Taiwan's Teachers:Transformations and Challenges

Teachers' Day approaches. It is a day that brings much reflection for one teacher at Taipei City's Chiehshou Junior High, who wishes to remain anonymous. In the past, students and parents showed their gratitude to teachers with cards and presents. She looks back with nostalgia at the deep bonds forged in those days, knowing that in this day and age none of her students would remember the occasion if not reminded of it.

Moreover, what has been different about Teachers' Day is that in two of the most recent years it has been chosen by teachers as a day to demonstrate and to protest. In 2001, 100,000 teachers-an unprecedented number in Taiwan-took to the streets, shocking society with calls for "unity and dignity" in a protest that had been sparked by a proposal to tax teachers. They sought to protect themselves in a concrete way through unionizing. Last year, on September 28 (Teachers' Day), close to 10,000 frontline teachers demonstrated with calls for "addressing the chaos of the decade-long education reform," "restoring joy and hope to children," and "fulfilling presidential campaign promises regarding education."

In recent years, many teachers have labored to respond to the rise of parental authority in the education arena. Whether parents become a help or a hindrance is often a test of a teacher's EQ ("emotional intelligence").

Teachers have had enough!

Following that particular demonstration, National Teachers' Association (NTA) chairman Chang Hui-shan explained that the tax proposal had not been the main reason for the teachers taking to the streets. They had in fact planned this demonstration in late July, but by coincidence in late August the Executive Yuan had finalized proposals for income tax reform measures to eliminate tax breaks for elementary and junior high school teachers. So while it may have seemed that the demonstration was directed towards those issues of taxation, in fact it was not.

According to Chang, the tax exemption had been a well-intentioned move on the part of the government to allow teachers to focus on their teaching without any additional anxieties. However, if throughout society there was now a sentiment that such a practice no longer accorded with the times, everyone could certainly sit down and discuss changing the law rather than slandering teachers as tax dodgers. Thus, the teachers' demonstration had changed its demands at the last minute to one of asking for "a restoration of the right to pay taxes."

In a few short days, this issue exploded, and 100,000 teachers came out to demonstrate, far exceeding the NTA's estimates. On the one hand, says Chang, aside from uncertainty over the future, teachers were facing a dramatically shifting external environment. On the other hand, they also felt unable to resolve conflicting inner feelings. The collision of such forces had erupted into this great display of energy.

Many teachers are unable to accept the fact that their once-revered profession has now become just another consumer product. Teachers protest that teaching is a hundred-year effort to shape human beings, not a for-profit marketplace, and that education concerns living, breathing human beings and not trendy products.

Social critic Nanfang Shuo, in his analysis of the reasons behind teachers' changing roles, says: "In the last 20 years, 'marketization' has been the most powerful global force, doing away with the way things have been ordered in all kinds of fields." According to the rules of the marketplace as applied to the educational arena, teachers are now service providers and students are purchasing consumers. Thus, students now rate and score their professors in the universities, and parents do the same for teachers in elementary and junior high schools. All of this has an effect on the educational hierarchy, and teachers' autonomy has consequently begun to unravel.

Teachers come bearing crosses to signify their protest against the failings of the decade-long education reform, which has added to rather than lessened the stress that tens of thousands of students labor under.

Explosive education reform

The momentous, over-a-decade-long process of education reform has had the most serious and direct impact on Taiwan's teachers.

In a slightly modified rendition of a famous Chinese poem, one might say, "It's been ten long years since education reform began, and though I do not often think of it, I nonetheless find it difficult to forget about." Last year, a group of teachers from all over Taiwan jointly authored a book entitled Pieces on Education Reform. The book's main author, Lin Jung-tzu, explains that education reform has been led by officials, academics, and experts; classroom teachers have been asked to simply follow along. But when the policies have proven impossible to implement, it has been the teachers who have been blamed for being unprogressive and conservative. In response, this group of teachers decided to give expression to their own genuine feelings.

The decade-long process of education reform has brought a shift from authoritarianism to a loosening of authority, from a monolithic to a pluralistic set of values, and from elitist to populist education. From a cross-sectional perspective, reform has included changes in the core curriculum, a freeing up of the types of instructional materials used, and a variety of assessment methods, admissions, and approaches to teacher training. From a vertical perspective, reform has included the widespread establishment of new high schools and universities, the localization of normal and vocational high schools, policies regarding independent study in junior high schools, basic education testing, the promotion of English in elementary schools, and native-language instruction.

While education reform is something that countries all over the world are engaged in, Prudence Chu-ing Chou, professor at National Chengchi's University College of Education, finds it "unprecedented" that Taiwan, with its limited resources as well as inadequate accompanying measures, is pushing ahead with such sweeping education reforms in such a short amount of time.

Moreover, every single change in the turbulent process of education reform is bound to directly or indirectly challenge frontline teachers' working habits and instructional content. The sense of unease detectable from the teachers writing in Pieces on Education Reform highlights the gap between the ideals and the realities of reform, as well as widespread anxiety at its shortcomings.

Facing wave after wave of education reform and frenetically changing times, teachers must deal with a variety of challenges in and out of school. How they redefine themselves matters indeed to the future of Taiwan's next generation!

Challenges of the new curriculum

The nine-year integrated curriculum must be seen as the education reform policy that has had the most direct and far-reaching impact on teachers. Much debate has been engendered over the issue of discipline-based versus interdisciplinary instruction under the "integrated curriculum."

If one takes social science as an example, the integrated curriculum takes the formerly distinct fields of history, geography and civics, and combines them into "social studies." The area of "arts and humanities" now includes instruction in the formerly separate fields of music and art, with drama added in as well. Difficulties arise, however, when students enter junior high, where they study finely divided subjects, as well as the fact that for the past few decades teachers have been trained in distinct disciplinary specializations. How, for example, are teachers to gain a second or third field of expertise in such a short period of time? According to Lin, "While teachers all over the country scramble to acquire their second area of expertise, they find themselves with less time to prepare their classes and interact with their students. Whose loss is that?"

"Before, we had two classes each of music and art per week, but now we have three classes of 'arts and humanities,'" says Chang Mei-ying, past chairman of the NTA. Because teachers cannot practically split their music and art lessons into equal, one-and-a-half class period segments, they have to make do by having one class period of music and two class periods of art this month, and then two class periods of music and one class period of art next month. Such logistical problems not only bedevil teachers, but they also adversely affect students. Many schools have even been unable to come up with course schedules.

But it is not only a matter of the logistics of administration. Because interdisciplinary integration carries with it the need to work together in groups, teachers of different areas of expertise and personal temperaments find themselves being thrown together. This change from the traditional solo approach to teaching now involves navigating personal relationships and bringing together different teaching styles and experience levels. It is not an easy task.

Outside the school stands a statue of Confucius, the "paragon of all teachers." But in today's rapidly changing times, the model of the traditional teacher is gradually fading away. The question of whence new models for teaching will emerge deserves greater public attention.

Declining student competitiveness?

Teachers are also very concerned about the possibility of lowered academic competence on the part of their students, given the fact that the increasingly diversified subject matter of the new integrated curriculum takes away from time spent on basic subjects. Huang Mu-lan, principal at Shoufeng Elementary School in Hualien, writes that the nine-year curriculum entails a simplification of instructional content as well as a reduction in class time. Chinese classes, for example, have been reduced from ten to five class periods weekly, while math and natural science classes have been reduced from six to three periods weekly. When one adds to that the effects of a simplified curriculum, the end result is a decline in student performance.

Chang Mei-ying expresses the grave sentiment that, over her 30-some years of teaching, she feels sorriest for her current students because they may one day become losers in the arena of international competition.

However, even with its difficulties and struggles, since its implementation a few years ago, the integrated curriculum has genuinely changed teachers' longstanding teaching habits. For Li Chuan-hsin, a teacher at Taipei County's Hsinpu Junior High, teaching social studies as well as arts and humanities has necessitated developing instructional materials with teachers in music as well as in art. This has allowed him to see the classes he teaches from a different perspective. By working with other teachers in such groups, he feels that he has gained a lot. "For example, when I used to teach arts and crafts, I simply passed out materials for the children to work on, but rarely did I guide them in developing a sense of aesthetic appreciation." Now, the teachers are trying to lead the children in expressing color through musical notes.

Lin Yi-shan, who is a teaching intern in Chinese at Fuho Junior High School in Taipei County, says that even though he was not at first entirely clear about what the integrated curriculum was about, he still hoped that it could help him revamp some of his old, ossified teaching methods. Thus, in his eighth period "catch-up class," he tried leading his students in reading poetry. After first taking out the titles of the poems, he encouraged the children to lose themselves in the experience of reading poetry and give free rein to their imaginations. He then asked the students to supply their own titles to the poems. After trying out this method, Lin discovered that a student sitting in the far corner who had always been quite indifferent actually began picking up the reading. "He wanted to know what the rest of the class was doing. Being able to finally recapture his attention and bring him back into the classroom makes me very proud."

Students rush out in a whirlwind when class gets out, but this teacher-with a whole series of meetings and teaching practicums to go to after work-needs to make use of every minute to grade assignments!

A question of power

Not only have curricular changes caused teachers themselves to change, the redistribution of power within schools has also opened teachers up to criticism at every turn. The education reform's ideal of "dismantling the authoritarian structure of the education system," has resulted in a growth in parents' influence in recent years. Many teachers feel that even though parents can provide support in terms of instructional resources, parent-teacher interaction can be mixed. Often, a powerful parental minority can be enough to cause teachers to retreat.

Lin Hsueh-hsiang, a teacher at Minsheng Elementary School in Taipei City, gives an example from her school of a senior teacher who employed more traditional teaching methods. Because she never used information tools such as PowerPoint presentations in her classes, some parents petitioned for her to be replaced. School administrators subsequently went into her classroom to observe her teaching, and mandated that she make changes in her teaching methods within a set period of time. When other teachers saw this, most felt a sense of injustice at the way in which she had pretty much been humiliated.

Corporal punishment, once a standard and unquestioned practice, is now forbidden in schools. A certain teacher at Tafeng Elementary School in Taipei County, surnamed Lu, once hit some students on the palm of the hand because of repeated misbehavior that could not be dealt with through simple admonitions; two or three of them ended up with bruises. Though the teacher later admitted being overly heavy-handed, the students' parents went ahead and petitioned for his removal, calling on legislators and the media to amplify their complaints. Fortunately, however, in the end, the situation resulted in reassignment within the school after other parents stood up and supported Lu at the public hearing.

When students reach junior high school, their parents have a different set of expectations of their teachers and their schools due to increasing pressures for advancement to high school and beyond.

A teacher named Li at Chiehshou Junior High School provides anecdotes from her own school, where a few teachers, resisting what they see as a distortion of education brought about by pressure to pass exams, sought to take advantage of the new, more flexible curriculum and offer instructional resources in environmental studies, the classics, and character development. However, they soon experienced a backlash from parents who saw these things as a waste of time and a drag on their children's chances for further advancement. The principal, hampered by parental demands, was powerless to support his own teachers.

Teachers putting on a titillating show? Actually, it's a play put on by an association of classroom teachers. With their emphasis on caring for the weak and underprivileged, they are exploring the relationship between a teacher and a student who also works as a "betelnut girl."

Striving under a heavy workload

Along with the times, schools have changed, and the challenges that teachers face have changed. Even so, many in society still see teachers as having "lots of vacation, good pay, and little work to do." Teachers, for their part, are annoyed whenever they hear this.

"The media rarely reports on how hard teachers work," says Li. Many teachers arrive at school at seven in the morning, and work with students until five or six in the evening. From the ninth grade on, homeroom teachers may stay even later. Teachers try their hardest never to take time off even when they are sick, because they can only get a substitute when they have been away for three days or more. Since taking one or two days of sick leave would inconvenience their colleagues as well as their students, most simply take the attitude that "it's better to just grit your teeth and bear it!"

With the many rounds of education reform taking place in recent years, there seems to be a never-ending progression of practical training sessions, meetings, competitions, reports and on-site visits. When those higher up the chain of command demand results, teachers cannot but comply, causing an increasingly heavy workload and stress that never lets up.

As a result, quite a few of the more senior teachers have expressed a desire to retire, due to their inability to adapt to the intense pace of curricular change in recent years. However, many have been unable to do so.

Last July, Chang Li-chen, a teacher at Puchien Elementary School in Taipei County, went to the Ministry of Education and got on her knees to beg for help, as her resignation had been rejected by the county government. Much debate ensued. According to Chang, 31 years of teaching had taken their toll on her health, and the new integrated curriculum was putting her under so much stress that she suffered from insomnia and, as a result, low energy levels during the day. Her students were also being affected by all these changes. She had thus decided to retire but had been prevented from doing so by the county government, which twice turned down her request due to budgetary constraints.

With assistance from the Taipei County Teachers' Association, this news was catapulted into the national discourse, and eventually resulted in the Ministry of Education allocating to local governments NT$30 billion over three years to address the issue of teacher retirements. This in turn caused a rash of retirements. Many teachers, uncertain about their own retirement prospects, asked anxiously, "But what will the situation be like in three years' time?"

Aside from education reform, an even newer challenge has come along in recent years-how to deal with problem students of all types. Conservative estimates indicate that in urban schools, each classroom sees on average two or three emotionally disturbed students or students coming from problem families. "I've even seen students who have sold sex on the Internet, and others who have been sexually abused in their own homes!" says teacher Li Man-yun of Taipei's Peicheng Junior High School. Indeed, such issues are beyond the professional capacities of teachers, and call for the assistance of social service agencies.

According to Chang Mei-ying, elementary and junior high school teachers these days are reluctant to serve as homeroom teachers given the complexity of student misbehavior, since "some even threaten their teachers at knifepoint." Given such students, what are less experienced teachers, or those coming from more sheltered backgrounds, to do?

This jeans-clad young teacher does not immediately punish students who get into fights, but instead lets them resolve the underlying issues behind their conflicts through drama.

School ecologies

With society changing drastically and the course of education policy continually debated, where do teachers fit in? Is there a way ahead to the future?

"What's the way ahead? Living organisms all have ways of surviving!" says Lin Jung-tzu.

Lin's strategy is to gather together kindred spirits, organizing reading groups and web-based platforms to increase interaction and mutual learning between teachers. He also actively seeks to promote dialogue between teachers and society at large.

Others have taken even more drastic steps. Last year in Changhua, Chang-an Junior High School teacher Wu Li-hui went and knelt at the Ministry of Education as she petitioned it to address the issue of whether to stream classes on the basis of student ability. As a result, a Public Television Service documentary entitled Mirror, Mirror was made, which provoked widespread public discussion. Wu herself was consequently herself subjected to blame and criticism by colleagues and parents.

Quite a few of the more conservative teachers, as well as those who have been hurt in some way by such incidents, tend to cope by adopting a strategy of self-preservation and detachment. Lu, the previously mentioned teacher at Tafeng Elementary School, says, "You try to do so much and no one cares, but then something tiny goes wrong and parents immediately try to get you into the newspapers." He himself has been forced by his previous experience with parental lawsuits into taking a more conservative approach.

What about the majority of teachers, who seek a middle path between activism and conservatism?

The uncomplaining attitude of teachers of yore still seems to flow through the veins of today's teachers, with sentiments such as the following: "Even though we may not be applauded for what we do, we will still do our jobs as best we can, and that is to teach students what is of value in human life," and "The way that you would wish your own children to be treated in the future is the way that you must treat others' children today."

The 21st-century teacher no longer occupies the role of an authority. Changing student-teacher interaction is challenging teachers' habits and ways of thinking.

Recovering the essence of teaching

This is an era in which society moves forward at a furious pace, an age in which a "here today, gone tomorrow" mentality prevails, fixed realms of knowledge are unable to keep up with today's information explosion, and new educational trends expect children to become self-directed learners. How should the teacher's role be transformed to meet these changes?

"When we look at the current situation, teachers face the same kinds of competitive pressures in society that those in other occupations face," says Lin Sieh-hwa, director of the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). It seems that the days of the rather straightforward role of teachers in the ivory tower are now over.

Moreover, student-teacher relationships have also changed. According to Pan Hui-ling, director of NTNU's Center for Educational Research, it is no longer the case that teachers occupy a position of authority, and can simply expect their students to learn what they teach. Instead, a teacher's role is now that of a guide, centered around the student. While previously teachers only had to concern themselves with what they wanted to teach, they must now shift their thinking and consider how it is that students best learn.

In terms of curricular matters, says Pan, "Teachers have moved from being curriculum implementers to curriculum planners."

Thus, many call on teachers of the future to live up to the title of "professional teacher." Chou Li-yu, past principal of Taipei City's Wanfang Senior High School, who worked for many years towards education reform, stresses the need for a theoretical underpinning to that professionalism. To be creative in how they design their classes, teachers will need not only the pedagogy of their own fields of specialization, but a basis in social scientific, psychological, and educational theories as well.

Chou takes the nine-year integrated curriculum as an example. Neither the idea of a system integrating the content to be studied in Grades 1-9, nor that of academic "fields," are new. In fact, these things had been spelled out in previous curricular standards. In past decades, however, one saw the prevalent use of "contracting out" specialized tasks within Taiwan's education system, so much so that now that things have been opened up, people cannot imagine doing otherwise.

Chou uses learning swimming to illustrate her point. In the past, it was mandated that one first learn breaststroke, and then freestyle. Nowadays, the requirement is for students to be able to swim at least 25 meters. Teachers are now free to exercise their professional capacities, and can even train swimming champions if they had the ability to do so.

Teacher/student figures for the past decade

　Student:Teacher ratioStudents per classTeachers aged under 50

Courageously changing

In early August, Chang Hui-shan, former chairman of the NTA, founded the Taiwan Teachers Association. According to Chang, even though there have been policy and procedural changes resulting from education reform thus far, most teachers have not really been mobilized. Aside from a lack of training and parsimoniousness on the part of the government, a basic reason is that teachers have not changed their accustomed ways of thinking. Many teachers still feel that students should simply submit to them and that teachers should follow whatever is demanded from higher authorities. When told to adopt a newer, "constructivist" method in teaching math, for example, such teachers might reply, "I don't know how to do that. Why don't you first show me how?" Chang feels that teachers should leave behind this outdated copycat mentality. The TTA hopes to play a role in instilling desired new values.

Shih Ying, executive director of the Humanistic Education Foundation, gives his own interpretation of what teachers' "professionalism" should entail. In a democratic society, students should no longer be educated to attain parental or national goals, but rather be inspired to discover their own potential and realize their own goals.

"I teach at National Taiwan University's Center for Teacher Education. On the first day of class I always stress that we can never surrender to the pressures for advancement and placement," says Shih. Even if this is what the parents ask for, teachers must strive to cling to the essence of education, learning how to deal with parents, as well as the scrutiny of parents and society. Professional courage has thus become one of the new traits that Taiwanese teachers must develop.

Getting out of the classroom

"Teachers need to come out of the classroom, and participate in curricular development and school management," says Pan Hui-ling, whose research focuses on how schools may be renewed. Teachers need to realize that schools are moving to performance-based standards, and that teachers and schools are symbiotically connected. The establishment of organizations such as teachers' associations and teacher evaluation committees can empower teachers and increase their capacity to participate in school administration.

Since the Teachers Act was passed in 1995, teachers' associations, teacher evaluation committees, and parent-teacher associations (PTAs) have become important forums for the handling of school administration, personnel issues, and other matters. While in the past principals held primary authority for school administration and personnel decisions, they must now work with these "three organizational pillars" of the school to achieve the goals of school administration.

Despite having some of the power shifted to them, teachers have thus far not shown great willingness to participate in such teachers' associations. Some would like to, but feel burdened by heavy workloads, while others see such organizations as places where power struggles are played out, and thus choose remain on the sidelines.

Wu Chung-tai, managing director of the NTA, asserts bluntly that many teachers join teachers' associations to try and gain benefits for themselves, or have more channels to air complaints regarding possible wrongs. Few, he says, join because of idealism towards education reform.

"With teachers' associations providing some security, teachers should feel empowered to hold on to their educational ideals," says Chiu Yung-shun, chairman of the PTA at Taipei City's Chingmei Junior High School. If such associations are run well, they can actually have a lot of room to operate. After all, many parents, in wishing the best for their children, desire to elevate teacher morale, and are willing to think about what is best for the teachers. Parents, he says, are mostly happy to support initiatives brought up by the teachers' associations at school administration meetings.

Seeking new models

Reflections have come from all quarters on the difficulties of education reform in recent years. Many say that teachers are the most important force in promoting education, and are the key to whether education reform succeeds or fails. The academic community has started to research how to motivate teachers to inspire and move reform forward.

So how are teachers to define themselves? According to Wu Chung-tai, not many teachers or teachers' associations today are giving much thought to this question. "With the more senior teachers retiring, many of the old educational models have disappeared. But where are the new models to be found?" he asks. Are the old ways of chalk and blackboard really inferior to those of modern technology? How are the roles of the traditional teacher to be changed, and what of those traditional roles needs to be carried on?

The new era calls for a new kind of teacher. Wu and others are beginning to work towards that direction. Though the road ahead may be long, we should harbor the highest of hopes for their efforts.