3. My personal experience

     The implementation of this change just happened to be the year that I entered Grade Eight. Not singing God Save the Queen was the least of the changes. We no longer addressed our teachers by their formal names, Mr. Jones, for example. He now simply became “Bob, or Jim, or Fred,” like all the other classmates. This had the instant and probably undesired effect of reducing the teacher’s respect, in our eyes, to that of our most stupid colleague. 

Needless to say, our scholastic scores suffered. The lowest standard became the new standard, but we were staying in school. The greatest, and probably most puzzling decision, was to allow smoking in school: say what? Yes, it is true. We had a smoking area near our running field -- even to write this fifty years later, “sounds crazy.” 

There was, in fact, a special technique to document your “coolness.” You dropped your cigarette ash onto your pant leg and rubbed it into the denim. The whiter the leg, the more worldly and sophisticated the person. You only smoked when you were talking and thinking, right? I remember that my mother once washed my jeans, thus destroying my social standing amongst my peers for a protracted period of time. It took me a long time to forgive her. How could you be that insensitive? I just couldn’t adapt to this new system and my grades consequently collapsed. What saved me in the end, and allowed me to graduate from high school with high marks, was my theatre studies. 

Our school had the best theatre program in the entire province. This was remarkable given the size of our town. Regardless: because of the director, Dr. Sparks, it produced award-winning productions, year after year. I remember my interview to attempt to join the class. Dr. Sparks was an impressive man with a full scholarly beard and no hair: he was bald. “So Mr. La Couvee, you want to join our group?” Yes, Dr. Sparks,” I eagerly replied. “Show me a fish,” was his command. “A what?” I queried. “A fish, show me a fish,” he repeated. I only have to wave my hands close to my ears and puff up by cheeks to be transported back to that interview. I passed and was admitted to the club, and finished my schooling. In the end, the new system didn’t work: most of my peers did not. Taiwan would be wise not to try to quickly copy the American system. That nation’s critical thinking skills do not seem to be in the ascendant, do they? Aristotle (384-322 BC) has a thought: The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

All pupils, unless they have severe behavioral or psychological problems, are seekers. They want to learn about the universe they are growing into. The most difficult for them is that the cell phone tricks all users into the belief that knowledge itself is finite when the opposite is true: all pure understanding is infinite and, ultimately, unknowable. Our responsibility as students, parents, teachers and educators is to provide the key that each person needs to open their individual door. This can be realized through humor, honesty and imagination. People, both young and old, can sense when “you do not take yourself too seriously!” 

Education has its pitfalls and problems in any generation. It is only with hard work and “good cheer,” as the British like to say, that we will change the world for the better.