The summer sun shines upon the Hsinhua Village before six in the morning. The students of the Hsinhua Primary School get up early and their sun-darkened skin shines in the matinal glow. These little people have open and happy faces, usually smiling, and they always say hello when they pass by.

Ma Li-chun, head of the student counseling section, who lives in the dormitory, is at school first thing in the morning to accompany her little friends. After the twelve students arrive, they first sweep out the area as is their routine. Though there aren't many kids, they have to sweep out quite a large area, and it is no mean feat to get everything in order. After the fallen leaves and garbage are cleaned up, the kids are covered with sweat. Third graders Lu Chung-chiang and Lai Ming-che figure they might as well just put their heads under the faucet and give them a good soak.

Because there are so few students, each and every one is part of the "honor guard" at the daily flag-raising ceremony, playing parts like standard bearer, drummer, or trumpeter. When they line up on the athletic field, it's not like the ranks of pupils at other schools. They can simply make a three-sided open-ended square, with three kids on each side (not counting the team leader and the two flag bearers).

But this scene will soon disappear. The Hsinhua Primary School is one of the units that will be eliminated by the Taitung County government starting next semester.

Hsinhua Primary School is fully equipped; it's shame it will be eliminated.

Mini-school:

The Hsinhua Primary School is located in Hsinhua Village, Tajen Rural Township, Taitung County. It is situated at 400 meters above sea level in a restricted mountain area. Because there are no regular buses that travel there, communications are not very convenient. To get there you first take the south coastal train or the highway to Tawu, and then hire a taxi to head up the mountains. The trip from Tawu to Hsinhua is almost ten kilometers of steep and winding roads that take half an hour to traverse.

Once visitors arrive at the school, they immediately discover that it is truly very "mini." A 200-meter track flanked by a column of classrooms constitutes the entire scope of the school. Not only are the grounds tiny, there are also very few students. Right now the first-year "doctoral class" has only two students, with three students in third grade and seven in fifth. The ratio of girls to boys is eight to four, so the school is strong on yin and weak on yang. In terms of staff, besides the school principal, there are two men in charge of counseling and general affairs as well as three women teachers and one custodian. These nineteen people together constitute the smallest primary school in Taitung. On average each faculty member instructs only two pupils.

Chang Chung-yuan, the principal, has 16 years of educational experience. He has served as head of guidance counseling at the Fengjung Primary School in Taitung City, and two years ago passed into the ranks of primary school principals. Last year he was assigned to Hsinhua. Little did he expect that he would be assigned as his first responsibility to be "the last principal."

The main characters at the school are all children of the Paiwan aboriginal people. The design of the snake on the front of the platform aside the athletic field reflects this special characteristic.

Every Friday, after the flag-raising ceremony, the kids sit under the trees and recite from memorized texts.

Success is the mother of success:

The atmosphere at this primary school as well as the main focus of education are somewhat different than at typical county and city schools.

Every Friday all the students and teachers head to the field after the flag-raising ceremony. They sit under a phalanx of acacia, bodhi, black pine and maple trees, and begin to do their recitations from memory. The feeling is relaxed and easy, and the children speak freely.

Besides reciting from memory on this day, they also have occasional periods of voluntary rote memorization. In order to encourage the students, Principal Chang rewards those who memorize most perfectly with candy or gives out a certificate; a child can trade for an even better prize after accumulating ten such tokens. So Chang always has a ready supply of treats and tickets in his desk.

So that the students have a deeper understanding of their own ethnic background, Ling Hsien-mu, the teaching and guidance director who himself graduated from Hsinhua Primary School and returned to his alma mater to serve, often relates stories and patterns from Paiwan history to the students. He also teaches them about carved wood, glazed beads, knives, and other cultural artifacts. After learning these about things themselves, the students all understand that they absolutely cannot sell the things left to them by their ancestors.

Like the sparrow, the school is small but perfectly formed. The educational facilities are complete, even including the latest in video equipment. The school is open to the public, so villagers and students alike can use the available facilities. There are no stamps or slips in the library books, and anyone can take them out to read, returning them whenever they happen to finish. And if the book is lost? Principal Chang looks on the bright side: "If people really were stealing them, even that wouldn't be bad, because it would mean people in the village still want to read."

Third grade teacher Ma Li-chun tests her students by throwing out a few terms; they quickly come up with the meanings in their dictionaries.

School and village an organic whole:

Besides the formal classroom tutelage, the Hsin-hua Primary School has pioneered seminars for local aboriginal families, adult literacy classes, and similar offerings, for the edification of the older people who never had the chance to study.

Every Monday and Thursday night, you can see folks in their fifties and sixties--even grandmas carrying their grandchildren--coming to class. Chang Chung-yuan believes that as far as the older people are concerned, this is no easy thing to get to class at all. Because most of them go out of the village in the day to work, it is already six or seven by the time they get home. If they want to get in a short rest and a bite to eat and still get to class, it's quite demanding.

So Chang doesn't have unrealistic expectations. He merely hopes to give them a chance to use their brains and to slowly expose them to another lifestyle. He also hopes to let people know that there are better things to do at night than sit around tippling.

Because of the ideals of the principal and the efforts of the teachers, the school has had a great impact on the locality. Teachers are considered intellectuals, so they have a high status in the village comparable to the village mayor, the elected village assembly members, and the chief of police.

In mountain villages, schools are often located in the center of a hamlet. They also occupy a large space. Anytime there is a marriage, funeral, or festival, the school grounds are the best location, and the principals and teachers are all invited to attend. When the school needs manpower, the parents of the kids will come to help out.

It's obvious that in mountain villages, primary schools and residents are part of an "organic whole," with the two mutually dependent. Since it has educational and social functions and occupies an important place, why should it be eliminated?

Guidance director Lin Hsien-mu teaches the children Paiwan customs and traditions.

Severe population outflow:

Put simply, because the school has only twelve students, and each year must spend NT$6 million, on average NT$500,000 is invested in each little mind annually.

This year there are only students in the first, third, and fifth grades, with none in the even numbered years. This is because there are so few children of school age that the school has no choice but to enroll new pupils only every other year.

Looking at the approximately 460 people who call Hsinhua Village their home, there should be no problem in getting new students. But due to the fact that only 200-300 people have actually remained in the village, and population outmigration is severe, school-age kids have mostly gone away with their parents to other places.

In fact, Hsinhua Village has had its days of glory as well. In the 1970's, the villagers cut down the maple trees to plant mushrooms, bringing in considerable income. Hsinhua Village had the largest savings deposited at the Tawu Farmers' Association of any hamlet in the area. Later on, when the trees had been completely cut away, income declined and gradually disappeared. The construction of the southern railroad provided work opportunities for a time, but when the line was completed the villagers were left with little choice but to leave home to find work. At present healthy young villagers almost all go to the cities to do construction work; they can earn from NT$1500-2000 a day, which is far better than they could get remaining in the village.

With population outflow, the nursery school that had originally been set up in the town hall was closed three years ago. There are fewer and fewer kids coming along each year now: Two years ago the school still counted 37 heads, with 24 remaining last year, and only an even dozen this year.

Children who grow up in the mountain villages are lively and healthy looking.

It's hard to run a school without students:

Leaving aside for a moment the question of economic efficiency, in terms of the quality of instruction, what impact does the small number of students have on learning?

Chu Chun-hsiung, a school inspector in the Taitung County Bureau of Education, believes that a school provides an opportunity to acquire a group identity and learn group skills. These enable students to develop in a balanced way. But they really only have such experiences in a group of their peers; when a school has too few students, there are fewer occasions for learning of this type. Thus it is better at this time to bring the students down the mountain to study, which will be more useful in adapting to real life in the future.

After numerous discussions by the educational authorities, and after weighing all the pros and cons, it was decided that allowing a school to exist independently, accepting only two or three students a year, would not be worth the effort. Thus next school year Taitung County will eliminate 13 primary schools, branch schools, and branch classes.

Although Chang Chung-yuan faces the fate of having his school eliminated in his very first posting, he has accepted the logic of this decision. Because a school can only function normally with a certain number of teaching personnel, if there are too few students, there will also be too few staffers, and the teachers will have to take on administrative responsibilities like payroll, planning lunches, and so on, as well as attend training sessions and go away on business. If one faculty member is out for the day, they have to rearrange classes, which disturbs the whole course of instruction.

Even though the school does not function ideally, Chang Chung-yuan also understands that sudden elimination will be a severe blow for the students and teachers. He recommended to the Bureau of Education that the school first be downgraded to a branch school, then to branch classes, after which a final decision on whether or not to eliminate it could be made at that time. Unfortunately, this recommendation was not accepted.

Principal Chang and his twelve charges say goodbye to their visitors; it's hard to imagine that soon all this will be gone.

The community lives and dies with its school:

The students at the school don't really understand what's happening to their school and don't really know how to react. They still go to and from classes quite happily. However, the villagers are mostly unwilling to see the school evaporate.

Tung Chin-hui, mayor of the Tajen Rural Township, says that you can't blame the community, the parents, or the students if there are few pupils, because this is a product of changes in the overall environment. According to his observations, mountain communities can still maintain themselves, but the main thing is that they have to have a school as the spiritual center of the village. Thus even those parents who leave the village for employment would still be willing to leave their kids at home. If in the future there are no primary schools in the mountain villages, the children will have to go down the mountain to get to class, and transportation will become a major problem. And then parents will also be worried about safety, and perhaps will even take their children out of the village, so that over time there will be fewer and fewer people until the village finally disintegrates.

Hsinhua Village's elected rural township assembly representative, Yeh Su-sheng, says that in the past, a school was established in each settlement to emphasize public education, and each fulfilled an important function. Education is an essential part of life, and cannot be calculated merely in terms of costs. Even more emphasis should be placed on giving children from remote areas equal educational opportunities, so this annual investment of NT$6 million is by no means a waste of educational resources. Whether or not this is a waste of such resources is still a matter for dispute. But some contend that based on the principle of equal educational opportunities, each person is entitled to a similar chance to learn; you should not deprive students of their rightful entitlement and eliminate a school just because their numbers are small.

After sweeping the children are covered in sweat--time to wash up!

Next door becomes next town:

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that the school will be eliminated, and it seems there is no possibility of the case being overturned. After the school is gone, how will the students be compensated?

The Taitung Bureau of Education has decided to subsidize the transportation fees of the students and has already set aside the funds in next year's budget. They have appropriated ten years worth of funds, calculated at a rate of NT$100 each way (or NT$200 round trip) per day.

This not insubstantial amount has been turned over in a lump sum to the families of the children, with no hard and fast restrictions on its use. Both the Bureau of Education and Chang Chung-yuan have suggested that the parents get together to hire a mini-bus or van to transport the kids, dropping them off and picking them up each day.

But it is speculated that the families are far more likely to keep the money for other purposes, and let the older children from the village bring the younger ones to school. But this could lead to problems because when the time comes, the still youthful students of the Tawu Middle School will be carrying the younger ones back and forth on their motorbikes. (Though nominally forbidden by the school authorities, many middle school students ride motorbikes to school.) Given the treacherous mountain roads, it is feared that this could become quite dangerous unless a great deal more attention is devoted to the problem.

Villagers came to help put up flagpoles for the village school athletic meet, tacking on colorful flags.

The incredible shrinking primary school:

How will the teachers and the principal react faced with the imminent demise of the institution? Chang Chung-yuan states: "Since we must leave, we are doing all we can to make it a beautiful ending. No matter what changes the future may bring, we must do everything this semester in proper order so that the students can get the maximum benefits." Although the principal and the teachers are all transient visitors, they all hope to make some small contribution to this community.

Starting next academic year, the words "Hsin-hua Primary School" will no longer exist. Along with twelve other primary schools, branch schools, and branch classes in Taitung County, it will go the way of dust in the wind: disappearing from the ground without a trace.

[Picture Caption]

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When the time comes, the students go of their own accord to sweep the surroundings, disposing of garbage and fallen leaves.

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Hsinhua Primary School is fully equipped; it's shame it will be eliminated.

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Every Friday, after the flag-raising ceremony, the kids sit under the trees and recite from memorized texts.

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Third grade teacher Ma Li-chun tests her students by throwing out a few terms; they quickly come up with the meanings in their dictionaries.

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Guidance director Lin Hsien-mu teaches the children Paiwan customs and traditions.

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Children who grow up in the mountain villages are lively and healthy looking.

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After sweeping the children are covered in sweat--time to wash up!

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Villagers came to help put up flagpoles for the village school athletic meet, tacking on colorful flags.

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Principal Chang and his twelve charges say goodbye to their visitors; it's hard to imagine that soon all this will be gone.

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After their school is eliminated they will need special consideration, especially when it comes to transportation.

After their school is eliminated they will need special consideration, especially when it comes to transportation.