Independent Thinking

Independent thinking is a very important skill in life, we have to have creativity to be different from others and to bring our own ideas out to the world to make it a better place. If we want to succeed in life, we can’t see the world just in black and white, we have to think outside the box. Then, we can discuss our ideas with someone else, and that person can tell us their ideas, and this is where teamwork comes in. No one starts a company all by themselves, we have to discuss with others that have different ideas from us or else it would be extremely difficult.

Often times in Taiwan, it can seem like kids don’t really know how to do anything else except take tests and write worksheets. Kids also don’t really know how to prioritize their time because there are very few long-term projects. For example: Do math workbook p.44-p.45. We have to do every single homework assignment on our “communication book” and when we finish it, we have to check it off, then our parent has to sign our communication book to prove that we finished that homework assignment. Most of the assignments are due the very next day. If we don’t finish them, we will get in deep trouble by the teacher.

This is my communication book. First thing in the morning, we write the date, then copy the homework assignments (the pink words). When we go home we do our homework and check them off, then we have to write our diary and copy the "phrase of the day" (the blue words). There is also a really weird English phrase of the day above. Then my mom signs at the left bottom corner, and if she has any questions she can write them to the teacher. That's why it's called a communication book. When I go back to school the next day the teacher will look at my diary, and give me a stamp to prove he looked at it.

The parents seem to only care about grades and tests, so a lot of my classmates go to a cram school, where the teachers teach material that will later on be taught in school. They give even more worksheets and tests than the students already have. The cram school’s number one job is to get them a good test score. If they don’t get a good test score, parents will complain to the teachers. Therefore, the teachers have to emphasize test taking skills, rather than teaching new stuff. The parents mostly care about the homework that has to do with tests, they don’t really care about assignments like group presentations. A lot of my friends will get some sort of punishment, and some might even get beaten if their scores don’t meet their parents’ expectations. There is a girl in my class that said if she didn’t get a ninety-five percent or above, she’d have to spend the whole weekend studying at home and would not be able to go out. My other friend got a ninety-nine and was crying because she made a careless mistake and didn’t “improve”, so she was so scared she was going to get yelled at by her mom.

Another thing that is really different from my school in the US is my teacher ranks us from first place to last place after a series of tests. It’s so annoying because everyone is so competitive. The top four are always the same, but first place changes between them every once in a while, and they always try to fight for it. Out of the four people, there is one first place and the other three are always so jealous. Sometimes they even bond together to knock first place down, and then there will be a new first place, and they will do it again.

A lot of people want to be friends with kids who have good grades, I don’t know why. It’s also really annoying because I have to be extra careful when I take an English test. Of course, the English tests are super easy for me, but if I make a careless mistake and get a ninety-nine, and if someone gets a one hundred, everyone will think that that person’s English is better than mine. Again, they have a very black and white mindset, “if you get a high score you are good at that thing, if you get a low score you are bad at that thing.” But that’s not necessarily true.

This is one of my worksheets, this is what we get everyday.

Once, my social studies teacher asked, “How come you are not going to international school if you are going to go to college in the US?”

 “Because we want to learn Chinese and get a cultural experience,” I answered, which is how I answer every time someone asks me this question.

“But it’s not going to be useful for you because the tests for college are not going to be in Chinese.”

And then I didn’t know how to answer…

Another time we had a big science project and it could be on anything, I was really excited about it, so I found three of my friends and we started to discuss what our project was going to be about. Those three girls were all “A+ students” so I figured they would have a lot of cool ideas. But actually, they didn’t really discuss or have any ideas, anything I said they just said they didn’t care. Whenever we were supposed to go home and do our own part, often times they would say, “Sorry, I had to go to math class and then I had to do homework, so I had no time.” 

Then I thought “Isn’t this a homework assignment too?” They thought that the science project was last priority because it’s not in the tests, also they don’t really know how to complete it because it’s not that clear how to finish it. You can’t really “check it off”. Their parents think that too, so they were no help when we had to buy supplies, thanks to my dad who helped us buy all our suppliesJ. But our science project was still really hard to complete.

A lot of the education here is just about memorizing stuff, not about understanding it. For example, the science textbook just says what happens and not why it happens, and the problems that we have to write never ask why, so you can just memorize everything, but from my learning experience in the States we never memorized science. It’s the same with the other subjects, in a social studies test we had to write why global warming was happening, and I wrote a very complicated but logical answer, but the teacher gave me a zero just because what I wrote wasn’t in the textbook! Basically, you don’t have to pay much attention in class and just memorize what’s in the textbook to get a good score! But that’s not the point! The point is to understand because that’s not how the world works! I bet the teachers here think I am crazy because I have so many questions and I am consistently asking, “Why?Why?Why?”

Another example is that we don’t have actual art classes here. My interpretation of art is creating something that expresses your own thoughts and feelings, every piece of art is different. But in art class here, we are sewing a pillow right now, and the supplies come in a DIY kit, everyone gets the same kit, so everyone’s art is the same. But I wanted to change mine up a bit, and use some supplies from home, which made it hard for my teacher to grade.

This is the pillow kit

These are the instructions we have to follow.

In the past ten years Taiwan’s education system has been really trying to encourage independent thinking, they are improving, just very slowly. Last semester I got the “additional courses award” (like creativity, teamwork, and stuff like that).

There are good things about this type of education too though, sometimes in life you have to learn to sit still and do what your told even if you really really don’t want to. I feel like some of the kids in my school in America had a very hard time doing that…

I am really glad that I get to experience these two totally different types of education because there is no exact right or wrong, it’s just that the world is a big place, and everyone on earth has different thoughts and opinions. Sometimes we think something is wrong or bad, while others think it’s good. Generally speaking, when we are exposed to new types of learning we feel uncertain and maybe even scared or angry, but everything has its flaws, and too much of anything is bad.