Education Reform in Taiwan
From an article in Today's Taipei Times:
This is what I've been thinking recently. Change in Taiwan needs to be done via education, from elementary school to college to adult schools. I wonder if I'm in the right school program...perhaps I should be getting a PhD or EdD. That is assuming I will go back to Taiwan though.
The state of education in Taiwan is really sad. Without adequate education, nothing moves forward in society. Though the percentage of high school students continuing onto four-year universities have been increasing every year, this is actually just an illusion. The reason more people are attending college is because there are more spots, and there are more spots because an increasing number of vocational schools have been transformed into four-year colleges. These new colleges do not have the resources and infrastructure to provide adequate higher education, so the rising number is just an artificial inflation. These new students are basically only getting vocational education but receiving glittery bachelor's degrees.
I read somewhere a couple of years ago that Taiwan has the highest percentage of government officials with doctoral degrees in the world. That is not surprising since so many students continue their education by pursuing doctoral programs in the U.S. The concentration of officials with doctoral degrees has done nothing for Taiwan, however. Having a degree means nothing if there's no substance. From my experience, the attitude of Taiwanese people toward education is one that values brand name degrees and schools over knowledge. My suspicion is that these people get their jobs with their spiffy degrees, but because they have no substance to actually effect change, the high percentage of doctoral degree holders becomes a number with no substantive meaning.
Now, what I said above might seem contradictory. If so many Taiwanese people are getting doctoral degrees in the U.S., wouldn't they have had to complete substantial research to get their degrees? Wouldn't the Taiwanese attitude toward education not affect whether or not their dissertation is approved? Makes sense. My hypothesis is that international students who come to the U.S. after college live in such an insular world they do not have the chance to absorb the mentality of higher education here. They live in their own worlds and only interact with other Taiwanese or Chinese students. Their only American interaction is with their advisors and (perhaps) "well-meaning" American students with Asian fetishes. What kind of crappy experience is that? So even though they do get their degrees, they do not get to enjoy the spirit of education that exists in the U.S. Even if they do, their 16 years of the banking style of education(See Freire) has already ingrained a system in them that is antithetical to progress. Thus, the fact that they are physically in the U.S. also becomes irrelevant.
American consumerism, capitalism, and jingoism are fucked up, and a lot of American higher education is screwed up too. But it is still (probably) the best system in the world. If the Education Minister is serious about reforming the educational system in Taiwan, then his farsighted approach would need to include both improving the immediate system in Taiwan and figuring out how to better understand different systems and ideas throughout the world (including the U.S. but also other countries) and bring that back to Taiwan (whether or not specific ideas are suitable for Taiwan should be determined on a case-by-case basis). I think this means that Taiwanese students should be studying abroad starting their undergraduate years, or even high school. It's too late after that.
Education reforms will not succeed unless the overall values of Taiwanese society changes, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng
said yesterday. Giving a speech in Taipei on the challenges in education development, Tu said education reforms are bound to fail if they involve only changes in schools.
According to Tu, education reforms should be comprehensive, farsighted and persistent and aimed at enhancing personal quality, rather than simply teaching children to pass exams
This is what I've been thinking recently. Change in Taiwan needs to be done via education, from elementary school to college to adult schools. I wonder if I'm in the right school program...perhaps I should be getting a PhD or EdD. That is assuming I will go back to Taiwan though.
The state of education in Taiwan is really sad. Without adequate education, nothing moves forward in society. Though the percentage of high school students continuing onto four-year universities have been increasing every year, this is actually just an illusion. The reason more people are attending college is because there are more spots, and there are more spots because an increasing number of vocational schools have been transformed into four-year colleges. These new colleges do not have the resources and infrastructure to provide adequate higher education, so the rising number is just an artificial inflation. These new students are basically only getting vocational education but receiving glittery bachelor's degrees.
I read somewhere a couple of years ago that Taiwan has the highest percentage of government officials with doctoral degrees in the world. That is not surprising since so many students continue their education by pursuing doctoral programs in the U.S. The concentration of officials with doctoral degrees has done nothing for Taiwan, however. Having a degree means nothing if there's no substance. From my experience, the attitude of Taiwanese people toward education is one that values brand name degrees and schools over knowledge. My suspicion is that these people get their jobs with their spiffy degrees, but because they have no substance to actually effect change, the high percentage of doctoral degree holders becomes a number with no substantive meaning.
Now, what I said above might seem contradictory. If so many Taiwanese people are getting doctoral degrees in the U.S., wouldn't they have had to complete substantial research to get their degrees? Wouldn't the Taiwanese attitude toward education not affect whether or not their dissertation is approved? Makes sense. My hypothesis is that international students who come to the U.S. after college live in such an insular world they do not have the chance to absorb the mentality of higher education here. They live in their own worlds and only interact with other Taiwanese or Chinese students. Their only American interaction is with their advisors and (perhaps) "well-meaning" American students with Asian fetishes. What kind of crappy experience is that? So even though they do get their degrees, they do not get to enjoy the spirit of education that exists in the U.S. Even if they do, their 16 years of the banking style of education(See Freire) has already ingrained a system in them that is antithetical to progress. Thus, the fact that they are physically in the U.S. also becomes irrelevant.
American consumerism, capitalism, and jingoism are fucked up, and a lot of American higher education is screwed up too. But it is still (probably) the best system in the world. If the Education Minister is serious about reforming the educational system in Taiwan, then his farsighted approach would need to include both improving the immediate system in Taiwan and figuring out how to better understand different systems and ideas throughout the world (including the U.S. but also other countries) and bring that back to Taiwan (whether or not specific ideas are suitable for Taiwan should be determined on a case-by-case basis). I think this means that Taiwanese students should be studying abroad starting their undergraduate years, or even high school. It's too late after that.
posted by Tran at 12:20 AM
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