It is one of many educational miracles that have been playing out for five years in the nation’s remote rural villages. A major behind-the-scenes player in this southeastern county-set drama is Chen Li, founder of Taiwan’s largest supplementary school.
Chen, ponytailed and in a suit, rides the Puyuma Express from Taipei City. Three hours and 30 minutes later, he arrives in Taitung and visits K12 Future School. Even though Chen woke early in the morning and was traveling for much of the afternoon, he remains energetic and, upon arriving at the school around dusk, receives a warm ovation.
As soon as Chen enters the classroom, he picks up some chalk and draws a circle and a square on the blackboard before writing mathematical equations. The 70 junior high school students in the room are not fazed by the senior high school content. Listening attentively, they jot down notes in their notebooks. Meanwhile, their parents’ heads are buried in their own math books. No one here is slacking.
First principles, then problems
The scene reflects nothing less than a small rural educational revolution led by Chen. Now 58, he has traveled every week for five years running from Taipei to Taitung to teach for free.
In addition to Chen’s longstanding reputation as a supplementary school teacher of great renown in Taipei, he is a successful businessman. His Chen Li Educational Group has 30 branch schools, with yearly revenue surpassing NT$600 million (US$18.9 million).
What is it about his educational methods that have brought him such acclaim? Why do his students get better grades in math and also call him the “philosopher of mathematics?”
It turns out that Chen’s method of teaching, rather than emphasizing the drudgery of constant drilling, stresses understanding of the process. He believes that every problem holds principles, and that one cannot tell students how to do problems. “Math isn’t done,” he said. “It’s figured out.”
Before giving students a problem to solve, Chen delves into the principles behind the solution and their significance. He even takes the opportunity to talk about the mathematicians who made the original breakthroughs. “I make what’s hard simple, and what’s simple hard.” The true meaning of mathematics is found in the search for knowledge and methods of thinking.
According to Chen, everyone tends to think polynomials are extremely abstract, but they are simply ways of conveying a pattern. Geometry may appear quite simple, yet it can be extended to design a pyramid. It brings with it complex applications.
For his practice problems, Chen insists on highly difficult content. “It resembles athletic training,” he said. “Only by training progressively harder can an athlete perform well at a competition.” Chen’s teaching curriculum is constantly revised in accordance with what new material has been used on the nation’s tests for advanced subjects. But he also incorporates topics covered on Japanese and mainland Chinese exams, so students can gain exposure to a greater variety of material and better realize their true potential.
Chen is also one for discarding chapter-by-chapter study. “I want to teach in accordance with students’ abilities,” he said. As long as students are good enough, they can skip to higher levels.
Although an excellent teacher of math, Chen surprisingly did not major in the subject. The story of his career traces back to college days when he worked as a tutor.
Studying industrial engineering at National Tsing Hua University, Chen found work as a tutor to help his family make ends meet. His lively methods assisted students who had been failing to score in the 90s, and he soon attracted 30 some pupils. “I was teaching them in my own living room,” Chen said.
Everything changed in the blink of an eye when Chen’s father suddenly died. He had no choice but to discard his dream of studying abroad. “Life always has its own plans for you,” Chen said. When he was performing his military service, he saw that supplementary schools on Taipei’s Nanyang Street had posted help wanted signs for math teachers. He gave it a go and was hired after one trial session.
As soon as Chen was discharged from the military, still wearing army fatigues, he immediately went to the supplementary school and started work. Teaching became his passion and he scurried around the island, conducting 10 classes a week. “During the peak periods, there would be 700 students in a class,” he said.
Chen’s wife Zeng Shu-ling, who was also teaching in supplementary schools, recalled sitting in on one of his classes. It was a real eye-opener.
In order to reduce nervousness among the children, Chen picked up a guitar after class and sang a campus folk song “Cotton Tree Boulevard” to his students. She found the scene deeply moving. “He was sensitive and passionate. Perhaps those are the special charms of truly awesome teachers.”
Then in 1982 the couple founded Chen-Li Educational Group. From its start with three students to its 10,000 today, the organization has relied on attitude of stubborn persistence about education, Chen said.
The revolution starts inside
But why would a famous supplementary school instructor who teaches countless outstanding students every year travel all the way to a remote village in Taitung to teach math?
A discussion in 2010 about the rural-urban divide prompted these journeys. Back then the youngest son of Chen Lian-yan, the wife of the Taitung County magistrate, was enrolled in Chen Li’s supplementary school. The boy often spoke about the “philosopher of mathematics,” quickly piquing Chen Lian-yan’s curiosity and prompting a parent-teacher meeting in Taipei. When they met, Chen Lian-yan lamented that the urban-rural divide had narrowed her son’s dreams.
The comment sparked in Chen Li a sense of mission. Instead of waiting for other people to begin educational reforms, he thought, why not act himself? Thus, the “Elite Young Scientist Class” program was born.
Chen makes only two requests of his students: a willingness to learn and parental attendance through the entire curriculum. “Love and accompaniment are the keys to educational transformation,” he said. As news of the class spread, families came from far and wide, many arriving early so as to get the best seats.
At first, the classroom was in the great hall of a renovated Taiwan Sugar Corp. plant. It lacked fancy equipment, so Chen made do with a blackboard and chalk. The families helped him move in tables and chairs, install lights and print posters. Still, the parents were skeptical and reluctant to consider their children as belonging to an “elite” class. “How are we elite?” they wondered. “How can we go to competitions?”
But Chen conveyed his determination through his actions. He wanted to demonstrate that each child embodied the place where change could begin. Over these past years, Chen has not missed a class, coming even during typhoons and heavy rains. He also does not provide detailed answer sheets, instead asking students and their parents to work through the problems together. He encourages parents to form study groups, which get together each week to discuss math problems. The 500 volunteer families connected to these classes in Taitung comprise the area’s largest group of volunteers.
So as to foster a passion for learning, Chen has established a digital learning center next to the classroom, providing students with opportunities to borrow educational videos.
The students’ performance has exceeded all expectations. Cai Jia-jyun, now a seventh grader, signed up for the class in third grade. Under Chen’s leadership, he has won awards and become a minor local celebrity. “I’ve collected so many prizes I can’t count them all,” Cai said, adding that Chen is skilled at making hard concepts easy and bringing math to life. One example is telling the stories of Pythagoras and Gauss, an approach enabling all and sundry to find joy in understanding math.
Established last year, K12 Future School is aimed at getting the rural education movement to fully take root. Chen said that some organizations promoting experiential education often talk a lot about promoting pleasure in learning but pay short shrift to results. Chen, on the other hand, hopes to create a comprehensive curriculum from kindergarten to high school, which will adopt “concrete and robust” educational targets.
These past years teaching in the remote countryside, Chen said, have been a great gift. “What is love? I spent more than 50 years searching for the answer to that question, and I found it in Taitung.” Deeply moved by his experiences there, Chen said he has come to see what he truly values in life and has attained a greater understanding of the spirit of education and its role in—as Tang dynasty (618-907) scholar Han Yu put it so long ago—“conveying proper social norms, teaching skills for career success, and casting light where there is confusion.”
[by Li Ya-zhu / tr. by Jonathan Barnard]