Taiwan Today

Education policy is shifting toward the recognition of abilities beyond traditional academic gifts.

This August, National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Department of Music will receive a new student, Shih Shin-yu, who will major in vocal music there after graduating from Taipei Municipal Zhongzheng Senior High School. Her classmate Lin Zhi-yuan, who will go to National Taiwan University of Arts’ Department of Music in Taipei County, aspires to a career as a concert pianist. Like many of their classmates at Zhongzheng, Shih and Lin have been enrolled in music classes since they were elementary or junior high school students. By attending their senior high school, however, the two would-be musicians say that, in addition to regular academic coursework, they have been allowed to devote more time and energy to developing their proficiency in music.

Zhongzheng had its origin when a new senior high section was added to Shilin Junior High School in northern Taipei. It became independent in 1968 as Shilin Senior High School before being renamed and moving to its present site in neighboring Shipai in 1975. In 1984, the school started to include art education programs, which are now divided into the three disciplines of music, dance and fine art. Specialized classes for sports and in-depth study of the English language are also available at the school.

As of March 2010, there were 26,949 Taiwanese students like Shih and Lin recognized for their artistic talent, 10,740 for scholastic aptitude and 6,446 for general intelligence, as well as 265 for other special talents as specified in the gifted section of the Special Education Act, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education (MOE). In addition, in the 2008–2009 school year, there were more than 32,000 students enrolled in specialized sports classes at 485 elementary and junior and senior high schools in Taiwan, although these are not counted under the Act. That Zhongzheng and many other Taiwanese schools at the elementary and secondary levels offer programs for gifted students in such a diverse range of subject areas represents an ongoing trend in education policy toward recognition of a wide range of talents and abilities.

Taiwan’s first classes for gifted students were trialed at two elementary schools in Taipei in 1963. By 1973, Fuxing Elementary School in Taipei was one of Taiwan’s first schools to offer “gifted” music classes, which are now available at the school from third to sixth grades. The school added a specialized sports program focusing on volleyball three years ago. “We want to shape a favorable environment for educational exploration in different fields,” says Wang No-ling, director of the Counselor’s Office at Fuxing. Fuxing teacher Yang Min-chih, who helped create the school’s sports classes, is glad to see children in the classes develop a broader outlook on life through activities such as staying away from home overnight when they attend sports contests. Moreover, many parents are beginning to develop a favorable view of the sports classes, as they come to understand that their children do not have to sacrifice academics in pursuit of sporting achievement.

Currently, the MOE’s Special Education Unit oversees the education of most gifted students. The unit’s executive secretary, Lin Kun-tsan, says that his team works together with other MOE departments including the Department of Elementary Education and the Department of Secondary Education.

Schools with gifted students are eligible for funding under the Special Education Act. In the past, schools could choose to form complete classes of these students or educate them separately within regular classes. Recent revisions to the Act, however, specify that elementary and junior high schools can no longer form special classes composed only of gifted students.

Sports classes and the development of sporting expertise are not covered by the Special Education Act, however, and the responsibility for them falls to the MOE’s Department of Physical Education. Department guidelines allow schools to group together students who display strong athletic potential. At the same time, the Art Education Act allows a school to form special classes only for students with artistic gifts or inclination, but does not have provisions for funding. The result is that schools retaining exclusive classes for gifted art students risk losing their special education funding for the classes.

The National Art Education Parents and Teachers Alliance says that, ideally, a dedicated unit could be set up to administer art education in a way similar to sports education, alliance spokesman Cheng Chi-liang says. This could allow schools to form classes grouping fine art, drama, dance or music students and receive funding for the classes, says Cheng, a graduate of a German music school, explaining that it is very important for art students to spend time together with their peers as part of their training. “Music is not just about playing alone, but also about playing with other musicians,” he says.

Kuo Ching-chih, a professor in NTNU’s Department of Special Education, emphasizes that primary and secondary education is a crucial stage for the development of a country’s talent. Many scientists, musicians and dancers say that they trace their later achievements back to those formative years, says Kuo, who is also the president of the Chinese Association of Gifted Education. “We’re not talking about education for an elite group,” she says. Rather, the professor defines gifted education as offering opportunities for a student with a gift in one area to adequately develop it so as to spur development in his or her other weaker areas. “In a sense, everyone could be a gifted student,” she says, referring to one of the ideals of the educational philosophy.

Multiple Channels

If a variety of gifts are to be recognized among students when they are seeking entrance to higher education, there cannot be only one dominant standard for performance evaluation or school recruitment. In the past, uniform joint entrance examinations held each year largely determined a student’s enrollment choices for senior high school and university. Now, this rigorous scheme is giving way to a multi-channel admissions system, which sees the national joint exams as just one among several means to gauge a student’s potential. In some cases, an applicant can dispense with taking the exams altogether. For example, those who want to enter Zhongzheng’s sports class to focus on track and field training can use their rankings at major competitions, including the annual National High School Athletic Games that took place in eastern Taiwan’s Taitung County in April this year. At Zhongzheng, sports applicants are also tested on their general physical capability and specific skills. Applicants to the school’s music classes can also choose to submit an application based solely on their rankings at major national contests or on their test scores at regional joint music examinations carried out by the MOE. There is also a combined format available, with scores from the music tests accounting for 70 percent of the evaluation and the national joint examination for 30 percent.

These routes into the music program represent an expansion of the school’s admissions policy in recent years, according to Chen Yu-hong, a music teacher at Zhongzheng and director of the school’s art education unit. Previous applications via the combined format were based 50 percent on music test scores and 50 percent on the joint examination. The use of a student’s performance at musical contests is also new.

The Special Education Act also stipulates that a gifted student can enter a school at a younger age than usual or shorten his or her time there. For example, Chao Ling-ya was 16 when she won fifth place among 130 young participants from 16 regions in the 2010 Asian Physics Olympiad held in Taipei earlier this year. The win assures Chao of admission to National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Department of Physics when the new school year starts in August. Previously she had been allowed to skip one year at junior high school, and another when she attended Taipei Municipal First Girls’ Senior High School, before her brilliant Olympiad performance gained her acceptance to NTU. Cases of students skipping grades are the exception, however, and do not represent the current mainstream model of gifted education.

NTNU’s Kuo Ching-chih says that the regulations for approving early graduation from school are much stricter than those for identifying a student as gifted. The MOE’s Lin Kun-tsan believes that, for gifted students, access to higher-level and a bigger range of courses at school is better than skipping grades. In the past, some gifted students have had problems fitting in with older classmates and might have felt shy or isolated, Lin Kun-tsan says. “It can be important for students’ social development to be with classmates their own age,” he says.

Taiwan’s systematic gifted education program started in 1973 with the MOE conducting a six-year pilot project at several elementary schools in the northern, central and southern regions. In 1979, this project was expanded to include junior high school students, and then in 1982 extended to senior high schools. Meanwhile, the range of abilities in which gifted education is offered has continued to broaden since the Special Education Act was promulgated in 1984. Beyond the three major areas of general intelligence, scholastic aptitude and artistic talent, a MOE subsidy program will spend about NT$2.73 million (US$87,000) this year on local governments’ gifted education efforts aimed at other areas where students display special talent such as leadership, information technology, card-playing and the board game Go. The Affiliated High School of National Chengchi University in Taipei, for example, uses Go as one means to identify gifted students and even offers admission to the school based on a student’s Go ability.

Coveted Title

In March 2007, 27-year-old Chou Chun-hsun won the LG Cup World Baduk Championship, a Go competition held in Seoul, and became the first contestant representing Taiwan to obtain one of the most coveted titles in the strategy board game world. Even before Chou became Taiwan’s youngest professional Go player at the age of 14, he had dropped out of regular classes based on an agreement with his school, although he was still required to return for periodic examinations. The agreement was reached to accommodate the boy’s nearly full-time devotion to studying the game with Go masters, but also because a birthmark on his face had led to his being mocked by classmates since his early schooldays. A 2009 study by the Taipei-based Chinese Association of Gifted Education cautions against such scenarios, however, saying that the school’s failure to provide adequate assistance and counseling in Chou’s case should be avoided in the future. Indeed, a major point of the White Paper on Gifted Education released by the MOE in 2008 is the recognition of and assistance for students with gifts in areas other than traditional academic subjects.

A sport for the brain, Go will be played for the first time at the Asian Games at this year’s event to be held in November in Guangzhou City, mainland China. Other competitions in the Asian Games and Olympic Games such as athletics, archery, badminton, soccer, gymnastics, swimming and tennis have been designated as target areas by quite a few city and county governments taking part in a three-year project launched by the MOE last year to establish regional systems for developing sports talent. With a budget of NT$100 million (US$3.17 million), a major part of the project is dedicated to setting up sports classes at elementary and high schools that help to locate and train potential athletes, as well as draw a comprehensive picture of Taiwan’s athletic talent, according to Wang Chun-chuan, director of the MOE’s Department of Physical Education. Wang points out that the project is based on the integration of regional sports expertise into the school system. The result is the provision to students and teachers of specialized sports knowledge including sports medicine, nutrition, injury prevention and other relevant scientific knowledge right from the basic levels of sports talent development. For example, a university teacher of sports science might go to a neighboring elementary school to help its coaches develop training plans for students. Wang expects such efforts to begin to bear fruit at the Singapore Youth Olympic Games to be held in August this year.

In recent years, the increasingly flexible systems for admitting gifted students into schools with specialized educational facilities, as well as the wider range of talents recognized, have seen encouraging results. Among other things, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, arguably Taiwan’s most prominent dance troupe and one that enjoys high international acclaim, has benefited from dancers who received their initial training in the dance programs of schools such as Zhongzheng and Tsoying Senior High School in Kaohsiung City.

“Dance and musical talent must be cultivated from early childhood,” says Cheng Chi-liang of the National Art Education Parents and Teachers Alliance. Distinguished performers in Western troupes usually come from such art education systems, he says. “Herein lie the roots of the cultural creative businesses that the government is eager to promote,” Cheng adds. He suggests that the government continue to promote art education research and also cultivate personnel with expertise in arts administration. That way, hopefully, all future artists can easily open a window to their own potential and to a world that awaits being captivated by their works.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com