On May 10, Mother’s Day, a groundbreaking exhibition at Huashan 1914 Creative Park attracted crowds to stop and look. The posters outside the exhibit featured large images of Confucius, with the words: “2015 Naughty Education Fest.”
“More than 2000 years ago Confucius developed the concept of ‘education for all.’ It’s well suited to our ‘naughty spirit.’” Ozzie Su, the festival’s founder, says that education shouldn’t be confined to certain models but should exist instead in a broader imaginative space. In recent years a variety of new concepts about creative education and flipped classrooms have gradually been gaining exposure. It’s that trend that led to this event, where like-minded individuals got together to share their experiences.
Pop songs in Chinese textbooks
As the concept of “flipped classrooms” has gained ground, voices have also risen in criticism, leading to heated debates in the field of education. For instance, Shih Ying, chairperson of the Humanistic Education Foundation, believes that the strengths of traditional education shouldn’t be thrown out lock, stock and barrel.
Removed from this policy debate, many teachers quietly combine the methods of traditional and creative education in their own ways, blazing innovative approaches to classroom education.
For instance, walking by the classroom of Yang Zhilang, who has been teaching at Changhua County’s Lu Ming Junior High School for 18 years, you can often hear the sound of the teacher and his students singing together. But this isn’t music class: it’s Chinese class.
“I teach Chinese,” Yang explains, “so when students don’t work hard at studying Chinese, it makes me really mad.” To strengthen students’ memories and understanding, he began to bring students’ favorite pop songs into the classroom in 1997.
Yang compares pop singer Jay Chou’s “Fragrance of Rice” with the Qing-Dynasty poet Shen Fu’s “Childhood Stories,” and Taiwanese chanteuse Zhang Xiuqing’s “Railway Station” with Li Bai’s “Seeing Off Meng Haoran at the Yellow Crane Tower.” He likes to make connections between contemporary songs and classical poems.
There are even echoes in the writing itself. For instance, take this line of verse from the Book of Odes, which describes how objects can evoke memories of a person: “Blue, blue is your collar / It has captured my heart…. Blue, blue is your belt / It has captivated my mind.” Pop singer Winnie Hsin’s “Scent” deals with similar emotions: “I miss your laugh. I miss your jacket. I miss your white socks and their smell of you.” These two works arouse similar states of mind. When students can connect the two, a poem from thousands of years ago no longer seems so far removed from their lives.
After each lesson, the students are asked to write in the classroom a 250–600-word essay, which hones their writing abilities. For many years Yang’s students have performed well on the essay sections of their exams.
Building the library
Devoted to teaching, Yang has won countless prizes. In 2014 he won a Ministry of Education teaching award. “But I’m really not a particularly outstanding teacher,” he says. “I’m just hardworking.”
Because the school is located in a remote rural village, it lacks library resources, so every month Yang spends his own money to buy books. “So long as I feel that the books will help the students in some way, or if they are by authors we have covered in class, I’ll buy them for the school.” Yang says that reading helps students to better understand the world. After 14 years, the small library at the back of the school has accumulated a collection of more than 4000 volumes.
So as to help the students here overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds, Yang has established a strict reading schedule that makes use of the free time students have in their days at school: English picture books and bilingual magazines in the early study hall and Chinese essays in the first five minutes of class. When he is correcting tests, the children read extracurricular texts. Lunch time is for reading newspapers, and the class before school lets out is devoted to reading magazines or watching educational videos. There is substantial reading over the course of a day.
Whenever students finish a book, they face an oral test from Yang. “Who turned out to be the murderer?” “Who is the person the author misses 1000 miles away?” With these simple questions he can ascertain if the students actually read the books, and it prevents students from slacking.
Yang, who is very strict in class, doesn’t relax after school lets out. As for children with troubled home lives, who find it difficult to concentrate on reading away from school, he brings them to his home after school to monitor them personally. He has even set up a special study for them, complete with air conditioner and beds. Sometimes, when the students are reading there late, they end up spending the night.
Unlike the free-spirited and lively images projected by other creative education teachers, Yang has a strict, even Spartan, teaching style. Yet students aren’t afraid of him. Rather, they affectionately call him Papa Yang and have privately organized birthday parties for him. “The decade-plus I’ve put into teaching,” says Yang, “has been rewarded with boundless love from the children.” Yang is single, but his students will forever be his children.
Bringing classical literature to life
Unlike the serious Yang Zhilang, Chen Wei-ren, an assistant professor of general education at Yuan Ze University, describes himself as “a totally zhai teacher.”
The term zhai (literally “residential”) is borrowed from the Japanese otaku, meaning someone who is obsessive about anime, manga and the like. It describes homebodies that spend a lot of time reading graphic novels or playing video games. One look at the plastic models and action figurines on the table in Chen’s office, and you realize that the term fits. Yet, in addition to these enthusiasms, he also has a great love for Chinese classical literature. He’s extremely well versed in the most ancient of Chinese classics, as well as the major Chinese novels that first came into vogue during the Ming Dynasty.
These two interests allow Chen to leap back and forth in time to make mental connections, and they have been the inspiration for his best self-designed teaching materials.
In the first scene of One Piece, a manga novel, the main character Monkey D. Ruffy jumps out of a barrel of spirits. It’s not unlike how the Monkey King Sun Wukong burst out of a rock in Journey to the West. Chen goes on to say that Ruffy can elongate his rubber arm at will, similar to how Sun Wukong wields his magic staff. In the manga the main character and his companions embark on a great journey at sea, looking for their compatriots as they search for treasure. It’s akin to the Monkey King’s westward journey to find Buddhist scriptures. What’s more, Ruffy’s first name is Monkey and Sun Wukong is actually a monkey.
The students are always surprised: Who would have thought that One Piece, a much-loved manga, would have so much in common with that old book Journey to the West? “That’s the charm of the classics,” says Chen.
The I Ching and the unpredictability of love
If you unshackle the classics from their onerous reputations as “serious literature,” students can take new approaches to understanding them. This is what Chen takes the greatest satisfaction in. By guiding students to find connections between classical literature and modern life, he also helps to foster their motivation to read.
Even in the case of the I Ching (Book of Changes), which is riddled with arcanely academic and esoteric mysteries, Chen has a bag of tricks to entice students to read the entire book.
The I Ching was created out of the ancient practice of divining through trigrams. Based on recorded observations about changes in the natural world, it made use of the eight trigrams to explain people’s relationships to the environment. “After thousands of years of revisions and amendments, its wisdom remains well suited to life today,” says Chen. No academic course poses more difficulty for college students than romantic love. If students can apply the wisdom of the I Ching to their quest for love, they can put themselves at an advantage.
By making connections to students’ daily lives, there will constantly be new understandings about classical literature. Chen’s approach has prompted hundreds of students to eagerly enroll in his class every semester. Striving to keep up to date, Chen reads the latest manga and watches the latest dramatic serials on television featuring casts of young idols. For him, perusing these entertainments qualifies as work.
A broader education
With the rise of the Internet and rapid developments in information technology, knowledge can be disseminated widely and through various channels, and the meaning of education is growing broader.
Whether you go on the Internet to engage in self-study, are homeschooled or are enrolled in a conventional educational institution, the purpose of education is to enable students to understand more and to see farther.
Many questions in life lack definitive answers, and there are no methodological certainties in education. Categories are breaking down, and a variety of approaches are being tried. In truth, all aspects of life provide materials awaiting exploitation by educators. In Taiwan there are more than a few super teachers like those described above. They can be found blazing their own trails in every corner of the island.
The 2015 Naughty Education Fest eschewed the conventional to celebrate a variety of innovative approaches to education. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Who decides what’s naughty, and what’s nice? The 2015 Naughty Education Fest highlighted the current state of education and showcased innovative approaches to learning.
Added design elements can give Chinese textbooks some of the artistic aura of a picture book. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Added design elements can give Chinese textbooks some of the artistic aura of a picture book.
Are only students who get good grades good students? There’s more than one path to an education, and more than one way to answer many important questions. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Athletics and reading are both important parts of a general education. There’s a big wide world out there beyond the classroom’s walls.
Athletics and reading are both important parts of a general education. There’s a big wide world out there beyond the classroom’s walls.
Only with the learning acquired through education can students face the challenges that await them after graduation.
