Recently, my husband and I watched a video from Ku's Dream, a French YouTuber in Taiwan, and we laughed so hard. The video was about high schoolers in Taiwan, where Ku's Dream brought French kids to experience student life here. However, what was shown wasn’t entirely accurate.
The video focused on the fun aspects of student life, with the French kids eating and doing other activities instead of attending all the classes. While I can understand that other countries may not have as many after-school clubs, the video completely overlooked the heavy workload and busy schedules Taiwanese students face. Our son, who is only in first grade, studies far more than kids in Europe could ever imagine.
Taiwan’s education system is well-known for its rigorous academics, long study hours, and high expectations. As a parent of a first grader, I’ve had my fair share of experiences—both positive and frustrating—navigating this system. While the quality of education is undeniably strong, the workload, expectations, and extracurricular commitments can feel overwhelming at times.
Our son’s school day starts at 7:30 AM with a reading session and… cleaning duties. Yes, kids in Taiwan are responsible for cleaning their classrooms and school premises. While this fosters a sense of responsibility, I sometimes wonder why so much cleaning falls on such young students.
Although a school day can end at 12:30 PM, and 3:30 PM on Tuesdays, he remains at school longer to finish his homework. It’s challenging for me to assist him at home, so staying after class helps ensure he keeps up.
The amount of homework can be intense. Over winter break, he had 26 pages of assignments. Then, when he got sick and missed three days of school, he had nearly 40 pages of schoolwork and homework waiting for him! The pressure to keep up is real, and it’s easy for kids to feel overwhelmed.
Frequent small tests are a part of daily life. Teachers give stamps for a 100% score, but anything less gets a written “Jiāo Yóu” (加油, meaning “keep going”). While encouragement is great, the constant emphasis on perfection can be stressful for young kids.
Our son scored 96% and kept asking if it was good enough. Personally, I feel that anything above 70% is good, and over 90% is amazing. But the competition seems so intense that even six-year-old kids question whether their scores are good enough.
Learning Chinese is another challenge. Our son knows Bopomofo (Zhuyin) well, but even when he writes the correct answer using phonetics, teachers expect him to use full Chinese characters instead. When he wrote a correct answer with Bopomofo, he still received a remark that “they had already learned the character” and he should use it instead.
They’ve been learning Bopomofo for two months, and then switched to words. Every day, they have several words to write, and I wonder how they are expected to memorize them all in such a short time. There are tests to check their progress, and our son often forgets the words, causing him to lose scores. I think it's normal to forget, especially when some of the words have 20+ strokes. Oh, and speaking of that, it also matters how you write. If you start with the wrong stroke, the teacher may consider it incorrect, even though the result looks the same.
We enrolled our son in soccer club, thinking it would be a fun way for him to burn off energy once a week on Wednesdays. However, it turned out that soccer practices also take up nearly every Saturday, leaving almost no free weekends.
His teacher also suggested he join the badminton club, but the schedule was shocking - daily training from 2 PM to 6 PM and weekend sessions if there was a game. For a first grader, this felt excessive! While sports are important, such an intense schedule leaves little room for childhood freedom.
Taiwan’s school system is undoubtedly structured, disciplined, and academically strong. However, the combination of long hours, frequent tests, strict teaching styles, and weekend-occupying extracurriculars can feel overwhelming, especially for young children. While I appreciate the dedication to education, I also wish kids had more freedom to explore, play, and simply enjoy being kids.
For now, we’re still learning how to balance the demands of the system with our son’s well-being. Hopefully, we can find a way to ensure he gets a great education without losing his childhood in the process.
Seeing his cousins in Poland having fun playing on phones and watching TV while he was busy doing his homework made him feel like he wanted to live in Poland. Even recently, after finishing his missed classwork, he sat down until 9 PM to finish everything and said, "Mommy, I think going to school in Poland would be better." I feel so sorry for him sometimes.
At least compared to many kids, he still has more free time, as many Taiwanese kids end up in cram schools for hours after regular school. Some finish at 6 PM or 7 PM, and many kids are still out after 9 PM. Although this may not apply to younger kids, the higher up in education you go, the more you have to study.
In the second half of the year, I also noticed that many kids who originally stayed at school after hours switched to cram schools to learn more things instead of just finishing homework and playing around.
0 komentarze:
Post a Comment