[Education Column] If Education Is in Crisis Now, How Can We Overcome It?
I saw a scene in which an unmarried young woman, driven out of her home after undergoing gender transition, pleaded plaintively through a televised video letter. “Dad, let’s have a meal together sometime.” I thought the father and daughter were already happy people simply by virtue of their sincerity. Sharing a single meal is sometimes that difficult and that precious. And yet we casually promise, at the drop of a hat, “Let’s have a meal sometime.” That greeting, which seems like little more than a means of parting, is shameful and pathetic.
On the uphill path to an apartment complex, two middle school boys met, and without a word they played ‘rock-paper-scissors.’ When one boy said, “If you don’t throw…,” the other smiled and quickly threw out his hand. When the game ended, again without a word, each went his own way. It was more creative and refreshing than “Let’s have a meal sometime,” and I thought these kids are different from us.
There are many teachers who have heard harsh words from parents, and many who have been humiliated by students. Some teachers even took their own lives, but time has passed without my ever having seen an article reporting that the circumstances were properly investigated. Laws have reportedly been amended in the National Assembly in the meantime, but I do not think I have heard that the teachers are pleased.
The teachers are quiet. It is probably not because they feel things are now fine. Some may believe they should simply do their duty in silence; some may not have abandoned the hope that good days will come if they endure; and in some cases it may be resignation, a sense that stepping forward will change nothing.
One could call it a predicament, or view it as an educational crisis, citing the social mood or trend in which people no longer expect schools or teachers to provide their children with a moral, human education. So frustrating is it that one might even entertain the thought of establishing a position endowed with tremendous power that could, as in a TV drama, satisfyingly deal with anyone who commits an uneducational act, even a person of enormous social standing, wealth, or power. But that is nothing more than a childish fantasy, and if it seemed plausible enough to actually carry out, it would merely increase the number of ‘positions’ for no good reason. The problem is not that there is no one in charge; it is a task that, after all, has to be done by people. If one really wanted to try it, it would not be impossible.
Is there any method we have not tried? There are laws and enforcement decrees set by the National Assembly, and there were even regulations specially established by the education offices on top of those. I am not sure whether they still exist. Who set them? It could have been a conservative superintendent or a progressive one. There is also the education committee. It is the same. Would things get much better if these were newly established? Naturally, this time too they would be conservative or progressive, and those who set them would, as usual, not be the students, nor those directly in charge of education.
Our country has now become a remarkable nation. Culturally, up until the last century it was the ‘most’ backward, and in this century it has become the ‘most’ advanced. Such a country can neither cling to and repeat backward methods, nor need it bother imitating the examples of other countries, nor can it now entertain the pathetic notion that there is no recourse but to hand down severe punishment anew.
Some may be displeased to hear this, but the very problems our education now faces may in fact be the most essential educational content (though far too many people mistake it for mere knowledge), and it may simply be an educational situation rather than a fight in which someone ought to win and someone ought to lose to any satisfying conclusion.
One could say this is a situation in which education administrators, educators, and parents should return to their own places, and the students should come to the fore. Moreover, that may be the best course. It is reasonable for the students to decide what they want to do, decide what they must uphold, and to control and encourage themselves. That is what is right.
They do not study because they wish to become the human resources of this nation and this society. They are simply living their lives today as well, carrying dreams of how to live those lives. It is only fitting that they find their own happiness. Each and every one of them has no interest in ‘how the school, the education office, or the Ministry of Education is run.’ ‘How should I live in order to be happy’—that is their earnest goal. We can only help them when they set out to do something, and that ought to be our task.