American schools everywhere seem to have the same relaxed atmosphere. Classrooms are only slightly less formal than the playground. Boys and girls with sandy hair and pink cheeks greet their superintendent with the same ease they show toward elders of their own families. In class, notes making jokes, engagements or comments fly around the room. This is the way of the student world anywhere and not merely of American schools. But if a scribbled message mistakenly gets to the teacher, the writer will only flush and mutter an apology while the class laughs at his embarrassment. There are no reprisals.
American students anywhere have reason to be happy and confident. They are born to be the inheritors and masters of the richest, strongest country the world has ever known. They may be living far from their homeland, but they are not separated from pride in their country, nor from pride in being Americans. They are well-fed, well-clothed, and well-taken care of. Chinese students might think they were a little spoiled. The cram sessions of Chinese education are unknown to them; even the universal burden of homework is less heavy. Classrooms are air-conditioned against the heat and warmed against the cold. Laboratories and gymnasium are equally well-equipped.
The Taipei American School is the second largest outside the United States (slightly smaller than the school in Bangkok). TAS has an enrollment of more than 2,600 students and a faculty of more than 100 U.S.- certified teachers, 95 per cent of them from the United States. Several Chinese teachers are on the staff to teach the Chinese language (Mandarin) and other subjects for which they are qualified. Supporting the 70 classrooms are a 14,000-volume library, auditorium, gym, language lab, cafeteria, and school supplies store. A swimming pool will be completed early next year.
TAS has taken 18 years to reach its present size and prestige. When it was established in 1949, there were eight students and one teacher. The two one-story red-brick buildings were surrounded by rice paddies. As Americans and other foreign nationals came to Taiwan in larger numbers in the years that followed, several buildings were added. But it was not until 1956 that the TAS boom really started. That was the year after ratification of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty. A senior member of the faculty said: "The 'Boom' has been with us ever since. Now we are waiting for two classroom units to be finished. As you can see, the cafeteria is invaded by classes."
Team teaching of primary pupils is being used with great success at Taipei's excellent American school. (File photo)
Students of all nationalities are accepted by TAS. For the 1967-68 school year, there are 156 Chinese students and 107 from Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Philippine, Spanish, and other foreign nationalities. When the applicant is not an American, the English Proficiency Test is given. Those who fail are not accepted. TAS has a course in English as a Foreign Language for those who need to improve language proficiency.
Chinese applicants must have completed six years of compulsory Chinese elementary education. Beginning in 1968, this will become nine years. Chinese graduates of TAS face several handicaps. They are not allowed to participate in the joint examination for college and university entrance because the Ministry of Education does not recognize TAS diplomas. Nor can they go abroad for advanced study. Only college graduates are permitted to do so.
American Style
Many of the Chinese students at TAS are children of diplomats returned from long assignments abroad. They have been studying in other foreign-language schools. Other Chinese prefer "education American style" despite all obstacles.
TAS has plenty of American style. The newest educational experiment on view is the team teaching method for elementary pupils. In a single large and comfortable room, 240 pupils are learning in various groups with eight teachers. A visitor is struck by the luxurious Taiwan-made green carpeting. Light streams in through the many windows. The atmosphere is relaxed. Children move about freely. The study groups sit on low chairs or on the floor to study reading, writing, science, Mandarin, arithmetic, art, and spelling.
Clyde Fitch, elementary principal, and Mrs. Marcia Blandeau, team leader, are enthusiastic about the project, which began last February. There are two sections each of the first, second, third, and fourth grades. Each teacher shares her specialty with the whole group.
Singing Starts the Day
In the center of the room is an uncarpeted area will office space, wash basins, display cases, and a small organ. The day begins with music. When Mrs. Blandeau plays the first note on the organ, the children move to the center of the room for singing. Afterwards they form their various groups. Accoustical ceiling tile keeps the noise level down. There is a muted flow of happy voices and considerable movement but seemingly no interference of one group with another.
For the pupil the advantage is in being able to move into the groups for which he is fitted. A second-grader may join the third-grade group for arithmetic and so on. This is wholly new to local educators. The Training Institute for Primary School Teachers at Panchiao is sending trainees to the big classroom for observation every month. Local teachers have shown enthusiasm for the team approach, although there would be many problems in any Chinese attempt at emulation
The TAS intermediate school includes grades 5 through 8. Grades 5 are of the single classroom type with special teachers for art, foreign languages, music, and physical education. Seventh and eighth grades classes are fully departmentalized. The senior high school is made up of grades 9-12. All the usual American high school subjects are offered.
TAS has a four-year-old Asian Studies program with 1,100 students and 12 teachers. Support came from the Carnegie Foundation and the Office of Overseas Schools of the U.S. State Department. In charge is John Dankowski, who studied Chinese at Yale for two years and did research work on overseas Chinese in Singapore under a grant from the Overseas Scholarship Foundation.
Words and Pictures
Beginners use We Learn Chinese, a two-volume work compiled by the Asian Studies Department. It begins with 你好嗎? Ni hao ma? 謝謝你 Hsieh-hsieh ni, 我很好。 wo heng hao (How are you? Thank you, I am fine). There are pictures of chairs, desks, and other objects. The teacher points to the pictures and asks in Chinese what they are. Students answer in unison at the top of their lungs.
Morning exercises at Korean School. (File photo)
In the intermediate school, students study Read Chinese, a book of 15 lessons compiled by sinologists at Yale University. In the high school they use "Read About China", "Picture Stories of Chinese History", "20 Lectures on Chinese Culture", "Conversational Stories", "Chinese Thoughts and Customs", and "Reading Chinese Newspapers".
At a Chinese seminar for seniors, a young man asked Dankowsiki the origin of the ideological dispute between Moscow and Peiping. Another student raised his hand and gave a brief account of the border conflict involving Mongolia and Manchuria. A blonde in a-go-go boots asked why there should be trouble over a little land. "We don't have border problems with Canada, do we?" she asked. Dankowski gave several reasons for the conflict and urged the class to pay more attention to historical background.
The Asian Studies Department conducts field trips throughout the year. Students of all grades visit museums, factories, handicraft centers, and other establishments. Seventy-line trips were conducted in less than three months in the fall of 1967.
People Are Teachers
"As a matter of fact, we have a field trip every day," Dankowski said. "Field trips provide person-to-person contact with the Chinese people. They do a lot of teaching you don't get from textbooks or tapes.
"Some of our students become so interested in things Oriental that they continue their Asian studies in American universities when they go home."
At least 12 TAS graduates are taking advanced Asian studies at U.S. universities. A still larger number is preparing to do so.
As a result of expansion, the Office of Overseas Schools has designated TAS as one of six overseas sites of institutes of advanced study for teachers. The institute will be one of the two in Asia and will be administered by the University of Southern California.
Howard Wire, superintendent of TAS, said: "This is in keeping with President Johnson's directive for a long-range plan of worldwide educational endeavor."
Compared with Taipei American School, other foreign schools in Taipei are pygmies. The Taipei Korean School has enrollment of 21 (the Kaohsiung and Keelung Korean Schools have 23 and 22 students each). The Taipei Japanese School has 79 pupils.
There are three teachers at the Taipei Korean School - a Korean husband and wife and a Chinese. Baek Eung Jin, the principal of TKS, said all Korean schools outside Korea have husband-and-wife teaching teams.
"This is mainly because of the dietary problem," he said. "I must admit that Chinese cuisine is among the world's finest. Still, it takes time for Koreans to get used to it."
On A Small Scale
As there are only two classrooms, the Taipei Korean School is carrying out what Baek called "program teaching". The first, second, and third grades study in one classroom and the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in the other. The teacher stays with a grade for about 15 minutes and leaves assignments as he moves on to the next grade. Pupils may be in different grades in different subjects.
Arithmetic time at Japanese School. (File photo)
"I have heard about the American School experiments in 'team teaching'", said the youthful Korean principal. "Actually, we are doing the same thing, except that we have only one teacher in a classroom."
No fees or tuition are paid by the Korean pupils. Textbooks are provided by the Korean government.
The situation at the Japanese School is very much the same as at the Korean School except that the Japanese have three semesters. The first begins on April 4 and ends on July 10, the second is from September 1, to December 27, and the third from January 5 to March 25.
Who else can be rich like the Americans? The difference is bound to show up in schools. The fancy trimmings are lacking at the Korean and Japanese schools -and even at the Taipei Bethany Christian and Dominican (Roman Catholic) American schools which do not have so firm an imprint of U.S. official approval. Nevertheless, all foreign schools are culturally nationalistic, as they should be. So are the Chinese schools abroad.
As Principal Baek puts it: "We are here to keep the Korean cultural heritage alive for Korean children. Maybe some of them have never seen Korea. (This is so of children enrolled at Kaohsiung and Keelung schools.) It is our obligation to tell these boys and girls that somewhere over the sea they have a fatherland that waits to embrace them."
Perhaps that is the sentiment of all the foreign schools and teachers in Taiwan and around the world. If not, there wouldn't be much point in foreign schools.