Yeah, uh, WHAT, would be, the purpose, of an education IF the world’s, coming to, an end??? Journeying, to find out the purposes of our own, beings, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
I work in an university, but, I’d feel, very worried over the higher-education realm here in Taiwan! Because the current means of higher education still uses the means of passing the knowledge along, lacking the trainings of students’ thought processes, the ability to cross into another area to solve the problems, and the structuring of the imaginative of our futures.
To break this cycle, the lecturers in university should NOT just “teach” the academics or counsel the students, helping them with the hard times of their lives, but also, there’s a need for a depth of designing the situational lessons, leading the students into the real world, so they can learn to solve the complex matters of the world, to help them evaluate their own thought processes, thus, coming up with more creative solutions to their own, problems in life. I can’t change the systems of education on my own, so I’d, started smaller, with the education of morality; and to do this, I’d, invited my freshman social worker major daughter along to the “1919-Moving the Love Along—Raising Funds to Help the Families in Need”, circling around Taiwan, to raise the funds.
The two of us used our feet, our eyes, to get immersed into the hardships of life those living in the countryside, those who are living under the poverty-stricken means, to get a depth of understanding of how the lower socioeconomic status individuals are living, hoping that my daughter can have the internal dialogue with her self through cycling, to try and understand WHY her major of social work is important to her. I’d invited her on this “I cycle, you donate” program, the reason behind it was from over fifty years ago, the former president of Yale University, Brewster’s lecture.
a road trip like this to find the self!
Back in the seventies, the U.S., in entering into the Vietnam War, causing the anti-war protests. In the times then, a lot of the students in college held great anxieties toward their futures. Fifty-two years ago, the then president of Yale, Brewster, gave a welcoming speech to the freshman class, he’d pointed out the shared question that all college students had back then——— “as the world is blazing up, where do the younger generations find their motives for their own education?”, Brewster did NOT answer this question directly in his lecture, he’d only, encouraged the freshman class to work hard to study in the university, to go to the libraries to write their papers, to follow their professors in the experiments, immersing themselves in their studies, fulfilling themselves, then, after they graduate, they will have what it takes, to change the world, to help solve the problems that the world will be facing for the futures.
But, is that, really, enough? Based off of the conditions for higher education here in Taiwan, are there any extra situational prerequisites to consider, for the students to be focused on their studies, to prepare for their own, futures? Especially, facing the MERS-CoV epidemic, as the world in under fire, we are all, pressing for the answers for the question—what’s the purpose of higher education for the younger generations And, how will the college students become independent on their own, disregarding what’s going on in the world around them, and just, buckled down on their researches and studies?
I’m glad, that my daughter persisted to that final mile, to leave that mark of her own life; while, the more than fifty riders of the troupe, also successfully gotten close to 2,000 of their loved ones, friends, to donate, and we’d raised over $13 million N.T.s in funds, to be used for the emergency cash for the families in need in the distant regions this year. The day the cycling group rode back to Taipei, my daughter got on the train straightaway for school, and following that, the finals. As I watched her go off, seeing her backside, as her father, I’d hoped, that these fourteen-days’ worth of cycling to raise the funds, this sort of a “situational education” can help my daughter find the purpose of her going to study in the university.
In the end, I want to invite all the readers who care too much about education in Taiwan, to enter into, this innovative line in education, to be the companions for the students who are currently undergoing that trial of fire, to take that huge step out into the futures, to discover, to find themselves, to change the world.
And so, this, is a journey, of finding oneself, to discover the purpose of one’s own life, of the majors we select in our university years, to figure out, how it’s, meaningful for us, to select the major we major in, and, this is a process of self-discovery, and, you don’t necessarily need to venture away from where you are, you can, look into your own psyche, but this father decided to use this trip of cycling around the island with his own daughter, to help her find the purpose of her major in the higher education years.