By Lee Chia-tung 李家同
A recent report by the Interna-tional Association for the Evalua-tion of Educational Achievement (國際教育成就調查委員會) said Taiwanese secondary school students' performances in both science and mathematics are outstanding. Eighth-graders in Taiwan ranked first in the world in science and third in mathematics in an international test. Some local scholars, however, view such great news with suspicion -- questioning whether our students are really that good. If so, they ask, how come Taiwan has never had a Nobel laureate in science or mathematics who was educated here from kindergarten through to PhD?
To respond to such questions, we first need to clarify that the association report only points out that the average level of secondary school students' performance in science and mathematics is good, which does not guarantee that some of them are geniuses. To win a Nobel prize, you have to be a genius.
Generally speaking, there are two major purposes of national education: One is to improve the average educational level of the population, the second is to cultivate the top or specially gifted students.
For most teachers, the first purpose is perhaps the only thing they will achieve, and I believe it is actually more important to a nation. In fact, given its lack of natural resources, Taiwan's national competitiveness is greatly enhanced by the high quality of its manpower. Without such manpower, companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and United Microelectronics Co (UMC, 聯電) would never have become leaders in the semiconductor industry.
I therefore must appeal to the government to continue to improve the average educational level of the people. Once Taiwan loses its advantage in education, the country will face a crisis.
The question is, although our young students rank high in science and mathematics, is it possible that they are just excellent test takers who lack the ability to think independently? Besides test-taking skills, I believe top scientists or mathematicians must possess many other qualities. For example, analysis and creativity are both necessary to become a great scientist. If Taiwan wants to cultivate successful scientists, we must encourage our children's creativity as well as cultivate their abilities to analyze and solve problems.
Meanwhile, all educators need to remember that "innovation" is based on "knowledge." We should not foster students' creativity without giving them sufficient knowledge first. Otherwise, their so-called innovations may be nothing more than reinventing the wheel.
Moreover, if we over-emphasize our children's abilities to analyze, they may get frustrated. For example, the most difficult math questions for a little kid are perhaps ones involving addition and subtraction, and they certainly aren't able to understand questions involving fractions in the early stages of learning. If we force these young children to analyze a question involving fractions, it might scare them away from math completely.
As a result, I believe we should not over-emphasize "analysis" or "creativity" when teaching young students. The teaching methods currently used in national education need to be improved, but cannot be entirely abandoned. We have to admit that most kids are not analytically-minded and perhaps more practice or homework is beneficial to them if the questions are reasonable.
On the other hand, since these teaching methods, designed for the average student, are not suited to cultivating top scien-tists, we need to liven up the educational system and to stress the importance of analysis and creativity when appropriate. Here are some of my suggestions:
One, encourage students to do case studies frequently -- high school students in the US are often assigned to do case studies. A teacher, for example, might tell the students the details of a murder case, asking them to analyze the evidence and to decide whether or not the suspect is guilty.
Two, encourage students to read detective novels -- after reading the books, we can encourage them to find clues and to solve the problems in the stories by themselves, which will build up their abilities of deductive reasoning and rational analysis.
Three, encourage students to calmly analyze current affairs -- for example, recent opinion polls show that people are not satisfied with legislators' performance. We therefore could ask the students to study how the US Congress operates.
Four, encourage students to challenge things as they currently exist -- for example, while students may complain about the imperfections of foreign computer software, they usually choose to tolerate the problems and seldom try to invent better software themselves. As a result, Taiwan is only an observer, while foreign countries are inventing better software constantly. Thus, if we don't dare to challenge things as they currently exist, we will never have our own inventions.
Still, while encouraging our students to develop their abilities in analysis, independent thinking and creativity, sufficient knowledge is absolutely necessary. Without first giving our students a sufficient foundation of knowledge, we are not even qualified to further talk about innovations.
Lee Chia-tung
is a professor of the Computer Science and Information Engineering Department at
National Chi-Nan University.
Translated by Eddy Chang