From the Front Page Sections, translated…
The three women from the agricultural backgrounds brought the most exciting parts of their culture into the materials they used to teach, taught the children to discover about “where they’re from, and who they are”.
When the Atayal Tribe from Taiwan meets up with the minority tribal groups on Yunnan, what sort of a spark would happen? Three mothers from the Atayal tribal region a short while ago, went with the foundation that they’re involved with to Yunnan, and transferred their almost a decade’s worth of experiences in early childhood education to the local kindergartens and preschools, it’d inspired the educational methods of the children of the early childhood years, they hoped that the children won’t just learn the lessons, but also “discover ones’ own identities” as well.
courtesy of the UDN Papers…
In the Yunnan Province of China, there are the most number of the minority groups, with a total of fifty-two different cultures, and, just like the natives in Taiwan too, the characteristics and traits that these minority groups have are slowly, eroding away, by the Chinese cultures, and the children are slowly, forgetting how to speak their mother tongues, and, felt estranged with ones’ own cultures, and when the parents talked a dozen sentences in their own dialects and languages, the kids would often reply just one phrase in Mandarin back to them.
Shu-Yun He, Ping-Ping Lo, Su-Mei Yeou are the tribespeople, the daughters-in-law of Jienshih County, Hsinchu, they’d accumulated the experiences in life for over a decade, went from being farming ladies, into what the children called as “teachers”, not only were they there, to accompany the younger generations of children and educated them too, they’d felt, that the Atayal culture is slowly, vanishing, they’d worked hard, in their kindergarten and preschool classes, to incorporate the traits of the local’s people and cultures. For the children growing up in the tribal areas, before school age is a time when they’d had the chance of getting an education, from when they were younger, started planting down the roots, that way, as they’d made their ways out into the world, they’d still know who they are, and where they’re from.
the ladies, using the materials they can find every day to make the teaching materials…
With the reminders and the instructions from the experts, the ladies tried to put their daily living routines, as well as the wisdoms they’d acquired as tribespeople, into the lessons they’d taught, for instance, they’d picked the pinecones, to have art lessons with the children, taught the children to make traps, took them strolling around the tribal areas, whatever they come in contact with, is what they’d used to teach. This time, they’d taken their experiences to Yunnan, and demonstrated the face tattoos of the Atayal tribe, the methods of weaving, archery classes, etc., etc., etc., hoped, that the teachers from the locality can realize “so, we can teach the kids this too”, to find the exciting things about one’s own cultures.
The mothers from the tribes also took their experiences of “corner education” to Yunnan. The early childhood education expert, Tsai aid, the early childhood education in China is stricter, and centered around adult authorities, the corner methods allowed the children to choose freely, at give times, what areas they want to be interested in, this can fulfill the learning needs of the children individually, allow them to explore freely, and the adults can also incorporate things from their own cultures, to set up an independent “corner” in the class.
“It’s really easy to teach the kids, but, teaching the teachers, that makes us really nervous.”, the three mothers spent a couple of months, and turned the lessons they’d taught the kids in their class into concrete lesson plans, and brought them to Yunnan, it’d received the local kindergarten teachers’ applauses. The director of a preschool in Yunnan, Weng said, that from before, she’d only wanted to “teach” the children about their culture, but after the experiences that the Atayal mothers shared, she’d thought of having hands-on with the children, for instance, adding the traditional handwritings of Dongba from the Naci Tribe, as well as the “stars and the moon signs” of their tribal attire into the art lessons.
And so, from these three mothers, they’d managed to bring these new methods of instructing the tribal children about their own cultures to China, and, this process will be duplicated, because these three women had set up a well-planned, well-thought-out system that works.