforms the system does not kick out the lower end, so test scores are falling.
Taiwanese students go to school round the clock every day. If the system works, why is there a shadow system of cram schools? Because it is completely oriented on test-taking, not “education.” It is a weeding out system in which students are successively weeded out at different levels until at last only the strong are left. It is not an educational system that ideally views students as each worthy with their own particular strengths. The ideal is completely different. Hitting is also widespread, leading to effective approval of hitting of children as a caring act. In fact at my daughter’s school, where hitting is rare, parents routinely take their kids out and transfer them to the larger school nearby where hitting is routine — Taiwanese feel that education should prepare children for the fact that life is hard. Because schools hit, parents hit as well, and the prospect of violence shapes even those who don’t hit — like people rushing to get their daughter to school on time in case she is hit.
The Taiwan system doesn’t work. Period (Taiwan universities are mediocre. Why?). And the sooner ignorant Americans realize that, the sooner we can start improving our own system with its amazing riches and strengths.
Michael