On education of children in the distant-regions, the observations of a school instructor who’d worked in both, the city and the distant regions, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
The instructor, Wu from Mado Elementary School in Tainan had worked in the especially distant small school, she’d observed, that the children in the distant region schools lacked the stimulations from the external environments, their lives are, closed-in, while the parents in the cities fulfilled all the materialistic needs of their young, but not taught them how to live life. Four years ago, as Chiu just passed her teacher’s certifications exams, for the first six months, she was transferred to a distant-region elementary school in Pingdong from Taipei, she’d found, that the environment was, totally, different too.
Wu had once worked in the Le-Li Elementary School of Hsinbei City for twenty-two years, due to family, she’d, transferred back into her hometown, because there was a lacking in the teaching post in Tainan, she’d, started working in the only especially distant-region small school, and she got her wakeup call because of a few typhoons, and decided to transfer back into the city to teach in the elementary schools again.
Wu told, that the children from the distant-region schools lacked the stimulation from the outside world, their lives were closed in, back then in the Chinese classes, she’d brought up the subject of Linsanity, but the children only watched baseball, couldn’t understand a thing she was teaching, lacked that connection; to the lesson on the Himalayas, how climbing up to the peaks, needing to use both hands and feet, and the children asked her, “We live on the mountains too, but we don’t need to use our arms and our legs to climb up the slopes!”
Four years ago, Wu transferred back to Mado, with twenty-eight students in her class, and, even though it was a whole lot less than the thirty, forty students from over a decade ago, but modern day parents are too addicted to their own high-tech devices, and only tried to fulfill the children’s materialistic wants, not taught the children how to experience life, and so, she had her students keep the diaries, step by step, taking the students, to experience the world.
Four years ago, Chiu taught in the elementary school in the city of Taipei, six months ago, she was transferred to the distant-region school in Pingdong, she’d found, that there are the resources available in the schools in the bigger cities, but not much freedom in curricula, that the children who fell behind feel the pressures. The children in the distant regions don’t have the fundamentals, some of the students had to help out with the household chores, but, the children in the distant regions are mostly passionate about life, and optimistic, it’s something that you don’t see often in the larger cities.
Chiu also told, that the children in the distant-regions aren’t as well-off as the students in the city, they’re more optimistic in nature, outgoing, with that curiosity for everything they come into contact with, most are well-behaved, courteous, and, eager to learn. Most of the parents locally believed, that their children only needed the basic levels of mandated school years, and they can come home and take over the families’ businesses, they’d not made higher demands on the academic performances, but, if the lessons learned were accumulated from earlier on, then the possibilities are endless for each and every child, and the children will have more opportunities, more choices open for them to select from in their futures when they grow up.
And so, this showed of the differences in the levels of understand what learning is, of what lessons should the students learn in school, and in the cities, it’s more academically oriented, while in the distant regions, it’s more, living-oriented, and, there should be a middle ground, where the education of the cities schools meshes in with the education of the distant-region school, to get that, delicate balance.
Life, the Obstacle Course 