The beliefs of a principal of an experimental architecture school, the education of DOING, combining the theories, WITH the applications, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
“Education is NOT just graduating the students to the next level, send the student onto the next stage, but to get them to have the right attitudes toward life!”, Wei, in his t-shirt, shorts, leading the students heading up and down on the scaffolds of the construction sites, under the heating sun, sweating it away. He was noted as the “foreman”, the experimental architecture education facility’s principal, with the goals to teach the students to BUILD one property by themselves in the three years of high school education. Wei stated, that Han-Der wanted to use the architectures/residences, to help the students gain the right attitudes of life.
The Very First Experimental Architecture High School
Wei and his wife, Hu both went to Germany to study abroad, one majored in mathematics, the other, technology sociology, but they’d, set up this architectural experimental high school here in Taiwan. All of this, started back when the couple bought an old house in Germany.
Twenty years ago, the couple took out the loan, and bought a one-hundred seventy year-old property in Germany. To fit to the laws of upkeep of the sights being listed, the two started fixing the property up themselves, learned everything about energy conservation which the Germans took for natural. In the process, they came to understand, “building a house is not just building a house, but building a world!”, they set up the international architecture school, “Han-Der Learning Academy”, put in the energy conservation reform means, and building homes together. Wei had the thought of starting a school, right around the time the legislatures approved for the experimental education methods, and, Han-Der became the very FIRST experimental high school specializing in architecture.
The Standards to File for Graduation: Write a Book, Build a House
There are no exams administered in Han-Der, school starts every day at seven in the morn, and ends at three in the afternoon. But, the graduation standards set by the school is so high it’s scary00the students all need to write a book, and build a house. “Writing the book is for the students to learn to express their thoughts and beliefs, building the houses, is for them to make that connection with their external environment with their own two hands.”
There’s also another special rule of the school: the students must bring their lunches from home, the school doesn’t have the lunches for them. “Lunch is a matter of the families, not the school’s.”, Wei’s father was an elementary school principal, and he had formed his beliefs about education a long, long, long ago.
Two Days Out of the School Week, the Students Headed Off to the Construction Sites to Build the Houses
Two days out of the school week, all the students needed to have their classes at the “Cultural Factory”—to the construction sites to build. For two years, the couple took the students all over Penghu, Magon, Nuan-Nuan in Keelung, Mailiao of Yunlin, they’d built chicken coups, and cafés, and they’d designed a wooden building that emitted very little carbon dioxide for the Langyang Museum. The first group of students are in their final year of high school this year, the families are getting ready to set up a construction company for the students. The course load of the school included, running to photograph the construction sites, the laws of construction, social responsibilities, along with other matters, the final year students, under their advising instructor’s guidance, need to get a construction job approved by licensure.
“On the very first day when the students came for the interview, I’d told them, getting you into a higher education facility is NOT my business!”, Wei told, that he believed that the students who graduated from the high school will all be capable of getting into the specialty skills qualifiers of the various universities, or with their expertise in German, they can get into the foreign exchange student programs, “everybody learn and discover through the art of architecture!”
So, this school set up by this man, it helps its students get ready for work, and the students, by the time they graduated out of this high school, they would’ve already had the experiences of working on the construction sites, which gives them an advantage, to get into the architecture majors if that is what they want to do, and they’d been trained in German too, so, there are, probably, a lot of students who went onto majoring in German after they graduate, and these students come out of this program, with a clearer view of what they want to do, unlike how the normal high school graduates, as they’d entered into college, they began exploring the areas of their interests, for these students, they ALREADY know the directions they are walking towards.