"Today we had the story, Going out with Mother."— The story is in one of the basic texts used throughout the Taipei municipal school system.
"This morning, we just read, but next class we are going to act out the story. We will make it into a play to perform next month."—Reading involves a lot of memorizing. Chinese teachers require that pupils learn large sections of their texts by heart, in keeping with traditional educational practices.
"Sometimes, we write short essays in class, but I prefer the reading."—Wei-jung is fortunate that Chinese is his class of choice, since it occupies eight or nine periods of the school week. His good memory gets him through the class easily, for Chinese is taught at this level principally by rote learning, with little requirement for creative composition.
Wei-jung's classmate, Lai Teh-han, did not express an equal interest in the Chinese class, though he expected the play would be a lot of fun. "Learning from the texts takes too much homework time," he explained. "I can do my math very quickly, so I like that better."—Math, with five periods scheduled each week, coupled with Chinese, takes up the major part of class time and the majority of homework. Homework time runs from one to two hours each night, six days a week, depending on the pupil's efficiency.
Pretty Huang Hsiu-feng loves her music class, which is scheduled three times each week. Hsiu-feng, a ten-year-old, also learns piano outside of school. Western music is a much more popular subject for study among Taipei students than Chinese music. In her last music class, the teacher had shown a videotape of a recent choral competition, as the class usually centers around chorus singing. I talked with Hsiu-feng during the ten-minute break that follows each fifty-minute class period. During these short breaks, the pupils, dressed in uniform or street clothes of their choice, may wander out of the classrooms to relax or let off steam.
In a sixth grade music class, the reason that Taipei attains such a high standard in choral singing became evident. The young students, divided into six groups, were singing intricate madrigals, weaving their harmonies into a complex pattern of sound. Ms. Kao, their teacher, was surprised that I should consider it anything exceptional, maintaining that it was quite an ordinary class.
A lineup of shoes marked the library doorstep; inside, there were groups of children sprawled on the cool floor, leaving a few of the available seats still vacant. The "shoes-off" rule kept the floor suitably clean for the young readers' choice position. Most of those present were part of a fifth grade class having its weekly reading session at the library.
The kids prefer to sit on the floor
"We can read any book in the library so long as we fill out a borrower's card and return it after we have finished," explained Li Jen-hong. "Of course I like this class, I'm just doing what I want." His response reflected what can be seen from Taipei's bustling bookshops: that Taipei's youngsters are much more keen readers than their Western counterparts.
The limited space in the playground seemed to be in constant use, either by masses of children running and playing during the break and recreation periods, or by students of individual classes for physical education. A physical education instructor, Mr. Hsu, detailed the problems he and seven other P.E. teachers have, providing the near forty classes at the school their three P.E. periods per week in the limited space. After eight years at the school, he is very pleased that construction, now nearing completion, will double the school's utilizable space in the new school year.
Nature study classes and science classes have a large range of equipment available from the laboratory and its stores. For the higher classes, there are electronics kits and models for human and animal anatomy classes. I found little Hong Jen-mei in her element in a third grade nature study class. She was mixing colored solutions and blending them with others to get different colors. The practical joy of working with her hands and materials made this her favorite class, which came too seldom for her at only twice a week.
Showing the way-Students learn to be "up front"
As with all schools in Taipei, this one is graded at all levels on an I.Q. basis. So of the six grades at each level, the A-Class has the most intelligent students. At this particular school, this distinction is taken to a further degree, since its A-Classes collect high I.Q. pupils from all Taipei. Perhaps in response to this, there is considerable flexibility in the school and a positive attitude toward tending to the students' extra needs both in teaching materials and school formalities.
Wei Chia-hong attends a more district oriented school—Ku Ting Elementary School on Roosevelt Road. In the mornings, when all 4,000 students are present, it is just bursting at the seams. At all levels there are thirteen to fifteen grades with about 50 pupils in each. The eighty-odd classrooms surround a large quadrangle big enough to contain a running track and playing field.
Wei Chia-hong likes the school for its convenience to his home, a short bus-ride away. He most enjoys his Chinese class, which at his second year level entails listening to stories, practicing character writing, and memorizing large slabs of the textbook for recitation. The first two years at school involve six half-days per week. "I don't worry about tests, they are easy," he says, "and I only have about twenty-five minutes of homework each day."
His sister, Wei Yi-jen, is in fifth grade at the same school. Her special love is music, and she studies both the piano and the cello after school. There are some special music classes at the school which, among other things, strongly influenced her parents to choose it. Yi-jen obtains great pleasure from being able to practice her piano at school and to accompany her class during singing practice. Artistically inclined, she resents time spent on math, but enjoys her Chinese studies, particularly her essay writing class, for which she has a special teacher, a journalist from the Mandarin Daily News. Her social studies & history class is brought to life by a young teacher with a good sense of humor.
Yi-jen said she enjoyed school immensely until fourth grade, when the pressures of courses she could not understand easily became a burden. She is, even now, quite sure of her direction, and feels disappointed that she cannot concentrate on that. She feels some relief that her class teacher, being younger, tends to give less homework, which leaves Yi-jen more time to work at her music.
Ku Ting Elementary School has classes which cater to slow learners. Shen Kai-sheng is a seven-year-old in the first level of one such class. A smaller class size of twenty-five pupils, and occasionally an assistant teacher, enable these children to get the additional help they need. Kai-sheng gives the impression that school is a long holiday of stories and games. At his level, he has homework of only thirty minutes each day.
National Chengchi University has an affiliated primary school which is well known for its progressive approach to children's education. Chu Tung-tung is a fifth grade student there. Her mother, a writer, is pleased that from first grade, the school concentrated on an approach of creative writing rather than rote learning in its Chinese classes. The school's library is a showpiece for children's libraries: book purchasing for its shelves goes well beyond the standard range at other elementary schools. Tung-tung, however, seems unimpressed by the wealth of knowledge stored in these books; she deplores nature study as a messy business and expends her energies in a passion for physical education.
These few schools are representative of some of the better ones of the Taipei municipal elementary school system. Others may boast a swimming pool or some other modern equipment, but those that have less lack only a little by comparison.
On these schools, and others of Taiwan Province, rests its success in attaining one of the highest literacy rates in the world. A look at these schools shows that for the 2.15 million elementary school students now enrolled, the directions of modern education in the ROC promise sophistication well suited to the modern age.