Taiwan’s education culture is harmful to most students. For years, complaints from children and parents about problems with Taiwan’s education have been common. Education in Taiwan is flawed in some significant ways and should be fixed as soon as possible.
Always testing
The first weakness with Taiwanese education is that it forces students to take tests because officials at the Ministry of Education think that taking tests is equal to learning, and scores always represent what students have learned. Therefore, most teachers in Taiwan give their students some form of exam at least once a week.
Most students think that taking tests is tedious and tiring, so this often results in students losing their passion for learning. Taiwan’s education culture teaches students how to deal with tests, but students do not actually acquire knowledge and then apply it to their lives because they are just learning about how to take tests.
Cramming
The amount of cramming required is a huge flaw in Taiwanese education. Teachers feed tons of information directly to students almost every class. For example, most students spend the whole time in class copying information that their teachers write on the board. In addition, most teachers rarely ask their students questions or ask them to engage with what is being taught.
However, since students become reliant on their teachers’ explanations, students will not be able to think critically and independently about the information they have been learning. Therefore, when teachers ask questions to their classes, most students will keep silent because they do not know how to express their thoughts and opinions.
A lack of free time
Taiwan is famous for children going to cram schools each day after normal school, and many children spend time cramming until 9 or 10 p.m, including on weekends. In addition, students have tons of homework and projects their teachers assign. In addition to the great amount of homework from their cram schools, students have only a tiny amount of free time because they spend most of their time studying.
This lack of free time has negative consequences for students, especially teenagers. For instance, teenagers have nearly no time to develop their interests and they feel exhausted after working overtime every day. This results in some teenagers suffering from depression because they cannot endure the huge pressure put on them by Taiwanese levels of studying.
Why is Taiwan like this?
The proverb “Studying is the most valuable thing in life, and other things are all unnecessary” (萬般皆下品，唯有讀書高) misleads people. This harmful conception of learning has misled the officials of the Ministry of Education, and through them teachers and parents have been infected with this thinking. Next, teachers and parents used this flawed ideology to educate children, so most students are harmed by this educational style.
Improvements
Fortunately, the educational culture in Taiwan is fixable. First, teachers should assign more group projects and class discussions to diversify their learning methods. Next, teachers should ask more questions to their classes to train students to think critically and encourage students to answer the questions, since simply copying concepts from the board does not mean anyone is acquiring knowledge.
Furthermore, parents ought to reduce the amount of time their children spend at cram schools so children can have more time to develop their interests as well as reduce the amount of stress they feel.
In a nutshell, Taiwan’s flawed educational culture needs to be improved.
This artical is great, I loved it. It told of the problems and how they affect students, then it talked about how to solve these problems. This artical is the reson that my mom decided to send me to a IB school, these concepts are so true, and it helped greatly in my school project, Thank you so, so much.