Taiwanese academics is very different than what I’m used to back home. I’m still trying to get around some of the challenges I’m facing while studying in Taiwan. The teaching methods, the homework and class assignments, the interaction - or lack of - between students and professors, the interaction - or lack of - between students and students, are just quick examples. I think almost every English teacher blogger here in Taiwan or the ones I read in China has written at some point or another about the Taiwanese education system, some more critical, some more accepting, but that’s usually from a teacher’s perspective.
In the few weeks that I’ve been here and have been talking to fellow Taiwanese students I’m still finding it difficult to understand how they do it all. All of the Taiwanese I talk to are highly intelligent, knowledgeable, modern, open, some also outgoing and noisy, but when it comes to university, classes and professors it all comes down to about the same symptom - an unbelievable amount of time spent studying, restudying, preparing for future study, or doing homework.
The symptom is usually linked to an unbelievable pressure coming from the parents which is interlinked with an even more extreme self perfectionist pressure. The strange thing about this perfectionism is that it can not be acknowledged as such, due to some face-humility kind of cultural issue. When asked “wow, so, do you consider yourself a good hard-working student?”, they reply with a range of puzzling responses - “No, just average”, “Not good enough”, “Not as good as I want to be”, “Hope maybe I can be one day” etc. When I confront them with the contrast between what they describe about their study life and their evaluation of it, it usually comes back to the parents who keep pressuring their kids to study harder and take less student clubs, maybe have no romantic partners or even dates, do less on the weekend etc.
From my limited view on things so far from the very small sample that I have, I’ve noticed some obvious patterns of pressure. Here’s a basic outline:
Think it’s the same everywhere else? I disagree, but I’d be interested in hearing your opinions.
Before concluding this first part, here’s an interesting article I ran into a while ago which I thought was way off when I read it. Now, it might make a bit more sense :
One in four students depressed and need treatment: foundation
TAIPEI, Taiwan — According to a recent survey by the John Tung Foundation (JTF) entitled “Taiwanese college student depression behavior,” has indicated that one out of every four students is in need of treatment for depression.
The survey is based on 6,198 valid surveys of students from 58 different colleges all over Taiwan, with results among both male and female participants being almost equally divided.
“The number of students in need of professional treatment for depression has gone up. There are 344,000 students suffers from this issue,” said Hwang Jenn-tai, the chairman of John Tung Foundation.
“25.7% of students are in need this year, in comparison to 24.1% and 24.3% in the last two years,” he said. [...]
While this article is more about Taiwanese not using counseling services, I think the link is obvious. I’m not saying ALL Taiwanese students are depressed, I’m not saying they’re all over-worked, but what I am trying to say is that - in comparison it might be worse than what I know from back home. Hopefully, more on this topic later.
David on Formosa » Links 22 October 2007 | October 22nd, 2007 at 9:14 am #
[...] FiLi on the pressures faced by Taiwanese students. [...]