From the Front Page Sections, translated…
“Education of children is like cultivating a plant, the different plants needed different environments to grow, that way, they will all be beautiful!”, the parenting writer, An-Yi Chen used her own experiences as the mother of modern-day Mencius, broke the circle of security, moved her whole family from Taipei to Yilan, transferred her children into an experimental school in Yilan, helped the children to build a stage they could shine on.
Originally, An-Yi Chen lived in the resourceful Taipei, but a year ago, she’d transferred her son and her daughter into a locally operated school outside the system. And now, her eldest daughter is in the last year of middle school, her son, a sixth grader, she was glad, that she’d made the choice to move them when she had.
An-Yi Chen said, that after her eldest daughter went into middle school, because the “examination oriented teaching methods”, her daughter had the artistic talents, but, because she needed to get caught up on the academic, so she gave up on her favorite piano, drawing, plus, she was the only one who didn’t sign on for an eight period for extra tutoring, she’d become the odd one out in her class.
An-Yi Chen felt bad for how in a few short months, her daughter had gotten beaten up so badly by the grades, the rankings, and so, on her second semester of her first year of middle school, she’d transferred her daughter to the Yilan Humanities Middle School systems. She felt she’d done the right thing, because in a year’s time, her daughter became independent, just worked on her art, and written articles, and managed to get a fourth place trophy for the French horn competition performance.
Getting out of the “safety circle”, what challenges did An-Yi Chen had to face? She said, that the kids having “no homework assignments” IS a difficult assignment for the parents. She’d started observing her children’s areas of interests, and constantly prepared for them, the materials, the tools, to encourage her children in self-directed learning processes.
So, in this school outside the systems, this child actually got to excel, whereas had this young child stayed in the system, she would’ve gotten CRUSHED, and that still just shows, that there are more than ONE way to educate, and, it’s time, to use the NEW and innovative measures, school instructors, because the age where you yap on the podium is about to come to an E-N-D!
