Translated…
Shui-Yuan and Han kept mentioning the word “brand”, because they knew, that it was, hard to attract modern day people who are shortsighted and stingy, with the claims of “Character Education”………
Making a Name for Oneself
“Professor Tsai, this last edition of your school periodical is really well-written, how did you lead the students?”, Mr. K, who was also responsible for making the papers at his school asked me curiously. I’d told him, I’d used the “Name brand” to ask my students to get up to standards. He’d become even more confused, “Brand? Isn’t that, only in business?”
“Although it’s used in business, but I believe, that it’s, more concrete than the word ‘character’. ‘Brand’ includes quality, taste, and characters, and so, when my students didn’t give me high enough quality work, I’d told him, ‘you need to go observe, and up your own level of work, in order, to produce your own brand.”, when my students dragged past the deadlines, I’d told them, ‘you’re dishonest, you’d destroyed your own brand name, if you delay turning in your drafts again, there would be no more value left, of your brand.”
“Do the students understand what you’re talking about?”
“Sure! Because I’d given them a ton of examples, for instance, the service industries in Taiwan back in 2012 takes up about 58.7 percent of total population, but, the service industries in Taiwan is the ‘busying-for-nothing group’, because they’re selling, similar things, only in having that uniqueness of your product, will you be away, from the competing world. Plus, as my friends in the industries ran short on manpower, I’d also, introduced the student who’d set up their own brands to them too.”
“Hehe, so Professor Tsai is using added incentives.”
“Not only that, I’d needed to, speak to their hearts, using reasonable forces, and play on their fears too.”
“You? Threatening your students?”
“Of course, only through the darker parts of your eyes will you see light, in order to make sure the next generation follow the light, to face the light, we must, tell them examples of failures, of darkness, and the stories with the twists and turns in the plots, can help the students internalize these values.”
“Stories like what?”
“Stories of my pen pals from prison, as well as my best friend in high school’s lives as examples.”
The pen pal was called “Han”, we’d exchanged a dozen letters this past six months. The very first one, Han introduced himself as, “My fierce reputation is outside, with more than enough firearms, as I’d started firing at the cops, I’d not held back, because I have enough gun power.”, in his most recent one, he’d told, “the scam ring my friend set up, the members are all college students, there were, a couple in the law department too. My friend asked them both, are they going to graduate and work in law firms, or quit school now, and work for his unit in Guangzhou?”, both said they are quitting and going with my friend to Guangzhou to work for him.”
I’d met Han, because of the preface I’d written for my best friend in high school who’d published a book. My best friend, Bei-Yuan was once a famous lawyer, but years ago, he’d started serving in jail, and after nearly eight years in prison he was released. After he got out, he’d finally come to, realized the price of his selling his soul, and turned his own experiences into two volumes, and kept returning back to the prison system, to lecture about his own story, hoped, to get the inmates to turn their own lives around too.
“I was once, a seven-figure salary attorney, but I’d done something awful, got disbarred, almost ruined my entire life.”, in Bei-Yuan’s book, there was a lot of repentances, and words of warning, and so, the justice department bought five hundred copies from him, and sent it into prison.
Han had read my “Going to Hell to Save Someone”: because the reformed was once bad, they can surely prove the cases………those rocks that hit the bottom, actually, they are all, the strongest of them all, can help the younger generations change their uses of their fists!” Han felt a connection, seemed, to see his calling of the future now, replied, “Allow me, you, and Bei-Yuan, to help others out of hell then! If the younger generations wanted to follow my lead, I’d told them, that this world that we live in is not suited for gangsters. Back then, I’d sold guns, set up gambling rings, look how I’d turned out, and now, I just want to spend my days ordinarily, set up my own reputation for the bottom half of my life, work hard, to earn my living.”
The Price of One Adventure
Bei-Yuan and Han both mentioned “brand” again and again, because they knew, that the hard to conceptualize “moral” education, is hard, to attract the modern day men who are very shortsighted and focused on earning the dollar. Bei-Yuan said, “there were not even a-third of worker in the prison system factories who were in for illegal substances, but last year, the number had, increased to a half.” And what’s more worrisome is, the convicted younger generations who are serving time for fraud on the increase. Last month, as Bei-Yuan went to speak to a group of underage offenders, most of them were already members of scam rings.
An officer stated an even more shocking truth, “from 2005 to 2014, there were over 200,000 who were caught as suspects in fraud cases, and there were, nearly 6,000 who were extradited back to Taiwan, and, changing that into numbers, there are, about 100,000 individuals who are involved in fraud and scams currently. And because there are a lot of specialists in computer and telecommunications, plus there’s a lighter sentence for fraud, more and more members of the younger generations are getting onboard the scam artists line.”
In our recent gathering, Bei-Yuan shook his head sadly, “in that lecture, the youngest offender was just a kid in middle school, he was a driver for a scam ring, after my speech, he’d held on to me, and cried and cried nonstop!”
Han who’s in his fifties regretted what he did back when he was younger, “As a young man gets used to spending $50,000N.T. to $100,000N.T. in easy money, you wanted them to start making the minimum of $20,000N.T. to $30,000N.T., how are they able to, ‘bend’?, so, the originally once-in-a-lifetime adventure, caused their entire lives to head southbound! Like me, I’d gone in and out of jail several times, for over a decade now, to the point I need reading glasses, and I’m still, serving my time………Chih-Hwa, to save this society, we can rely, only on education!”
Education, would that work? Which school didn’t push forth the moral education curricula? If it works, then, why are there more and more drug abusers and frauds? And, what stronger weapons can we find, to fight all of this?
Like Bei-Yuan and Han had told, through education! The education of the brand names! In the era of materialism, who doesn’t need to face up to the temptations? Who can easily say no to them? Those with the conscience of brand! Because setting up a brand name is no easy task, and if you don’t cherish it, then, the brand name perishes overnight.
Just like how we’re all willing to spend more money to buy the name brand formulas, and not willing to get those lower priced, without the qualities, to feed our own young, brand stands for trust, it’s value, it’s, a high return; but, it takes time, to set up a brand name, and it doesn’t earn as quick as when you’d taken the shortcuts, to use the less qualified materials, only through enough accumulations, after we’d persisted long enough, we can earn the trusts from others, and become reputable, and earned our “brand names for life”.
Facing the issues of illegal substance overflowing out in the community, fraud cases on the rise, the debaucheries of an entire generation, we needed a tactic that’s fitting to the current time and place, why not, use the brand, “character”, to help your students to learn to differentiate right from wrong, to help them to set up the brands when they were younger, so they can depend on the brands they’d set up after they retired, so they can have profitable gains for their whole lives.
So, you can see, how important character education is, can’t you? And yet, there’s no emphasis on these most important lessons in the younger generations’ learning processes, why is that? Are we, so caught up in the GPAs, that we’re willing to allow, character education, to slide???