Many people think these are just more old folks' colleges, to which only retired people would have the energy to go to while away their time, and assume that the courses on offer do not go beyond "soft" subjects such as flower arranging and taijiquan. But is that really so?
At seven o'clock on a weekday evening, when most people have finished work and the pupils of Mucha Junior High School in southern Taipei City have all long gone home, the lights in the classrooms on the east side of the school's courtyard are still burning brightly.
In a classroom on the third floor, writer Lei Hsiang is showing his class slides of the charcoal self-portraits he asked them to draw the previous week.
"This one's a very good likeness, drawn intuitively, with a very simple and direct feel to it. The top half of this next one is very strong, but from the nose downward it's weak-perhaps his ambition flagged and he didn't have the confidence to draw the details of the lips. They could almost be two different drawings. . . ." After appraising each of the drawings, he says: "Before the end of term we'll draw some more and compare them."
College education for all
Not all the class have experience of charcoal drawing, but Lei Hsiang, who has made documentary films, written novels and published art collections, says this doesn't matter-in his view, "what is important in drawing is not technique, but the person's instinctive concern about the image." He feels that seeing so many people willing to rediscover their childhood interest in scribbling is quite something.
This was originally planned as a small class of just 15 people, but over 120 applied, so the organizers had no choice but to ask the teacher to accept more, and they drew lots by computer to select 17 candidates. Those accepted include office workers, recent college graduates and housewives.
Mr. Lin, an engineering company administrator in his 40s, says he draws to relieve the stress of his job; he has also enrolled on the Art and Life course taught by cultural critic Lin Ku-fang.
Upstairs, people of all ages are gathered together in a class on reading classical Chinese poetry in Taiwanese dialect. The 40-person classroom is not quite big enough, and the later arrivals have to fetch chairs and tables from neighboring rooms. While they do so, the teacher asks the students to come up to the front and introduce themselves, and say why they are interested in the class.
"Back in high school I was interested in poetry," says one young man, "but when we recited in Mandarin it never seemed to flow, and the Taiwanese on TV doesn't flow either. For many years I've wondered why."
"You're never too old to learn, and when I saw the ad in the paper I thought I'd come along and soak up some knowledge," says an old gentleman his 60s who received his schooling under the Japanese. He says that Taiwanese, with its eight tones, is the most beautiful language in the world, and that he is very moved to see so many people interested in their mother tongue. When he has finished speaking he bows deeply to the teacher and says: "Teacher, we're relying on you."
Pushing open the doors to knowledge
The ROC's first community college opened on a rain-soaked Teachers' Day-28 September. Since that day, from 7 till 10 on Monday to Friday evenings, and on Saturday afternoons, over 800 people have been coming to Mucha Junior High to attend the 37 classes on offer in the first term.
The courses offered by the community college fall broadly into three categories: academic subjects, such as Practical Calculus, Sociology, Psychology, Economics, Women and Social Culture, and Introduction to Community Architecture; classes put on by civic organizations, such as Community Design Studio, Communicating with Young People, and Storytelling with a Camera; and practical crafts and artistic pursuits, such as Pottery, Classical Poetry in Taiwanese, Art and Life, Household DIY and so on.
"If there's any copyright on the design of the courses, it should belong to Professor Huang Wu-hsiung," says Professor Ku Chung-hua, director of the sociology department at National Chengchi University, and a member of the community college preparatory committee.
As far back as 1994, National Taiwan University mathematics professor Huang Wu-hsiung put forward the idea of community colleges. Most county and city cultural centers already provided adult education classes not leading to qualifications, but Huang felt there was a general "prejudice" that the goals and content of adult education did not go beyond "teaching people to read and write and to sound more educated, various craft and leisure activities, and courses with the same content as in full-time education, to enable people to improve their academic qualifications."
This model of a one-way input of knowledge tends to ignore the fact that people who entered the world of work early often have a well-developed ability to "learn by building on their own experience of the world around them."
Hence Huang drew up a "Draft Plan for the Establishment of Community Colleges by Local Authorities," in which he suggested that to save expenditure on land to build such institutions, use could be made of the existing junior high and elementary schools and community activity centers for classes in the evenings and at weekends. However, at the time the idea received little attention.
In late 1997, in response to the general sense of powerlessness throughout society that year following three major criminal cases, an epidemic of porcine foot and mouth disease and the Asian financial crisis, Huang Wu-hsiung again wrote an article putting forward the idea of community colleges. In it he stated: "The aim is not only to provide the public with lifelong opportunities for education, but also to revitalize Taiwanese society through knowledge and discussion, the operation of civic groups and the exchange of skills."
Following Huang's article, a group of private individuals formed a "Preparatory Committee for Community Colleges," and began actively contacting local authorities. Early this year both Taipei and Hsinchu city governments responded by making available budgets of NT$10 million and NT$6 million respectively. Thus Taiwan's first community college opened in Taipei City's Wenshan District, and Hsinchu City Community College is due to begin classes early next year at Yuhsien Junior High School in Hsiangshan.
Challenging the capitalist division of labor
How should courses at a community college be designed so as to serve the needs of adults, and not have people repeat the experience of their youth of studying for the sole purpose of passing exams?
"In traditional education, the students sit and listen and write things out on paper; only what they can use in exams counts as knowledge. This makes their interests very narrow," says Ku Chung-hua. He comments that although everyone knows that education is for life, practical life knowledge is not regarded as an academic subject.
Thus the community college teaches life skills in an attempt to break away from the educational model of only academic learning being of value and of talking being better than doing. For instance, where domestic plumbing and electricity, car maintenance and carpentry are concerned, most people have become accustomed to meeting their needs by spending money. But over time this leads to the wasteful habit of throwing things away as soon as they break down, and causes our science education to remain at the stage of the written word and spoon-fed concepts. There is little in the way of understanding gained through practical experience.
The instructor of Wenshan Community College's Household DIY course is Pierre Loisel, a Canadian who has lived in Taiwan for more than 20 years. In Loisel's 200-plus-square-meter seaside house in Taipei County's Shihmen Rural Township, everything from the living-room walls and ceiling and the bookshelves and wardrobe in his daughter's bedroom to the fish pond and small incinerator in the back garden were created, hammer blow by sawcut, by Loisel and his Taiwanese wife while Loisel was working for a computer company. When the 30-odd students in Loisel's class went there for a lesson on Sunday 17 October-the day after Typhoon Zeb hit northern Taiwan-although a few trees behind the house had been blown over, the house itself seemed to have suffered little damage.
"The most important thing with a house is keeping out the wet," says Loisel, who tells his students to pay special attention to whether their houses are dry. "Damp, termites and cockroaches can all be beaten, and once you know how, there are many ways to achieve it." Later in the course, after familiarizing his students with various tools, he plans to take them step by step through the basics of plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry and maintenance, with detailed explanations at every stage, and help them to try out for themselves what they have learned.
In the future, WCC also plans to put on courses such as "Home Sewing and Cooking" and "Health and Diet" to encourage people who have sufficient leisure to learn to bake bread, cook, eat healthily and make their own clothes. On the one hand such skills enrich people's lives, and on the other they make them less dependent on the capitalist division of labor.
Promoting a love of knowledge
WCC workers originally feared that courses of an academic nature would be undersubscribed. But when enrollment was complete it turned out that applicants were not interested only in "soft" subjects such as painting and pottery: academic subjects were also very popular. For instance, 173 people signed up for psychology and 93 for economics; even mathematics, the subject most feared by Taiwanese schoolchildren, attracted 89 applicants.
"Calculus sounds very academic-as if it should be taught at university," says Tsai Chuan-hui, an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at Hua Fan University and acting director of WCC. "But we want to break down the notion that knowledge is something locked away in the ivory tower. Most people think of calculus as something only studied by professional mathematicians, and assume other people aren't clever enough to learn it. But this only mystifies knowledge."
Before classes began, WCC held an explanatory fair at Mucha Junior High School, at which all the instructors, each at a round coffee table, explained to visitors the content and teaching methods of the courses they were going to teach.
NTU maths professor Shih Ying, who is also executive director of the Humanistic Education Foundation, recalls: "Lots of people kept asking, 'Am I good enough?' I told them that all I asked was that they were willing to learn."
In the WCC course guide, Shih Ying sells his Practical Calculus course as follows: "This class requires no prior knowledge except experience of high-school maths lessons. That's all-there's no need for any particular level of skill, because we teach everything from scratch! You don't have to have any flair for mathematics either: it's the instructor's responsibility to get students who don't understand to gradually come to understand." This powerful sales pitch succeeded in attracting over 80 people to join the class.
The moon doesn't shine, the sea isn't blue
"Taiwanese schoolchildren and students are generally rather naive and innocent, and they don't have much experience of life. But when you teach members of the public with life experience and community experience, you can't stray too far from the real world," says Professor Hsia Chu-joe of NTU's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning. Hence in his Introduction to Community Architecture class, he takes great pains to convert abstract concepts into practical examples.
However, since the community college sets no entrance requirements-its students' academic backgrounds range from elementary school to postgraduate qualifications-many people wonder just how one goes about teaching such disparate students.
In the Practical Calculus class, Shih Ying takes the "wandering moon" as his starting point to lead his students into the world of mathematics. He asks why it is that when we walk along a road at night, we have the impression that the moon is following us.
"Most teachers will say this is an illusion, and most people are content to leave it at that. But mathematics is a subject which depends on understanding, not memory," says Shih. Therefore he conducts a thought experiment with the class, to help them understand how this "illusion" comes about.
The explanation of the wandering moon mainly depends on the way the changing angles between the lines joining our eyes with the moon and with the trees or houses (reference points) along the road create the sensation that the moon is moving with us as we walk along.
"We see all sorts of things all the time, but what matters is whether we understand what we see," says Shih, adding that once we understand this principle, we can for instance tell whether the background on television is an artificial backdrop or a real scene.
Before ending the class, Shih Ying sets some homework: he asks everyone to think of other examples from everyday life where "what we see is different from reality."
At the next class, one female student writes: "The moon doesn't shine, the sea isn't blue, and stars don't twinkle." This simple but elegant observation wins high praise from Shih: "When we started you were all about as good as NTU students, but now you're even better."
Shih feels that university students' powers of reasoning and discrimination are actually much the same as those of the general public; perhaps the only area in which they really differ is their level of "prior knowledge." For instance, university students who have been through senior high school know what trigonometric functions are, so they don't need to have them explained again. Perhaps prior knowledge can help people study, says Shih, but we shouldn't overestimate its value.
One of the students enrolled in Shih's class is Yen Shih-pao, a maths teacher at Wanfang Junior High School. Although his knowledge of science and engineering is more than adequate to teach his pupils, arousing their interest in maths is a challenge, and the biggest benefit he derives from Shih's class is in "teaching them how to learn."
Igniting ideals and enthusiasm
Sincere and idealistic university teachers, community workers and others with special talents to offer have enthusiastically thrown themselves into the community college movement. But is enthusiasm enough to run a college? And what will happen once that enthusiasm has waned?
Most of WCC's instructors have other full-time teaching jobs. Although academic background is not stressed as a criterion for their selection, it is hoped that in future they will be mainly university graduates or postgraduates. But at present the academic subjects are largely taught by faculty from such well-known Taipei-area universities as NTU, National Chengchi University, National Taiwan Normal University, Fu Jen Catholic University and Tamkang University.
High-caliber teaching staff add to the community college's prestige, but with their own teaching duties to attend to, can these instructors really give their work the effort it deserves?
"The students are enthusiastic, and so are the teachers. In the short term this enthusiasm can carry everyone along, but will we be able to find so many teachers later on?" Shih Ying, who has long been promoting reform in Taiwanese education, acknowledges that this is the greatest challenge the community college faces. "That's why some members of the preparatory committee felt I shouldn't come to teach here-rather than teaching a hundred students, I'd be better employed getting two more colleges started."
But when he explains his hopes and ideals to others, and attempts to kindle their concern for society, many react skeptically, expecting there to be many obstacles: "How do you teach students of such varied backgrounds? What if the public aren't interested, or the funding dries up?"
"In the end I hardly believed it could be done myself, so just like the founders of the Forest Elementary School, we decided to go ahead and do it-at which point there's no need to argue about things which can't be settled by discussion anyway," says Shih. The strategy of recruiting well-known teachers was adopted in the hope that it would boost the prestige of the first community college; after establishing some principles and setting an example, they could then gradually make way for others.
Shih Ying does not deny that there were already a number of community organizations active in Wenshan District, and that it already had quite a strong cultural and educational ethos. Thus siting the first community college there "in fact was a soft option-but that doesn't mean we aren't aware of the difficulties to be faced later." He says that in the future it is hoped that community colleges will spread to communities throughout Taiwan, but this will depend on each community's degree of readiness and preparedness. Conditions in Taipei are naturally different from those in other towns and cities. The second community college will be in Hsinchu and the third may be in Taichung, but Shih is aware that the difficulties become greater the further south one goes.
"There are only so many famous teachers, so we need to develop a potential reservoir of people in society. What matters is not how highly qualified the teachers are, or their academic training, but whether they have the patience and the will to lead the students in their studies," says Tsai Chuan-hui.
Out into the community
Perhaps because of the word "community" in its name, some people feel the community college should join with other local organizations to actively pursue community issues. This has implications for how the college positions itself.
In fact, Shih Ying's conception of the community college is a broadly defined, abstract one. "It doesn't necessarily follow that 'community' means close to our society, soil and localities." He once suggested the name "citizens' college" as being less geographical in implication, but it was not accepted, and he did not insist on it.
But the public's interpretation of what is meant by the word community does indeed lead to confusion, with people mistakenly believing that the civic groups involved are trying to recruit volunteers. Thus the courses put on at WCC's invitation by such organizations as Tsui Mama Housing Service, the Homemakers' Union, Full Scene Film/Video Studio (which has made great efforts to promote documentary films) and environmental protection organizations, have actually found few takers.
The core concept behind the planning of civic group courses is based in Huang Wu-hsiung's observation of Taiwanese society. "One of the most fundamental problems in Taiwanese society today is popular alienation from public affairs. The question of whether grassroots forces can take shape which work from the bottom up is crucial to the reconstruction of Taiwanese society."
How can this great step, from filling a spiritual need to promoting participation in public affairs, be made?
The Community Design Studio course taught by Professor Jeng Hoang-ell, director of Tamkang University's Department of Architecture, has ten participants who hail from various Taipei neighborhoods. Professor Jeng says that the difficulties often encountered by community workers include how to organize events and how to attract people to them, how to communicate and reach a consensus between the different views raised at meetings, and how to get more green spaces in the community when one is unfamiliar with the relevant statutes and regulations.
Community colleges should serve the community, but isn't it overoptimistic, or at least premature, to hope that the general public will come out of their homes and get involved in community affairs?
Many people believe that in recent years a _community consciousness" has formed among the Taiwanese public. But from the campaigns some years ago against the DuPont works and the Fifth Naphtha Cracker, and the "Snails without Shells" home ownership movement, to the Chingcheng neighborhood anti-prostitution drive and various community improvement campaigns, community workers are perennially faced with the problem that it is always the same few people who have the enthusiasm to participate in community activities, and there are few willing to take over from them.
Analyzing the policy of "community architecture"-the most important cultural policy in Taiwan in recent years-for his class, Hsia Chu-joe says that a feeling widespread among those participating in the community architecture movement has been that "community architecture just means pestering everyone for while, but after a few years the community goes back to how it was before, and we all feel worn out and want to go home and rest."
Jeng Hoang-ell feels that of their very nature, the courses put on by civic groups will only attract a small public. But he does not expect those who are willing to make a contribution to go on letting themselves be taken advantage of forever-he hopes that each person can motivate two others, and that these two in turn will motivate others still.
"We will examine where the courses we are providing fail to match the public's needs," says Shih Ying, adding that perhaps students are not yet fully mentally prepared: "We have to think of every way we can to 'pull in' the students, but if in the end they still don't come, we won't take umbrage. That's the basic spirit of education."
Blind faith in certificates?
Another difficulty ahead is the question of awarding qualifications.
The community college does not wish to be seen merely as a springboard into university, nor does it want to be defined as a place where industrial and commercial vocational skills are imparted; yet it also aims to satisfy the public's demand for university qualifications. No limit will be set on the number of years students take to complete their studies; they will only have to accumulate the 128 credits required by the existing regular universities, to receive degrees awarded jointly by county and city governments and the community colleges.
However, such degrees have not yet been approved by the Ministry of Education, so they are not nationally valid. Juan Hsiao-fang, WCC's director of academic affairs, says that one of the difficulties in promoting community colleges is that county and city governments often take the view that the law needs to be changed first. But, says Juan, "the law is reactive, not proactive-the private sector moves faster." One can't sit and wait for the law to change, so one has to "start the ball rolling," while at the same time actively calling for the "power over education to be delegated."
The Ministry of Education also has plans to establish "community colleges," but their main goal is to give those students from the technical and vocational educational stream who are unable to squeeze in through the narrow doors of the conventional universities an extra opportunity to gain a university-level qualification; the aims do not seem very different from those behind the establishment of the old night schools or today's Open University.
Although the main concept behind community colleges is not one of challenging people's excessive insistence on paper qualifications, in Huang Wu-hsiung's view, "the best way to break down blind faith in degrees is to give everybody the chance to get one."
To analyze the background of WCC's more than 800 students, 34% are senior high school graduates, 27% are junior college graduates, and 31% hold university graduate or postgraduate qualifications.
For senior citizens or university graduates, whether or not community colleges offer degrees is not crucial. "The awards system is mainly aimed at people who didn't have the opportunity for university study in the past, and qualifications are awarded to encourage them to study diligently," says Ku Chung-hua.
Amid the autumn drizzle, people from all parts converge on Mucha. Li Ching-chih, a lecturer at Shih Chien University who is teaching the Introduction to Architecture course, says that without the pressure of exams and grades, the faces looking up at him express an enthusiasm for study of a kind he rarely sees on campus. Who'd have thought that knowledge could give people such extraordinary vitality?
p.115
Community colleges want to open the doors to knowledge, and also to increase ordinary people's ability to participate in public affairs. Pictured here is a scene from the "Bringing Books into the Community" event put on by the Tsui Mama Housing Service as part of its ninth anniversary celebrations.
p.116
Knowledge broadens horizons and creates vitality. The source of merriment for the more than 80 people young and old gathered together in this classroom is none other than that bane of Taiwanese schoolchildren's lives-mathematics.
p.117
Mathematics trains our powers of reasoning. After explaining the relationship between angle of view and visual reference points, instructor Shih Ying sets an exercise: how can we tell whether the background on TV is a real scene or an artificial backdrop?
p.118
The Saturday afternoon sunlight streaming into the classroom adds to the pleasure of making pottery.
p.119
In drawing and painting, what matters most is one's instinctive concern for the image. The Drawing and Illustration class not only allows adults to rediscover the childhood joys of doodling, but also gives them the opportunity to hear Lei Hsiang's stories of his extensive travels.
p.120
When Typhoon Zeb hit Taiwan in mid-October it left the beaches around Taipei County's Shihmen Rural Township strewn with garbage and other debris. Community college students coming for a lesson at their teacher's house stop off to clear up some of the mess.
p.121
Household DIY is one of WCC's more popular courses. In fluent Chinese, instructor Pierre Loisel introduces his students to some of the tools which can be used for home decorating and maintenance.
p.122
Community Design Studio is a course prepared jointly by WCC and the urban reform group Organization of Urban Re's (OURS). On Saturday afternoons they take the students on visits to various neighborhoods to pick up ideas.
p.123
The Community Design Studio class makes a visit to Peitou's Chiyen neighborhood. The verdant surroundings bear witness to the efforts of "do-gooders" with the enthusiasm to get involved in community work.
p.125
Big hands holding little hands-participation in popular events builds grassroots identification with the community.
The Saturday afternoon sunlight streaming into the classroom adds to the pleasure of making pottery.
In drawing and painting, what matters most is one's instinctive concern for the image. The Drawing and Illustration class not only allows adults to rediscover the childhood joys of doodling, but also gives them the opportunity to hear Lei Hsiang's stories of his extensive travels.
When Typhoon Zeb hit Taiwan in mid-October it left the beaches around Taipei County's Shihmen Rural Township strewn with garbage and other debris. Community college students coming for a lesson at their teacher's house stop off to clear up some of the mess.
In fluent Chinese, instructor Pierre Loisel introduces his students to some of the tools which can be used for home decorating and maintenance.
Household DIY is one of WCC's more popular courses. In fluent Chinese, instructor Pierre Loisel introduces his students to some of the tools which can be used for home decorating and maintenance.
The Community Design Studio class makes a visit to Peitou's Chiyen neighborhood. The verdant surroundings bear witness to the efforts of "do-gooders" with the enthusiasm to get involved in community work.
Big hands holding little hands--participation in popular events builds grassroots identification with the community.
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