Test taking skills v.s. Life skills; What do we really need to succeed?

It was only a few months into to teaching that I realized, excessive studying is not actually beneficial to my students. In my highest level English class, a small group of 12-13 year olds, we were learning about careers when I asked each student, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Expecting to hear the usual answers of any teen, singers and movie stars, all I heard back in response was “Teacher, I don’t know.” Nearly all my students replied the same, except one who answered incredulously, “Teacher we don’t have time to think about these things!” How sad, I thought at the time, that these students don’t even have the free time to daydream about becoming the next Miley Cyrus, let alone a doctor or scientist.

Over my course of time here in Taiwan, I’ve come to see that indeed these students don’t have time for daydreaming. In school from 7:30 in the morning until 10 at night, these kids are cramming 14 hours a day to survive in a world where only passing the test matters. Meanwhile year after year, in the U.S. we hear the same statistics; U.S. students are falling farther and farther behind their Asian counterparts in science and math. And with all the evidence showing that Americans are performing poorly in international education tests, the fears that we’ll see our American jobs start to slip away overseas in 20 years become more and more realistic.

So while we continue to feel these statistics bear down on us and begin reevaluating our education system, I beg to argue, is a good test score all you need to become a success in the working world?

Here in Taiwan, by age 12 nearly all kids have attended ‘buxiban’ or cram school for at least a few years. Cram school is just that, a school where children come to study more for the seemingly endless exams they have to take to get into junior high school, high school and college. It is here that most Taiwanese kids spend their evenings, from when public school ends at 4 p.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. at night, only to return home and attend to homework until midnight. Cram schools exist for a range of subjects here in Taiwan including science, math, history, Japanese and English with most students taking a variety of subjects in a given week. Practice tests are taken repeatedly at these schools with grades lower than an 80 to 90, resulting in an automatic redo. It is a culture of test taking and it is no wonder that Taiwanese students repeatedly score among the highest in the world.

Yet when I reflect on the skills needed to find success in my adult life, I hardly believe that skills in memorization or in test taking came in handy as much as the other skills honed outside of test taking. In fact, I’ve found that social skills are among the most important in landing a job. Straight out of college, a good friend of mine applied to a highly coveted position in the technology department of a large bank. Although he had good enough grades to get his foot in the door, it was his first remark that made him stand out from all the other applicants, “So how about them Yankees?” He was hired immediately and remains there to this day. What ultimately set him apart from his better educated peers and persuaded his interviewers to hire him came not from his hours spent studying, but from the confidence he grew while playing football in high school and his casual demeanor perfected through so many opportunities to socialize.

Problem solving, creativity, patience, determination, a competitive drive and social skills were essential for me in not only securing my first real job in New York, but also in keeping it. These skills were learned on the sports field, in the art room and during many of my extracurricular activities that students in Taiwan forgo altogether in order to spend more time studying.

And since all their waking hours are spent studying, most students here will not have time to even think of applying for a part time job until they reach college. By college graduation, it is likely they will have only ever held one or two jobs. Had I not experienced painful monotony of refolding sweaters while working in retail, the verbal abuse involved in telemarketing, or the pressure of working as an assistant for a pregnant paralegal, I imagine I’d have lasted about 2 days on my first job in NY. So as my kids fret away over a poor grade of 89, I fear these young students of Taiwan will graduate college without ever experiencing the misery of bagging groceries and having never had the chance to dream for something bigger and better out of life.

Perhaps most importantly, not only do they not have time for an after school sport, or a part time job, but they lack the spare time to let their imaginations run wild, for dreams to form and creativity to bloom. Though we can learn much from an Asian students’ work ethic, diligence, and discipline, I think there is something sad about a culture where children’s dreams and curiosity are set aside. While the critics fret about losing jobs overseas in the near future, I think we can rest easy knowing the U.S. holds a unique culture of creativity, bravado and idealism where big ideas, new technologies and innovations can come to life.

When it comes to preparing our children for the future, perhaps there’s more to consider than simply measuring test scores. A well- rounded child is like a perfect cookie recipe, too much of any one ingredient will ruin the batch. So before we start to increase the hours in the classroom, perhaps we can think about the importance of letting kids be kids and not take for granted the lessons taught outside of school. And to truly improve our education system, we can learn from Asia, not by copying the amount of time in the classroom, but by emulating the care and energy invested in each child’s education by the parents, the teachers and children themselves.

A mom takes her child from public school to buxiban as the sun is starting to go down

High school students end class at 4 and make their way home for a snack before attending buxiban classes at night

Reading Between the Lines in a World Where One Can't Read

It’s funny how blatant illiteracy makes life twice as hard as necessary. Yes life is hard for even those of us who can read, but most of you out there don’t walk into a restaurant and have to order the only thing you recognize on the written menu, 牛肉(cow meat) and then have to eat some surprise curried beef innards because you couldn’t read the 10 other characters in the description. I’m lucky though, because I’m a pretty carefree individual. Eating beef innards is the least of my worries and can actually be pretty good sometimes. And for the most part in Taiwan, English is everywhere, pictures everywhere else and when in doubt a very kind, bright Taiwanese person will be there to offer help when asked.

I’ve only had a few occasions of my illiteracy bringing any kind of real embarrassment. One time at my gym, it was about 10 at night and as I finished up my work out I casually breezed by a huge sign in Chinese at the entrance of the locker room without giving it a second thought. I took a nice long shower and relaxed in the fact that I, for once, had the locker room to myself. And since I don’t own a full length mirror at my house, I took advantage of the huge mirrors and empty locker room to openly check out my own butt and see if it was actually getting smaller or if my pants are just getting bigger somehow. Mid self butt check out a very, very surprised looking carpenter rounds the corner only to see me, in my underwear, checking out my own ace. Honestly, I think he was more embarrassed than me. He’s probably never seen a white girl’s booty, or really any booty (this is Asia people). Only then did I realize that reading would have been helpful. He immediately left and didn’t come back, probably reporting me to the manager.

Pathetically, that was the 2nd time I’d embarrassed myself at my gym, the other time being when I called them by accident thinking it was my travel agent and asked them when I could come pick up my ticket to Thailand. Instead of rightfully telling me I was an idiot, they transferred me around to a number of people at the company and set up a time for me to come in and come get my ticket. I think we both had some kind of communication issues going on. Needless to say when I realized what I had done (you know after my actual travel agent called me and told me to come get my tickets) I had to call them back and apologize and explain, that no I didn’t need to come to the gym to pick up my ticket to Thailand after all. All of this wouldn’t have happened if I could just understand the first thing they said when I called, “Hello, this is True Fitness.” Oh well.

Another recent illiteracy problem came shortly after my birthday when a great influx of mail came my way. Basically I don’t give out my address because I don’t really know it. There are numbers that go in places that seem wrong and all the doors surrounding my door on the street are also number 11, so I don’t get how it works. But I gave out my address to a few friends and family and surprisingly had packages delivered to me on my birthday. It would have been great if it was just that simple, I open my mailbox and there is a big box of birthday joy for me, but no, this is Taiwan.

Instead I have two slips all in Chinese with my name on them. My roommate luckily translates it for me and tells me one says to go to a post office a 10 minute bus ride away and the other he’s not sure what it is (and he is Taiwanese so you already know that’s bad when he can’t understand it). The next day, I go to the post office and wait in line at the counter for my turn. I get to the counter and the poor girl starts speaking a mile a minute and pointing for me to go out the door. Apparently I’m at the wrong pick up place. So I walk around the corner to where I think she is pointing into an open truck bay and give the slip to another postal worker who tells me to go to a deserted parking lot. I, of course, follow blindly to where he points. There another worker points to an elevator in a building across the way and keeps saying “sun lo”, which I actually understand as floor three. So then I enter this vacated warehouse of a building and take the elevator to floor three where an old, disheveled and braless woman takes my slip and points at my name several times. I show her my passport and ARC card, but she still seems uncertain of my identity for some reason. Probably because this is where most people come to sell their kidneys to the black market and not to try to pick up packages. But she disappears for a bit and comes back after a few minutes with a box covered in my sister’s hand writing. I am relieved.

Perhaps too relieved because then I pull out the second slip and try to ask her what it is and where do I go to get it. After what seems like an endless amount of speech that I don’t understand, I give up and just say in Chinese “yes, yes correct, good ok, yes. I know I know.” I fool her good. She writes down an address and gives it to me. I assume this is where I need to go to get my other gift, and by golly, it’s my birthday and I want my presents.

Knowing I'm on a few minutes away from ripping open another gift, I hop in a cab and head to the other post office. I am happy to see it is a post office branch when we arrive and not some greasy fish market where an uncertified back alley surgeon is waiting to take my liver. The next 20 minutes is the same as before, walking from office, to parking lot, to truck bay, to inner office, to room of confused and staring post office workers. There finally a very nice gentleman takes me aside and reads my slip. He makes a few phone calls and comes back to me, in perfect English stating “your package will arrive tomorrow.” Oh… thanks. But I work at that time, I tell him and then he personally schedules it to arrive on a Sunday when I’m free, even though they are closed on Sundays. Then he takes my cell phone number and says they’ll call me when they’re close to my house. Then a few hours later he calls me just to remind me that in the future I can just call him instead of coming all the way into his office to ask about a package. I was mortified. If only I could read!

Sadly for the most part, I’ve become quite tolerant of my illiterate status. I get on buses not knowing where their going although their map is clearly outlined in front of me. I say to myself as soon as the sun is at my back, I’ll be headed east and should get off immediately. Then once on the street hassle some poor doorman as to where the heck I am. Amazingly this usually works out for me ok. My foreign friends and I all travel like this, like some kind of retarded herd of humans, wandering aimlessly, yet we always end up at our destination somehow. Well most of us. My friend Michael has a penchant for taking trains that go everywhere but his intended destination including ones that are express 2 hour long rides to the other end of the island.

In many ways my lack of understanding is beneficial to me on a daily basis. I have no idea what my bad kids are saying in class. They could be telling me they hate me and think I smell like rotten dairy products, but I’d never know so I treat them much nicer because of it. And when I watch TV I have no problem toning out commercials or ignoring those annoying typhoon warnings that run across the screen. And since I can’t read the advertising on the subways, I make up my own commentary to go with the imagery provided for breast enlarging electric bras and fat burning pills, “With each zap to your boob, you are slowly increasing your chances of death by stroke while simultaneously making your curves curvier!” “Feel the burn! Not from exercising, but from the pain unleashed by thousands of fat eating tadpoles naturally hungry for your belly fat!” Life, I find, is much more entertaining this way.

So illiteracy may have its downfalls, but for the most part one can survive without mishap fairly easily. Maybe it’s my incredible skills of deduction, or my ability to successfully guesstimate with surprising accuracy that makes living life illiterate bearable. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that when one must survive off of the kindness of others, Taiwan will never be in short supply of a friendly face.

Home is where your pig is

I haven’t been studying Chinese very long, but I’m slowly falling in love with it, while slowly losing my mind trying to learn it. It has to be one of the most challenging (if not the most challenging) languages on the planet. Props to all of those out there who after years of studying can now read a newspaper. I may never accomplish this feat. And although I am more often than not frustrated at determining the difference between sounds and tones that my ears cannot distinguish and my mouth cannot mimic, or trying desperately to understand how the exact same sound and exact same tone can mean multiple words solely based on context, I am somehow learning! I can even hold riveting conversations with cab drivers about why Taiwanese boys don’t like American women (you know, we’re too big, we’re too tall, etc.).

But as if speaking and hearing were not hard enough, it’s the reading and writing that I find is taking up most of my time. As my roommate put it, “and you wonder why Chinese people all have bad eyes, just look at what we have to read!” He’s correct, there’s no way to really read all the thousands of unique characters without (at least in the beginning) straining your neck and eyes bent over, trying to differentiate all the strokes, dots and lines that make up the Chinese lexicon, all of which need to be memorized in order to determine meaning.

So here I am, bent over my desk like a cripple, reading and scrawling away at something that looks like a 4 year old wrote it, probably worse than a 4 year old, but feeling rather accomplished. And I’ve actually been finding memorizing characters more and more enjoyable as I come to learn why each character looks as complicated as they do. I think there’s something beautiful about a language that expresses ‘be careful’ by saying “small heart” because if you had a small heart, you’d be very careful with it, wouldn’t you? And I love that the character for good, is the image of a woman with a baby. Home is a roof with a pig under it and friend is two hands clasped together. To see is a hand over an eye, to want of course involves the depiction of a woman, to have is a hand holding meat and the character for mother boils down to just a pair of nipples. And my favorite, although it doesn’t look, but sounds the same, is the word for difficult which is ‘nan,’ the same sound that is used for man. How perfectly clear.

At some point, I’m sure the characters will stop being silly depictions and sounds will become unique and distinct to me. But that probably won’t be until I’m much older, married to my difficult man, living under a roof with a pig and tending to my motherly duties with my nipples bared, yelling, “Small heart! Small heart!”

Mother

Do you see those sideways nips?

Home

The top line means roof, the character below means pig, and this is how you get 'home'

When life makes it hard to blog

I know, I know its been 5 weeks since I've written. I should have warned anyone who actually wanted to read this on regular basis (yes all four of you) I can't commit to my blog. I love writing, I do, but I'm easily distracted by things like alcohol, and working 6 days a week. So I apologize. I promise I'll try harder, bla bla bla (or as they say here, bra bra bra hehe). I also have gotten to a point where I'm beginning to feel embarrassed every time I order some steaming delicious dumplings and whip out my camera as soon as they land on the table. I suppose I want to stop being the tourist I am and be a real resident of society, but who am I kidding? Between the freckles and blatant illiteracy I think they'll always call my bluff. But speaking of dumplings, Mike and I ate some ridiculously good Japanese curry dumplings (I have no photo, so you have to take my word for it). I promised him when I got home I'd try to recreate them in our kitchen. That'll be a whole 'nother blog in itself. Ok the long awaited new entry is below. More to come soon too!

A student's life in Asia

The life of a child here in Taiwan is led by rules, discipline and honor. The pressure I see bestowed upon these children daily is seriously incredible. My best students rise daily at 5am to begin their day of studying, school, extra school (buxiban) and homework, not returning home until 10pm at night. The hours they spend at home are busy with homework and studying for a single exam that will dictate the direction of the rest of their life upon its completion. This is no SAT, this is the high school entrance exam all Taiwanese kids must take. The results of this test will determine what high school they can attend which will determine which college, which will determine their future jobs. The results of this exam will also be the pride or chagrin of their parents. Mind you, these are the parents that they hardly see, who are off working hours upon hours to pay for their child's extensive education.

It is the end of the summer and summer vacation is coming to a close. Yet, most students have no stories of trips to the beach or picnics in the park, but only a summer spent in extra buxiban courses, at educational camps and doing more intense studying for their upcoming exam.

Since when did Asia decide that the responsibility free portion of life be taken away from their young population? I'm not sure, but this intense focus on education permeates society, and is now a way of life for nearly everyone except those too poor to afford it.

I've always cherished my childhood memories, my summers spent care-free, running around in the sunshine and outside in the sandbox all day. I'd return home wonderfully tanned and covered in filth to a big home cooked meal and make plans for what tomorrow's adventure would be. Sure, I had hardships too. After all I used to have to clean the bathroom and weed my garden in order to get my weekly allowance, which was eagerly spent with a bike trip to the town grocery store. Candy was a quarter and I could fill my bag to the brim with Fun Dip, the childhood equivalent to cocaine. But mostly I spent my days adventuring throughout nature, studying any new bug I came across and playing in the stream with my dog. My family would go to the lake, or out on the boat and some summers I even spent learning to ride horses and taking pottery lessons. I cannot begin to imagine the lessons I learned while playing in the neighbors cornfield, losing myself in nature and feeling overwhelmed by the beauty of the big blue sky above me. Perhaps with every breath of fresh air I was reminded of my small and inconsequential existence in this massive world, of the bigger things, the more important things in life. Or perhaps, more likely, I didn't learn a damn thing out there in that corn field except not to run around the day after the manure was spread. But at least I was allowed to experience that feeling of freedom, the lack of responsibility and time to explore on my own without dictation.

These kids will never have that, they will never have endless days to explore all that is around them, through touching, smelling and playing, not studying. They'll never get to let their curiosity run wild and guide them to learn about what they choose. Arts, sports and music are pushed to the wayside here, for there's not enough time in the day to study for 15hrs and do a sport as well.

One of my favorite students, Linda, is a perfect example of how different our two worlds are. She slowly shuffles her way into class every Tuesday night, 20 minutes late, looking disheveled and exhausted. She tries not to fall asleep as class ends at 9. She studies hard and has good sense of humor, so she does well in class considering her lack of energy. This weekend she graduated her 16th level of English studies. While other students posed for photos with their diplomas, she helped me clean up and when asked how she'd celebrate her graduation, she said she'd be studying all weekend, and every weekend, until her high school entrance exam was taken. This exam doesn't take into account that she's a budding female Tiger Woods or that she's woken up at the crack of dawn for the last year to fit all of her studies, including extra English class and practice into each day. This exam will only acknowledge what she has memorized at that moment, on that day. She said that her mother has never really approved of her love for golf and that scholarships for that kind of thing aren't really available, so its a waste in most respects. But its the one thing she loves, so she'll keep making it fit into her schedule as along as she can. Once she finds out what high school she tests into, she may find that playing golf is no longer feasible for her. She won't return to English class this new semester and as sad as I am to see her go, I hope that she can make some use of the extra four hours a week she gains, by sleeping or playing golf, but I know she'll most likely spend it studying.

And to think, when I was her age, the most pressing matter of the day was what to wear on my first day of high school, and where the hell my locker was.

Even at a younger age like 2 or 3, when I was probably still in diapers and crying for my mommy, Taiwanese kids are already feeling pressure to perform. Of the 20 2-3 year olds I teach daily, nearly all of them can take off and put on their own shoes, feed themselves (this entails pulling out their own bowl and spoon, cleaning them off after and putting them away), go to the bathroom themselves (I mean it, no help wiping even) and are responsible for themselves in more ways than most 6 year olds in the U.S. are. Currently they all know their colors, numbers, alphabet and emotions, all this in a second language. They come in each morning stating "I am angry" or "Today is Sunny and hot". All of which blows me away everyday. To think a child not even up to my waist can do all of these things is incredible to me. But to the parents, it's just what they expect of their pride and joy and many expect even more. One student's father has told me if she can memorize and recite the alphabet clearly (of her 2nd language, at AGE 2) she can go to Disneyland. She knows everything but forgets the letter X sometimes. Another parent complains to me hat his 2 year old doesn't fully understand the meaning behind the full sentences she's learned like, "This is a zebra." As if I could teach a 2 year old what it means to 'be' let alone what it means to be a zebra. Its absolutely insane, but alas, this is Taiwan.

You'd think the children of Asia would be on the verge of mental collapse, that the pressures placed on them by society and their families would be too great for their small shoulders to carry, but they know no different and all their friends do exactly the same. Most children even display an innate sense of maturity, that motivates them to learn a new language no matter how much extra homework and studying it involves. Instead of crying or whining over the long hours of studying, they find joy in a good grade or a classroom friendship. They find time to pass notes and discuss crushes and I've even seen them laugh until tears rolled down their cheeks. Amazingly, they're not unhappy children. In fact, I think they're very happy and are able appreciate the little things more than any spoiled American child ever could.

Will the youth of Taiwan look back 10 years from now and question where their childhood went? Will they wish they spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons and eating sugary cereal? I think not. They'll remember their friends from school, their crushes and inside jokes; and maybe even their English teachers and they'll do it all in perfect English.