There were not lacking detractors of Confucius as China entered the modern era some 50 years ago but today the controversy has largely died away. What remains is unwavering faith in Confucius insistence on what, we now call democratic education. Before his time, learning was the privilege of aristocracy. After him, all could aspire to the life of the scholar and high position in a civil service where birth was of no avail if the examinations were not passed. Brains and willingness to study hard were the sine qua non of success.
Had he lived in the 20th century, Confucius' feeling for ritual undoubtedly would have led him into the ways of science, where all is according to law and orderly progression. Man's task is to find the law, which also can be called the truth. The rituals of Confucius were not mere ceremonials, but a manifestation of propriety, or the proper order of things. He sought to push back anarchy. Necessarily, man had to have both a set of values and a framework on which to hang them. Confucius was wise enough to understand that society requires a stabilizing force above all else. Man seeks for the same objective still, pinning his hope to a scientific method that can determine precise truth or come close enough for practical purposes.
Free China's "new education" emphasizes science. (File photo)
The Republic of China observes Teacher's Day September 28 with increased awareness that science is the key to the future. This is reflected in an increase in science courses at high school level, scientific experimentation to find better teachers, and in conviction that no modern country can be greater than its educational system.
Winds of change are blowing through Chinese education much as they did in the years just after the Republic's establishment. Missionaries had introduced scientific concepts long before that. Mateo Ricci, an Italian, translated Euclid into Chinese at the close of the 16th century. But not until the downfall of the Manchus, not until repeated humiliations by a Western culture that was considered inferior and barbaric, did China reverse the dynastic rejection of scientific experimentation and the drastic changes that inexorably followed.
The 1920s witnessed a great flourishing of science. For the first time, history and Chinese culture were subjected to the searching examination of those who sought objective truth and not the endlessly repeated shibboleths of tradition. Scientific books of every kind were translated and taught in junior and senior high schools, and at the college and university level. Large numbers of students went abroad.
War with Japan and with the Communists brought a physical hiatus, although not one of the spirit. There was realization that science was the requisite of a strong, prosperous, free, and peaceful China. The problem was one of facilities and teachers - even of textbooks - in a land torn by invasion and internal conflict. So, too, with the 1949 establishment of Taiwan as the base from which the mainland is to be regained and Communism defeated. Continued emphasis on science was dictated by military necessity and the requirement of an economy that could provide a good life for the people as well as the sinews of war. Again, problems were endemic: a million and a half people to be resettled, the multiplicity of spoken languages, illiteracy, drastic shortage of schools and classrooms, heavy war damage, an economy heavily dominated by agriculture.
Elective Courses
Progress has been made - not spectacularly but steadily - toward the dual goals of scientific education and a large content of science within that educational system. Science teaching has been improved in junior and senior high schools. Scientific research has been encouraged at the university level. In 1954, a Science Education Council was established under the Ministry of Education to review and revise textbooks, introduce modern teaching methods, and develop improved laboratory facilities. The revision, based on current American textbooks, has been completed. The new books will be used in middle schools in the fall semester.
Beginning this year, junior middle school students will choose their subjects in the third year, and senior middle school students in the second and third years. This privilege, formerly accorded only at the college level, is a step toward the accentuation of scientific education. Senior middle schools will offer curricula stressing either the sciences or the liberal arts. An extra hour of class work will be given weekly in English, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The English language is considered a science requirement in Chinese schools of today.
More scientific teaching methods have been introduced and encouraged through in-service training. This program began in the summer of 1958 at Taiwan Provincial Normal University with 34 participants, and has been repeated annually. Training centers operate in both the northern and southern parts of the island. The core of the work is in physics and chemistry, and the class lasts for four weeks.
Acquisition of laboratory equipment has been carried out steadily. In fiscal 1961-62, 100 middle schools obtained new facilities for their chemistry, physics, and biology labs. Sixteen more received other scientific equipment. Some schools have new science buildings and classrooms. However, of the 280 middle and 10 normal schools in Taiwan, only about a third have minimum laboratory facilities for chemistry, physics, and biology. Further efforts are required.
Four-Point Program
University education also is stressing science. Vice Education Minister Yao Chi-ching has said higher education must help implement the government policy of economic development. Yao outlined four points leading in this direction. One is the expansion of maritime education. Because Taiwan is surrounded by seas rich in resources, the development of maritime wealth has become a practical measure to combat population explosion and unemployment, Yao said. The government will improve the Keelung Maritime Vocational School to train more students in navigation, scientific fishery, and other marine occupations.
Second, Yao said, willpower be the strengthening of scientific and engineering education in universities and colleges. With help from the United States, scientific facilities and equipment have been much improved at the collegiate level. This program will be continued, and efforts made to improve teaching and research.
An effective way to promote science education, Yao said, is to invite outstanding science teachers from the United States. The government will seek more Fulbright professors in the sciences.
The government's third objective is the study and revision of college curricula that have remained largely the same for 20 years. One example is agricultural education, which may be brought under a single agency. This would improve teaching and research, and eliminate duplication. Yao said agricultural development of the island could be materially speeded up.
Mixed Blessing
The fourth point is separation of junior colleges or vocational colleges from ordinary colleges. The former will devote themselves to the training of technicians, and the latter to academic studies. Curricula will be different.
Confucianist faith in education as the solution of all problems is a mixed blessing when applied to the health and physical conditioning of the younger generation. School authorities say half of the middle school physical education instructors are unqualified. Half the class hours allotted to physical education have been resigned to cramming for examinations, a practice currently regarded as the worst feature of the Chinese school system. The government has banned cramming, but to little avail. Parents demand it, and pupils and teachers become accomplices.
Cramming has many causes. Shortage of classrooms and the low salaries of teachers are two of the most important. Grade school education is compulsory. Children begin the first grade when they are six years old. More than 95 per cent of primary school-age children are attending classes. School construction continues unceasingly but cannot keep up with the annual population increase of around 3.1 per cent. Educational expenditures already run as high as 39 per cent of the revenues of cities and counties.
Libraries are favored place of university study. (File photo)
In the fifth year, pupils begin cramming for the examinations that will determine whether they can enter the public - and superior-junior middle schools. Only about half will make it, because of lack of space. For two years, the student gets up at five or six, attends school, returns for evening cramming sessions, and then falls asleep over homework that continues until 10 or 11 p.m. The government warns cram session teachers of dismissal but does not carry out the threat. Teachers are too scarce and the government has not convinced the public. The pay of teachers is low and they earn more from the cramming lessons. The parents do not cooperate with the government because they are afraid lest their children will not keep up academically and may fail to pass the middle school examination.
Another difficulty concerns differences among public primary schools, which are judged on a basis of the success of their graduates in the middle school examination. Parents resort to every possible means to get son or daughter into a top school. The government has answered with a district system in which the child attends a school near his home. To prevent parents from moving into the supposedly "good" districts, the government requires a residence period of six months and the presence of at least one parent. Friends' addresses often were used in the past.
Cramming continues in lower middle school for senior middle school examinations, and in senior middle school for college entrance exams. To break up established patterns of preference and presumed superiority, the government is placing junior public schools of Taipei and Tainan under municipal government and senior middle schools under the provincial government. Previously, a provincial middle school had been rated higher than a municipal school.
For Family Prestige
Another measure designed to reduce competition in the entrance examinations of middle schools is reduction in the number of subjects. General knowledge has been eliminated, leaving Chinese and arithmetic. All questions must be taken from textbook material.
Liu Chen, a former commissioner of education, says too many parents send their children to school for reasons of prestige rather than learning.
Schooling brightens the family's reputation and honor in a misapplication of the Confucian spirit. Thousands of years ago, when a student succeeded in a government examination, stone posts were erected in front of the door to tell people that this was a learned family. The concept is still deep-seated.
The most sensible proposal for stamping out cramming and excessive competition is extension of the period of free and compulsory education from six to nine years. The government wants to establish a junior middle school in each township. The problem is money to build the schools and employ the teachers. Not encouraging are statistics that put the rate of junior middle school growth at 10 per cent and the increase in applications at 12 per cent.
Courtyard of this newly expanded primary school is large enough for mass calisthenics. (File photo)
What seems to count more than the faults of cramming and an insufficiency of classrooms and teachers is the great educational ferment leading toward scientific solutions and a literate, modern China that will be able to cope with both the classics and the technologies. Observers of the mainland scene say the Communists have substituted indoctrination and brainwashing for education. The Republic of China preserves and fosters the love of learning as both an achievement in itself and a tool to build a better future, now on Taiwan, subsequently on the continent.
Were Confucius to return for an assessment, he might not understand everything he saw, and he might frown on some of the new education's more progressive methods. Yet it is certain that he would give overall sanction to what is being done. Confucius always admired and used the teaching needle that "stirs the creatures up." The new emphasis on education for science. and life does just that.