Category Archives: Messed Up Values

The system still needs to adjust to better functioning, because the switch from physical disciplining that this country is used to for the past few decades is suddenly switched to no physical or verbal reprimands toward the students, and so, how are the instructors going to adapt to this shift suddenly?  They can’t, and they get complained by the students and parents for doing what they’re supposed to, no wonder many are losing their drives to keep going as educators in this country, because the system doesn’t protect the instructors, because education had shifted toward customer-service orientation…off of the Front Page Sections, translated…

The recent incident of an elementary school instructor in Kaohsiung committing suicide, shocked the country; also, there was the case of the student throwing a pencil box toward the instructor, causing the thigh of the instructor to get scratched to bleeding by the protractor in the pencil box.  These cases shouldn’t be treated as isolated incidents, but the long-term tension that is there in the classrooms in the schools.  The society made the demands that the instructors catch every child that falls, but, who is there, to catch the school, instructors?

Taiwan had bid farewell to the authoritarian styles of teaching, shifted toward focusing more on the students’ feelings, positive reinforcement in education, and emotional accompaniment, this is, progress.  In the past, shaming is a method of teaching, obedience to the teachers should not be returned.  And yet, the problem is, did we go toward the opposite polarity, of our instructors no longer dared teach the students right from wrong?  The instructors’ reasonable reminders, misconstrued as “improper discipline, with the rules of the classroom, used as the filing of complaints by the students and their parents, in this kind of atmosphere, no wonder the educators are leaning more towards saving their own, skins.

“The educators from the past feared that the students can’t learn, the instructor now, fear that they upset their, students”, the line expressed the entry level instructors’ helplessness, hitting the turn toward the wrong of the schools’ functioning.  The instructors of now not just needed to prepare the lessons, to teach the lessons, to grade the assignments, they also need to help the students with their emotional management, reply to the parents’ constant messaging them, to file the paperwork for school, to even facing the online public trials, the schools’ investigative procedures too.  Some of the parents viewed education as a part of the “service industry”, the no-cost to who complained, also became a source of the educators’ stresses.  The educators not just needed to interact with the students face-to-face, they also need to be on their toes over the instructor-parent conflicts that may happen at any moment.

We can’t simplify the problem into the instructors wanting authority of the classrooms back, nor can we misconstrue the rights of the students into the instructors should never make demands of the students.  Education on a full scope, should protect the right to learn of the students, the right to be educated, along with the autonomy of the instructors’ professionalism too.  “Positive education” is not indulging the students, “emotional companionship” doesn’t mean  taking away the boundaries.  The children need to be understood, but they also need to learn to respect, sense of responsibility, and the rules too; the educators need the compassions, also need the systems to back them up, to show the their deserved, respect.

And so, the government and the school should set up a safety net for the instructors, and also psychological supports for the educators.  On the disputes of student-instructor conflicts or the disputes between the parents and the instructors, the schools should not demand that the instructors to deal with these matters on their own, but to intervene, to start up the psychological, the executive and the legal assistance; on the malicious or unreasonable complaints, the filter of the degrees of actions should also be set up, to prevent the schools from turning into the “scenes of the crimes”.  Reducing the office hours should not be a motto, the time of the school instructors should be returned back to the students, and the teaching of the classes.

Before the systems are completely set up and functional, the instructors should also have that sense of self-preservation, to save the communication records, to avoid handling the high-risk conflicts, taking advantage of the support network provided, the educators’ unions, the teachers’ guild, counseling resources.  Teachers should not excuse “grit our teeth down hard” as an act of professionalism, nor should they be forced to partake the role of the savior either.  The parents and the society needs to come to the understanding that education is a shared responsibility of the parents AND the educators, that it’s not an opposition of adversaries.

A friendly campus shouldn’t just show kindness to the students, but also the instructors too.  Before demanding that the educators give selflessly, the systems need to provide enough support, protection and dignity to the educators; only when the educators feel protected and that they have their dignities, will they have enough strengths, to take care of every student in the classrooms.

And so, this is what education became, service-oriented, and now, the students, the parents can file complaints against the educators for whatever reasons, and these educators who are working hard, to educate, to instill the right values in the students are getting burned at the stakes, and this is the problem, with the systems, because this country is heading into the humanistic measures of education, doing away with the corporal punishment means, and the country is still in transition on this, with the adaptation, adjustment period right now, everything is still a trial-by-error basis, because the systems are still on its way to becoming fully functional, and, the teachers get lost in the tramples in the process, and many of these originally passionate school instructors, after they see what happened to their fellow teachers, would lose their drive as educators.

It’s the systems that isn’t changing quickly enough, and that’s why, so many of the educators in the country are, switching tracks, because working in the schools is a thankless job, you put in the work, but you don’t get enough returns from the amount of hard work you are putting, in.