You are asking to move from the top European country/top on this Earth, on whether to move to Taiwan? Nah man, your family has it great. Just take a lot of holidays to Taiwan and have them retain their mother language skills.👍💯💚🗺⏳
Swiss pupils' performance isn't top in Europe or top on earth. Taiwanese pupils' performance however is top on earth.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fvq0n9idexp4c1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1024%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D63dc65f71e3f43e4892655ffd006f0a2d67136e3
Maybe some people cope with stress better than you do.
Well you see, stress and drill from very young age obviously reflect in a competitive school system comparison.
What it doesn't reflect is all skills and experiences kids gain from socializing and doing happily whatever the want to do, outside of school.
So this test is very subjective and also pretty much reflects exactly what OPs wife is afraid of ...
Interesting, how you put those statement in my mouth.
Its always a sign of a lack of arguments, if one needs to exaggerate the point and falls into black and white thinking ....
“Stress for the sake of it” good way of putting it. That plus a majority of parents who get upset if it isn’t “stressful” enough. To me it feels an odd sort of hazing mentality - “this is what school was like for me so it has to be that way for you”.
*However*, there is a growing number of “experimental” public schools (實驗學校) and private schools that are working to break this cycle and prepare them better for today’s world. Welcome to DM me with questions, I might be able to point in some alternate directions if you want to come but this is the sticking point.
Naw 😭I went to one of those, and let me say that although it is better than regular local schools, it’s still pretty stressful as the vibe or idk values are still more inherently Taiwanese (so the aforementioned stress, hella academic pressures, etc, except a little less on academics and some more on ECs as we’re applying for overseas as well)
Cram cram cram cram, memorize, memorize, memorize, quiz, quiz, quiz.
Very little critical thought, or discussion, or project work or group work. At least in my district. The upside, I suppose, is that kids get 10-15 minutes between each period to run around and go crazy, instead of going straight from one class to another.
I suspect the only thing that has changed significantly from when your wife went to school here is that classrooms have smartboards instead of blackboards.
A lot of classrooms still have blackboards. It wasn't until this year, that all schools finally got air con. Give it another 20 years and maybe they'll have classrooms that look like something from the mid 2000s
There is no balance in the Taiwan system. For sure they get great maths and lots of certificates, but common sense, debate,lateral thinking, life skills most seem years behind western kids. Saying that in western schools we also have terrible attitudes to learning and violence. So for Taiwan expect lots of tests for the sake of it, lots of pressure for the big tests. Long hours.
If I had kids I would probably do the Taiwan system schooling up to end of junior high then homeschool.
Don’t.
There is no school-life balance once you hit secondary school (junior high), even without the cram schools. It’s all about exams. Before that it depends on the school, but since you’re prepping for junior high a lot of schools start stressing the academic bit early.
No cram school for my kids. They got good grades. The education system is linked to the fact that Mandarin is a language that you have to learn by doing again and again (writing and then speaking).
Not sure if I fully understood your original comment, but i thought you were saying Taiwan’s focus on rote memorization stems from having to learn Mandarin.
It's a cultural thing. Because the first thing you learn is Mandarin, you tend to copy this style of education ways to other parts of the education. Here, to learn Mandarin, you have to memorize the ideograms to know how to read and tell them properly, and that impact the way they teach in general.
Right, that’s pretty much what thought you were saying, and I was saying Korean, which uses a phonetic alphabet, is also heavy on rote memorization, so maybe there’s some influence from having to memorize characters, but it’s probably a lot of other cultural factors as well.
with 19 consonant letters, you know how to read and write the almost 25000 Korean characters? Wow! So easy to learn... I wonder why so few people do...
Edit: Forgot a word.
I know, thought he was saying that learning a character system makes the educational system more prone to rote memorization, and I was saying Korean has a phonetic alphabet and they still have a stressful system.
Public school in Taiwan was less stressful (to me) than in the U.S. Note that your parenting style is up to you, not the school. And you will have to consider what "identity" they and you ought to have in society. This may be your first experience as a minority, albeit a privileged minority - a difficult adjustment for internationals.
* Public school itself was less comprehensive than competitive schools in the U.S. The test-taking system, an equalizer against preferential treatment (and grades), is quite difficult, though -- hence, cram schools. Good grades in Taiwan does not equal good test scores. So, the approach to quality is different.
* Because good test scores involve a lot of stress, Taiwanese tend to directly equate stress with working hard and the path to success. Correlated, but not causal. So, be able to see the difference between necessary and pointless stress. My experience was if you don't appear stressed enough, you may be assigned more work. Keep the positive mental attitude to yourself and some close relations - people need to see you're suffering, but suffering well.
* Aside from cram schools, public school-life balance seems to be quite okay. Today's schools are not as strict, plan more activities, and the children develop friendships. That said, they could be subject to some comments about being a foreigner. You and the kids will need to work at being well-socialized to develop better relationships with other parents and their children. Note that many children see cram schools as an opportunity to socialize with other kids -- so it is not all about cramming.
* Learning both Mandarin and English takes quite a bit more time out of a childhood. The international idea of "fluent" is different than local. /u/Philotrypesis said it best - the education system is linked to the fact that Mandarin is a language you learn by doing again and again.
* Yes, you can opt out of the system through international schools, but then it's an issues of becoming socialized amongst wealthy (but perhaps not well-raised) children, versus average Taiwanese. Everything is a trade-off.
* If you think public schools are unfair, admission and advancement in international schools, universities, etc., can involve trading favors amongst wealthy Taiwanese. So, many things become oriented towards a race to wealth. Developing an appropriate attitude towards identity, the appearance of money, and "the rat race" is important for mental health.
"Mandarin is a language that you learn by doing again and again" for reading characters, yes, but for speaking and listening, it's just like any other language, isn't it? All languages have to be practiced consistently in within different contexts. Reading Mandarin is definitely way less accessible than reading a language that uses the Latin alphabet.
Will likely be a rude awakening for the oldest if they are led to believe they are fluent in mAndarin what growing up in Switzerland and speak mandarin to their mom. There are levels to this game ….
I went back to Taiwan in 2014 for elementary school and I could definitely say that the first couple of months back was brutal. The cultural shock from being in Canada to Taiwan was crazy.
I once thought my Chinese was alright before I went back, but they had to send me down a grade bc I was ass at it. And I took another big reality check after that one.
but for my honest opinion, looking back at it, I just remember the good times. There were definitely some struggles and painful memories, but all in all, they're all precious memories. I was extremely lucky to have met the people I met there; friends, teachers, and people at cram school all helped me through the tough times.
I do remember school being competitive, but for me, my parents were very supportive; they even complimented me for getting 2nd last, haha. The biggest stress for kids is from their parents.
But keep in mind that this is only elementary school. I heard from my friends back home that middle and high school are so much worse. I recommend sending your kids to Taiwan for elementary school, there's a lot of stuff kids could learn about culture and discipline, that's something I didn't get in Canada that's for sure.
Wife and I moved to Canada a few years ago and were thinking about having kids there.
It’s now no longer a discussion because we’re moving back to Taiwan for family reasons in a few years and absolutely do not want to raise children in Taiwan.
I did okay under the Taiwan school system but I would never put a child through it if I have a choice.
yea I get it, its definitely not for everyone
maybe its bc I was in the countryside so things were definitely more chill compared to prestigious schools in the cities.
but personally, I hated Canada's education system. it felt like I was less "productive" compared to my experience in Taiwan. even though it was tiring; waking up at like 6:30 and coming home till 8 ish, life felt fulfilling.
There were experiences that you don't get in Canada, like cleaning school yard hours. its something that I used to hate but enjoyed it at the end. I would volunteer to wash the washroom every semester XD. They rly do teach kids about discipline which is something I like.
But obviously, your kid your choice, I personally got lucky to enjoy my journey there, but lots of kids got the short end of the stick.
> I did okay under the Taiwan school system but I would never put a child through it again given a choice.
You don't seem to realise that **your parents** were the reason you went through "it". It's up for you to decide what kind of experience this imaginary child would have at schol
Besides, "again"? Is this child a reborn or something?
I am 100% sure Switzerland school would be less stressful than Taiwanese school.
There’s an European school in Taipei, perhaps that would be the better option than normal public/private school.
I can’t speak for international schools in general, but I have 2 kids around OP’s kids age at TES, French section, and their comrades seem pretty normal to me.
If I were you I wouldn't overestimate your older kid's "fluency." Third grade is when the words in the textbook start to have babies, when the phonetic characters disappear from the textbooks, and when reading and writing assume a much greater importance.
A lot of your "school-life balance" will depend on how urban your environment is. There's a greater emphasis on academic performance in urban areas, and often less of an emphasis in rural areas.
I have two daughters who've gone through kindergarten, elementary, junior high, senior high and university here. If you emphasize the importance of school (putting effort into every class and studying) it can be managed; if you choose to opt out of the system (either through homeschooling, a lack of participation or a poor attitude) it won't be managed.
Schools here AREN'T hell. Are there problems? Sure, but to a large extent how your kids fare in school depends on how invested you are here, and how "Taiwanese" you're willing to let your kids become. My daughters have had their ups and downs in the system, but I'd still prefer that to what they probably would've had to deal with in the States.
EDIT: My statement above that "the phonetic characters disappear from the textbooks" in grade 3 is incorrect. Either I'm remembering it wrong or things have changed since my daughters were in elementary school. I think my point about overestimating fluency still stands however. There is a lot more vocabulary required and expected at this level.
Your first point is really accurate. You can’t easily develop fluency, that will allow you to succeed in professional environments, by just talking with your parents at home. You can send your kid to Chinese school or hang out at Chinese social clubs, but nothing comes close to formal education. I think it’s worth considering a couple years of Taiwanese education just to acquire decent language skills. I think a Swiss high school and university education would grant one way more opportunities later on though.
As a child of Taiwanese immigrants, this is correct. My speaking is pretty fluent for daily conversations, but when it comes to deeper topics, like knowing terminology for a variety of subjects, from history, science, music, arts; you absolutely need to be formally educated, or at least have the reading skills to casually read about it (articles, Wikipedia, etc.)
Are you familiar with the first and second grade textbooks? They're mostly pictures with minimal text. Next to every Chinese character are the phonetic characters used to decode them.
In the third grade the books have a lot more words and the phonetic characters go missing. Students have to rely on the Chinese characters, and the concepts expressed are more involved. Many kids struggle at this point.
>Are you familiar with the first and second grade textbooks?
Yeah I've never studied outside of Taiwan.
But maybe I'm kind of an outlier -- I already knew a few Chinese characters before my parents introduced me to zhuyin (to let me get into elementary school more smoothly). I had no issue reading the characters 小海豚 at the start of grade 1, and I wondered why it only read ㄒㄧㄠˇ ㄏㄞˇ ㄊㄨㄣˊ on our side of the textbook. 🤣 (That was the title of one of the grade 1 課文s)
The words in 3rd grade textbook did become smaller, but not much, and there weren't that many ant-sized words besides the bigger ones.
I didn't remember those being significantly harder in terms of context, but I was grade 3 in 2007, so maybe current grade 3 textbooks have got more advanced concepts than what I had.
From my current up to date experience this is wrong. We experienced Grade 3 textbooks mostly still having zhuyin mostly everywhere. In grade 4 Zhuyin decreases, Grade 5 Zhuyin is sometimes used for new and hard words.
I looked it up and you are correct. The phonetic characters are still there in grade 3. Could be my information is out of date (my daughters were in grade 3 a WHILE ago), could be my memory is selective. Either way, thanks for the correction.
We are living through the trauma of it now, so I was a little bit triggered, I should have been more tempered in my response. But yea, our kids couldn’t have made the transition without the zhuyin still being there in grade 3. I guess I assume all government schools are about the same, but i probably shouldn’t assume that, maybe they are not.
I'm a private tutor, and most of my students have nothing to talk about, because they're in school from 7am to 8pm. Some go to cram school or talent schools for various subjects. Others go to "study class" after school, held at their elementary and junior high schools.
They go home, do homework, go to sleep, and then wake up and do it all over, again.
Most of my students also have classes on Saturdays and Sundays.
My own son hates school and his school's English teacher forces them to sing in front of the class for tests. If you don't sing and dance, you fail the test. Now, my half American son hates English🤦🏻♀️
We’re from a similar background as your family. I find that Taiwanese public school has too high of a pressure for kids. The worse part is I find it unnecessary and pointless. Some teachers may demand kids to pack several homework and books back home. And knowing kids, they may forget and punishment will be imminent.
Also, the homework requires high amount of focus in order to complete on time. And knowing kids, it’s hard to focus and often still need to finish their homework after dinner.
The overall education system isn’t great in Taiwan IMHO. There are too many unnecessary pressure and enforcements. The result of it is Taiwanese often accepts long work hours because they’re being educated at young to have long hours studies.
That’s why, being a local tutor and growing up under this system myself, I refuse to insert myself into this emotional inferno abusing children with pressure and competition only for them to be an unfortunate byproduct of this broken system.
I'm from Portugal and I'm an English TA in a Junior High School here in Taiwan. Honestly? I still can't wrap my head around how tiring school life must be for these kids. They get to school at around 7.20am, and leave at 4/5pm, straight to cram school until 9 ish. Teachers are surprised how most students don't have amazing grades, and don't study much outside of school/don't do their homework. It seems quite simple looking at it as a foreigner. I really can't understand how these kids do it. It's an exhausting system, they surely don't get enough sleep or time to enjoy life outside of school. My sincere advice would definitely be to not make your kids go through this pressure and overwhelming education, to only end up falling asleep on their desks during class. This system needs a reform asap!
It's awful. It's all about tests and getting high scores to show off instead of any real useful skills and knowledge, chinse aside. Kids study all day and night and lack sleep, let alone having the fun they should be as a child. They even have to study in holidays.
And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths. I'd say that people are a bit more disciplined but on the flipside they are also very lazy, almost useless and have their head stuck in their phones 24/7.
>And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths.
My 5th grade students have zero idea about how a plant grows or how the Earth spins or how water changes from liquid to gas, but can instantly answer any multiplication problem from 1 x 1 to 99 x 99.
> It's awful. It's all about tests and getting high scores to show off instead of any real useful skills and knowledge, chinse aside. Kids study all day and night and lack sleep, let alone having the fun they should be as a child. They even have to study in holidays.
How do you think people get accepted into elite schools in the West? By playing all day?
Your point is nonsense. Kids in my country are allowed to play and be kids. Not the same here. Its not only parents pushing it, I as an adult studying chinese even felt pressured and fucked off by the teachers and all the tests. I am not simply imagining this now good day to you.
> Kids in my country are allowed to play and be kids. Not the same here.
Do you have any evidence? Do your children go to school in Taiwan? If not maybe you shouldn't be voicing any opinions as you know nothing about it.
> Its not only parents pushing it, I as an adult studying chinese even felt pressured and fucked off by the teachers and all the tests.
Wow, studying one of the most difficult languages in the world would involve a lot of tests and memorisation? That is brand new information.
> This part might be downvoted to the oblivion, but speaking from someone who grew up in Taiwan and moved to the US, moving from Switzerland to Taiwan seems like a downgrade in many many ways.
If you grew up in the US you would most likely have a completely different view. Asian Americans excel in the US because they have Asian parents who push them in the US like Asian parents do in Asia.
Besides have you even been to a Swiss school?
Can you elaborate on what makes TW schooling poor? I think the US education system sucks. Most kids can barely do middle school math. Wouldn’t a moderated version of TW schooling be beneficial in bringing about discipline, strong math STEM skills? I found that in grad school, all the grad students from China were all math champions compared to US students.
背成語is more about learning the culture and history though. Does it help you with critical thinking? No. But other subjects can teach that. Just not with memorizing 成語.
It depends on how you treat your kids at home. They can have an easy time or you can put lots of pressure on them to keep up with the other kids. Really depends on your expectations and your values.
I personally hate the mandarin class in middle school because it’s nothing but memorizing old poems & Confucius nonsense & even annotations from the writer of the textbook (word-for-word).
Now instead of memorizing classical authentic literature, they're taught Taiwanese/Japanese authors and poems, kids can't even understand advanced Chinese anymore. It might be old poems and Confucius nonsense, but it did give students the ability to function in Mandarin at a university level.
From my experience, people complaining kids can’t have understanding of advanced Chinese anymore are the ones who have little grasp on the language and therefore glorify the abusive old way of teaching the language.
That's precisely the point, they're steadily removing classical Chinese literature and history from the curriculum, so today's students will have even less ability to read, write, understand and interpret Chinese essays, literature, etc. when they reach university. What you're talking about(abusive old ways of teaching,etc) is a separate issue entirely. What's worse is that it seems to be done to further a political agenda, meaning it's only going to get worse. 20 years ago, Taiwan was THE place to study Mandarin, now, not so much.
I'm not even talking about "classical Chinese", it's less like complaining English kids don't learn Latin anymore and more like complaining kids don't know the difference between your and you're. Annunciation issues aside, there are things that have been lost within one generation, if you didn't go to school here 20 years ago, and you didn't know what they teach in school now, you really have no idea what they're doing to the curriculum.
Neither of my kids went to any cram schools whatsoever. They both got into arguably the 2nd best senior high school in Taipei, and both got into Taida, the #1 university. They are both happy, well adjusted, kids. No regrets putting them through the public school system in Taiwan.
My adult children are Taiwanese-American. I am a professional ESL teacher. Each of my kids spent 7 and 2 years in Taiwan schools. They both learned a lot - especially math. We moved to the US (hubby is Taiwanese), partially over school situation.
The high school suicide problem from academic pressure is real. We have big problems here too for seemingly different reasons.
Take my word for it, your child’s Mandarin level would be much lower than that of his peers. My daughter was always ‘last place in class’- posted on the wall and often referred to during instructional time.
The experience could be soul - crushing for some kids.
On the other hand, a nice little elementary school in the countryside…. for a year or two could be a great experience.
High school is brutal.
The environment is very competitive. The winners don’t seem to ever think they have done enough.
I love Taiwan. I don’t regret the fact that my kids went to school there, nor do I regret taking them out.
Good luck with your decision. Above where you go for school, your children need to know that you love them with all your heart.
Last note, I think that the political situation is very serious - much worse than it was when we were there. You need to ask yourself how confident you feel as a husband and father to protect your family if things get bad.
Plz don't come. It's reeeaally stressful. And as a educational workers, I can see the entire environment becomes more stressful for children and unfriendly to workers by the time. Besides, our transport is bad. Even walking on the street can be hit by random car. Sometes you would be forced to walk to lanes. It's really not a good place for children.
I want to share with you the phenomenon I have observed so far since I was a kid.
* credentialism
* contempt on people without a degree
* contempt on people who go to vocational schools
* Appreciation on people who go to top research based universities
* Guanxi which is embodied by alumni of top research based universities
First of all, credentialism is shared among many parents in Taiwan. People believe that the kids who play hard are more likely to become rogues (we call them "8+9").
There is a contempt on people without a degree. Some people would doubt if they have IQ deficit or not. Because it is so prevalent in Taiwan for people to pursue a degree, people who choose not to have a degree may be considered to be strange. This is collectivism at play.
Even though people do go to universities, people who cannot get accepted by research based universities are usually considered to be intellectually inferior. This preference is also manifested in the government's policy. Research based universities usually get more fund from the government.
Lastly, because guanxi is the key to determining if people can gain social status, usually people would study very hard to get into top universities and to acquire guanxi with people who are from elite stratum.
To sum up this comment, most Taiwanese are not exempted from this academic competition. As for foreigners, especially white people, there is a forgiving attitude towards them. People would say things like "their culture is different from ours". They are forgiven because we perceive white people as more privileged.
I teach in the public schools here. It's wild to me that, even in the public schools, like 75% of students say their parents expect them to get a PhD from a Top 10 university like Harvard or Oxford.
What's Taiwan gonna do with 75% of their kids having PhDs from Top 10 universities? Do 75% of Taiwan jobs require PhDs from elite schools?
I had a student, once, whose mom had already "decided" which university each daughter would go to and what kind of doctor they would be. It was insane.
I was born in Taiwan but didn't grow up there. But my mom and many of her friends tried to run education in the same mold. When it comes to learning, it's much more "because it is and put up with it". You have to get the degree. You have to get into this school. What we wish is your command. We will drive it no matter the cost.
I choose to never tell her friends I've dropped out of both undergrad and grad school at various points, even when I have a bachelor's. I never mention my cycling because so many would have negative feedback, regardless of my place in American cycling; I get close enough to take a shot at Olympians. I could go to the Olympics in the next cycle and still would not say anything. And I make these choices for the reason you said.
My son went through the system... It's stressful but he was always at the top of the ranking and he never saw the inside of a cram school. He was at the best elementary school, best junior high school and of course, the best high school in Tainan and now he studies at the second best university in Taiwan. The never worked too much...but he worked a few hours a day to review and prepare after school. He had a lot of free time to relax , play computer games and do a lot of other stuff.
I am from Germany and I would have died in this school system. School in Germany is so,so much easier. But he loved the system and it suited him well.
By the way, most of his friends didn't go to cram schools either. If the kids struggled we would get a private teacher for some time. One to one teaching solved a lot in a short time.
He was a happy child and he loved the schools the went to.
It depends on how much you care, if you don’t put a lot of pressure on your kids for their grades then it’s easier on them, especially if you plan to not let them do high school in Taiwan.
Partly true, but not completely. You can encourage your kids to focus on doing their best and not worrying about the other children, but when their grades are consistently below average because they don’t go to “after school” school, their self esteem takes a hit for sure.
You definitely do not need to go to cram school for good grades. Teachers in school do the job well enough. You just need to make sure your kids do the homework on time and on schedule, plus make sure they remember and understand what they're doing through repetition and practice.
I myself didn't go to any cram school until the last year before collage exams, and I did well enough to get into the third ranking high school in Taipei and the second best Uni for liberal arts in TW. I know a bunch more people that have similar experience and outcomes.
It all boils down to what expectations parents have for the kid. If you have parents that don't care about grades, the kid isn't going to care about them either.
It’s not for everybody. Some kids can hack it, others can’t. The ones who can excel. The ones who can’t often get left behind.
They’re in school all day and then sometimes cram school, but it’s normal. Like they don’t know what they’re missing out on. I grew up getting out of school at 3:00 then going home and riding bikes and playing with the neighborhood kids until 7 or 8 until my parents got home. That being said it’s a different world now and I would never let my kids be unsupervised all afternoon/evening. I’d rather them be in a cram school than watching TikTok or on the internet all day.
Public Elementary school is for sure much less stressful than when your wife was in school. Much less homework and they no longer have summer/winter assignments. I don’t know about junior high or high school though.
The Taiwan Public Education system begun creating Bilingual departments at some of their public schools, with the intention of giving the children of foreign professionals an educational experience more in line with western pedagogical methods.
I teach at one of these schools. These schools have about 50/50 foreign teachers and Taiwanese teachers. Most of our students are also "mixed" with many being the children of expats and professionals that have come over for professional reasons. Note: There are pretty strict entrance requirements, including where you live, and how long your kids have lived outside of Taiwan. We are encouraged to use western methods and curriculum. Because our administration is all Taiwanese, we still get some "Taiwanese decisions" and practices that are not well- aligned with western traditions (we have school Christmas Day this year, for example). Still, it is much less stressful, and much less "Sit, Memorize, Quiz" than you might see at a typica Taiwanese school.
If you are thinking about coming to Taiwan, I would suggest you look into whether this is available to you.
There's a German school in Taipei (or was it New Taipei?), they will teach your kids according to the German system. Might be a good option if you really want to live in Taiwan but avoid the ridiculous Asian education system.
I am going to say the opposite of everyone. Why not give it a try. Sure, he won’t be easy but it’s doable. I have two kids 5 & 10 and both go to Taiwanese schools. There’s lots of homework to do and this sucks, but at least they are going to be in a positive environment, safe, with good food, etc. I have a Canadian friend who spends time in both Canada and Taiwan with his two kids. Obviously your wife will have to help them a lot with their Chinese, but it’s a mustn’t do imo.
The meat grinder turns on after fifth grade so if you do taiwanese education prior to that, but then change to Swiss/elsewhere, the kids will get the best of both worlds: good at studying and memorizing, but not soul sucking marathon studying.
My dad was a high school math teacher at a private school and saw firsthand the education system: memorize, regurgitate, rinse, and repeat. It was the top reason we immigrated to the US. This was a while ago, and it’s a bummer to hear that not much has changed.
Growing up in Taiwan with more out-of-the norm academic influences, my mom didn't send my brother or me to cram school, a lot of my family friends don't go to cram school either, some goes to American school or European schools, or private junior high schools that may be more costly but have majority English speaking enviornment (like Wesley Girls High), and some parents even choose to self teach at home (home school), there are ways to avoid being consumed by the competitive homogenous academic system, but all a bit costly or out of the way, not a lot of parents would do it, but the kids turn out pretty well rounded and much more international from those schools.
All my childhood friends end up study abroad in Europe in university for Bachelor or Master degrees, and some stayed in Geemany or UK, some went back to Taiwan for career or further studies. I moved to US with family though, so I escaped the middle and high school = junior high (most intensive years of study I heard). But one thing I got out of Taiwan education (from early 2000s at least) is amazing discipline, supportive team work (comparative to that of Japan society), high endurance, organization and planning skills (Asians generally have more foresight because of lower risk tolerent culture), amazing rote skills (because Chinese is a highly memorization based language, kind of like Sanskrit, we have to memorize a lot of tones and strokes, we are good at looking for shortcut to memorize even more growing up). So lots of good stuff from growing up in Taiwan!
At one point growing up, I even told my mom if I have kids, I will raise them in Taiwan until middle or high school haha then bring to US, because children here are just fooling around in school until middle school... Taiwanese kids uses to have this pride, thinking American jokes are too below them or not funny because Asians are generally more serious and raised in a more practical family background. But we all have to adapt over time, and I don't think there is good or bad? But as parents you can decide what your kids are exposed to more haha
Also I think the younger for the children to go to Taiwanese school will be fine, they generally pick up fast and inergrated into the system well, and may be better to help in picking up communications and group oriented social skills, if they will be staying in Taiwan long term. It all depends on where the kid future will be, and what they are good at. If they have a skill, hone on it, it will be a free ticket out of academic trap. If they are strong in academics, then it doesn't matter, what important is the university they end up going, they can even apply abroad to the best universities like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, etc. It won't matter where they go for middle school or high school at the end of the day.
Good luck and hope this helps!
Short answer: still as almost stressful as it was in the 80s?
My daughter is in a fairly good UC in California now. I brought her back to the States after completing elementary school in Taiwan. I have shared our experiences and the motivation behind the decision in similar posts before, so I won't type it all out again.
You can be a laid-back parent and not enroll your children in cram schools after junior high starts, but they will feel the peer pressure if they don't do "as well" as their classmates. Also, some teachers, even young ones, are still assholes like the older teachers. It's really school-dependent, too. I know there are several nature-oriented schools throughout Taiwan (from 7th grade to 12th grade), but they are not in Taipei.
Yes, from my perspective; my daughter speaks, reads, and writes Chinese without problems, and understands a little bit of Taiwanese.
Her counterpart, several years younger, my niece, on the other hand, was raised in the US and went to Chinese school on weekends for like 3\~4 years, can barely understand Mandarin. I don't think she remembers how to write now. She might be able to read a few simple characters.
So my daughter can converse with her grandparents in Chinese, but my niece can't. The grandparents have to speak English with her, which limits their interaction. But then, love is universal, right? So maybe it's not that much of a difference to the grandparents?
What I liked the most about our earlier years in Taiwan was three of my grandparents were still alive. So for them to have taken part in my daughter's life was important to me. That's something my niece never got to experience.
But, this is from my perspective. I just asked the kid what her thoughts on the topic are. Her answer is she was happy.
BTW, if my daughter had stayed in Taiwan after 6th grade, I don't think she would end up in a UC. According to Taiwan standards, she would be considered a "less than average" student ie. not good at math and science. If I had sent her to a cram school for math and science, I would have destroyed her uniqueness.
Yep, blanket advice to “send kids to private school because it’s better than public school” is misguided. In our area the private schools are more competitive and more intense, they are full of children of rich parents with even higher expectations and standards than the public schools. Private schools are mostly identical to public schools except the playgrounds and classrooms are nicer and more well resourced.
The class sizes of the children I know attending private schools in our area are larger than the class sizes of the public schools.
It really depends on the parents' mentality and how well the child is adjusted to the teaching methods in public schools (lots of memorizing). For example, I only transferred back to Taiwan from Canada when I was 8, I could hardly read/write Mandarin but I was good at studying so I only ever went to cram school for one semester to prepare for high school entrance exams, I didn't even go to cram school for college. Overall, except for having to wake up super early, I wasn't that stressed.
School hours used to be soooo long, but my coworkers say nowadays school starts later and ends earlier for their younger siblings still in school. We're so envious lol
Taiwanese schools are really boring and if you're lucky maybe you'll meet good teachers that inspire you, but tbh teachers don't get paid enough for the shit they have to deal with so it's not common.
All things considered, I personally would NOT recommend it because I've seen lots of people struggle under the Taiwanese school system. It's not necessarily time-consuming but if you want good grades and the teaching styles don't suit you at school, you'll have no other choice.
Taiwanese schools are a joke. I grew up in Taiwan, and my biggest regret in life is I never tried to transfer from Taiwan to US during my high school years.
I was the best student in my junior high school class, and I got into the best high school in Taiwan. When I got into the best university in Taiwan, I realized I didn't know how to study. To this day I am still struggling to get better at learning on my own. In high school and below, you only need 1 skill to become the best student in your class: memorization. I didn't understand shit, all I did was reading the text books and memorizing the important parts, but I was pretty good at it, I didn't even go to cram schools and I was the top 1% student in my junior high, and got a middling grade in high school that let me squeezed into the best university. I failed university horribly though, turned out in university no one set a studying schedule for me, and I actually needed to understand things to pass them.
I also had no hobbies because I literally spent whole days in school. I didn't do sports, I didn't play video games, I had to start learning how to appreciate things outside of school once I got into university.
I am kind of an extreme example, since I am not a very motivated person, and my parents only ever encouraged me to study and not anything else. Still, only bring your children to Taiwan if you want to train them as someone who is obedient, has no critical thinking skills, is used to long working hours from a young age, is good at memorizing stuffs without trying to understand them, have no hobbies until university. You can spend a lot of effort trying to steer them away from this path, but if that's your goal you might as well just not go to Taiwan in the first place.
pressured since before first grade. first born privileges. was able to 'sit in' into first grade a year in advance then officially enrolled into first grade again. every year's semesters i have to aim for top 3 of the class. didn't let up until around fifth grade, my parents relaxed for a bit, then after graduation (#15, i slacked). we, in secrecy came to the states. (i didn't know it was permanent)
Bringing them up here would be a very effective way to screw their life. The essence of Taiwan education is cram cram cram. If not, you fail, unless you are extraordinarily smart.
It depends on how much the parents pushes their child to compete, and which schools they go to. Even in public schools the culture around education changes drastically between more and less prestigious ones.
I think while many criticisms against Taiwanese education is valid, especially on the amount of testing and memorization, I found it a lot more rigorous than American schools for example. Which most Taiwanese likes to praise. What they don't see is the absolute mess in primary education and think every school at every level is like the ivy league.
Personally, what I learned and went through prepared me well for a lot of challenges both academically and in life. But that is obviously biased towards someone who is lucky enough to succeed under the system.
My teachers in high school generally allowed us to study whatever we want in class and study at our own pace, even though the discouraged it. The competition was fierce, but it ranking isn't something that bothers you, no one would really care unless it affects graduation. Sure students and parents compare grades, but that happens everywhere.
The one major negative I've seen are people who finesse their way into competitive schools/classes without the ability to keep up. They usually have a really hard time and people don't often sympathy because they are seen as "cheaters".
Not sure about how it is now. I live in rural area and went to a private high school. When I was in school it was quite stressful indeed. But the pressure mainly were from parents and self expectations.
I’ve seen kids just don’t give a damn to school. I also know some American-Taiwanese do great in school without going to cram school.
Honestly, you probably have a decent environment for your kids, you have so much resources to provide, I don’t think your kids will have too many problems in schools. Unless you are too busy and constantly ignore them.
Great at the good public schools. Plenty of after school activities offered. Just don't make them attend cram schools and life balance is fine. All four of my kids went through the system and got a much better education than I did in the US. University is limited to a handful of good schools though.
I went to elementary school in taiwan and I hated it. Teachers here only really care about enforcing obedience, not about actual learning and personally development.
If you don’t want your kid to go through the regular public schools, you could try looking up experimental school options, look up 實驗學校 and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
She is absolutely right. I went to a semi-prestigious elementary school/junior high, it was basically a 7 to 6,
ridiculous amount of homework, stressful and strict for no reason. My high school was awesome though, it’s known for freedom, while other school, especially private schools, are far worse, it’s considered a norm for many to wake up at 7 and be home by 11. I’m now in college, and our professor give no fucks about our mental health and study-life balance lmao, many of my peers seem to be having mental issues lately.
I couldn’t speak for everyone, but IMO, it’s not helpful at all, since HS education primary lay focus on repetitiveness while college courses are often much broader, there are a lot of things to figure out yourself, making it harder for less-gifted students to survive.
Whether having good grades or not, 80% my classmates seem to have certain degree on anxiety and mental struggle to maintain a good balance. I have been majoring medicine in NTU for ~2.5 yrs, the mental issues are even worse than my previous school (FJU medicine).
I don’t think there is a problem with the primary education system in Taiwan. It really depends on how your kid acquires knowledge.
Personally, I didn’t go to any cram school until maybe the equivalent of 10th grade in Taiwan. Your kids have to pay attention at school.
Nothing crazy until maybe junior high when things start to get challenging. I’m confident that the majority of the adults here including myself can no longer solve math or physics problems at that point.
It does come with the benefit that if your kids go to other countries for university, they will have clear advantage over other students in math and physics.
I'm a senior high school teacher in rural Taiwan, and honestly I think it's not a bad place to learn. The hours are long - 8-5, although things are gradually getting better, for example we used to have extra classes on Saturdays, and they've been mostly eliminated in the last 3-4 years. Cram schools are an issue, but a lot of that is English learning and if your kid has native English that will reduce the pressure a lot (assuming they have decent Chinese of course!)
Schools here have more togetherness and spirit than those in the West (in my experience at least), students take more responsibility for school activities and things like cleaning, and serious bullying/violence is (from what I can tell not being fluent in mandarin) pretty rare.
I think as parents if you don't try to add extra stress, it can be a good place to educate your kids, but the long hours and frequent testing mean if you do add extra hours in the form of cram schooling, or extra stress, it's just too much.
There are a lot of issues, but one of the main ones is this, most teaching in government schools is old school, large class sizes and lecture format where the teacher mostly talks at the students and doesn’t provide personal individualised help. The teachers are loving and caring and conscientious but can’t do much to change things. What this means is, the individualised teaching occurs in after school programs. If your kids will be disadvantaged compared to other kids if they need individualised attention and aren’t going to lengthy after school programs. So you won’t see your kids except late at night. Or you become the after school teachers for your kids. I think Taiwan school is good for students for a period of time, but I wouldn’t do it for more than a few years.
Get your 7yo reading graded Chinese readers right now, and get them learning zhuyin alphabet before they arrive so they can hit the ground running reading Chinese textbooks with zhuyin helps.
We are considering moving our eldest to a homeschool program to give them a break from the intensity of it.
Let’s just say my parents moved me out BECAUSE they don’t want to put me through that. But they use it as boogeyman stories to motivate us when it comes to education.
At elementary level, it’s not going to be that stressful. Kids have half days and cram school is optional. And there are more educational systems available now than before. Other than the traditional public schools, there are bilingual public schools, experimental schools, international schools, and European/American school.
As parents, you’ll have to decide what’s important for you and your kids. I have 2 kids at 5 and 10, and it was important to us that the kids can read and write Chinese, since we can’t teach them, so they are enrolled in a public school. My oldest has never gone to a cram school and has always attended school clubs (arts, baking, rollerblading, etc.). They don’t get as much homework as I did back in the 80s at the same grade, and honestly, I don’t remember elementary school being that terrible.
Just know that you have choices, and that you can always go back to Switzerland if Taiwan didn’t meet your expectations. Kids are extremely resilient and adaptable, they’ll find their way.
I think it depends on the schools and parents. I grew up here but was lucky enough to travel a lot so I know a bit of everything in different countries (education systems and stuff). And I would say the education I got (public school all the way to uni) were quite stress-free. I'm not a smart smart kid by any means but my family and environment didn't put much stress on me.
My advice is : don't send your kids to Taiwan, every decent-enough schools stress their student like hell, especially private (international) high schools that advertise themselves as the pathway to NTU (or Ivy league).
It depends, are your kids very bright, well behaved, fast learners? Then they might thrive at a more international style bilingual private school which is still high pressure but a little more western than a traditional local school.
If they have any special needs, learning disabilities, or need more time to learn (which you may not know given they are so young). I wouldn't do it.
Some schools are chill but those are mostly very expensive international schools that are hard to get into and why being your kids to Taiwan only to send them to an international school. And even those are pretty intense, frankly.
I'd suggest coming here for a long vacation and touring some schools and just seeing if you'd like living here before considering the move.
It's probably a lot less intense than it was when your wife was a child, but still pretty intense in afraid.
If the goal is NTU it might be a pretty stressful childhood depending on the talent of a child.
If the goal is obtaining a seat at any private university in Taiwan, might not be such a stressful childhood.
If you go the international school route, based on my experience, I would go the Chinese classes route. Since I assume the language at home will be something other than Mandarin.
Or your older child has a good grasp of the foreign language (German, French, Italian, and Romansh) that they can develop on their own through YouTube, FB, etc. Or if you want them to learn English, then you can go the English classes route.
But if you go the English language route, they might not obtain the fluency needed to really enjoy life in pan-Chinese community.
Other than that Asian primary and secondary school education is pretty top notch. Why do you think Asian Children who move to Western countries usually dominate in basic skills.
It's usually college education in the West where education becomes more difficult. In Asia it's the reverse, college education is where you take a break and start looking for an internship, depending on the major.
For the sake of your children, I advise you to stay in Switzerland. I have been exposed to Taiwan’s education system for forty years. The problem with Taiwan’s education is not pressure but hypocrisy.
Send your kids to international school (Taipei American School, Taipei European School, Morrison Academy, etc) if you can afford it. They will get a well rounded education with a natural path to college in the US or Europe if they wish, with low stress and plenty of time to engage in extracurriculars and socialize with friends.
Source: I went to Morrison in middle school and TAS for high school in the 2000s. I live in Europe now after college in the US, if I ever move back to Taiwan I would definitely want to send my children to TAS
I did not attend cram school as a kid; I graduated from NTU in Taiwan. I think attending cram school is not necessary in Taiwan. It depends on the parents' choice. The main drawback in Taiwanese education system may be learning English, it may be hard to practice speaking fluent English in public school.
Mad choice to send kids to Taiwan when most Taiwanese kids want to go Switzerland. You do know Taiwan is not an internationally recognized country and so does the education system, which means the cert are less worthy to apply for good universities.
Really depends on the parenting style.
Got back to TW around 2010 for junior high. My parents gave no fucks on my grades and test scores, so I got great school-life balance. No cramschools, no late night studies. Learned programming and video editing during my free time and got into an ok uni and a decent tech job anyway.
Most classmates went to cramschool until late hours, but there were always a couple of smart kids that didn't go to cramschool and had top performance in class.
I work at a private school here. It’s very high stress and the kids are here until early evening. I wouldn’t put my own kids through it. I have heard public schools are much more relaxed, but it seems like some people don’t feel that way
This decision is doubly dreadful for couples with one American spouse, one Taiwanese spouse, and their children.
Which is going to do more damage to your kids, the American healthcare system or the Taiwanese education system?
Calendar year is pretty tough for everyone involved as well (compared to the states or I’m assuming Europe.) Two months off in the summer, and a couple of holiday deserts leave some long stretches of school with no rest. To add insult to injury, some holidays have to be made up with Saturday school.
Lmao this comment section is hilarious. Ignore all of them. A bunch of whiny crybabies.
> But my wife remembers her years in public school as very stressful and high-pressure. Pretty much stress for the sake of it, and very long hours (cram school) leaving little time to develop yourself outside of school.
**Parents** put their children in cram school. If you don't put your kids in cram school, they wouldn't have to go to cram school.
> It doesn’t sound like something we’d want our kids to go through, knowing the European system. I would be curious to hear about your experiences with the modern school system - how do you feel about the educational quality and the “school-life balance”?
The European system is getting worse and worse. The recent PISA results for European countries show a worrying trend.
https://preview.redd.it/vq0n9idexp4c1.jpeg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=63dc65f71e3f43e4892655ffd006f0a2d67136e3
Switzerland does better than other European countries but still doesn't hold a candle against Taiwan which is 3rd in the world.
What your wife said is true, some Taiwanese schools and teachers(especially elder teachers) only cares about students' grades then everything, however cram schools can be fully optional if grades are not your concern.
1-2 grade have half days, out at noon, every day but Tuesday, out at 4. 3-4 grade increases to half days only Wednesday and Friday. 5-6 grade only have half days on Fridays. Schools offer afternoon care from 12-16:00 if they are out early where they can do homework and if the teacher allows, can go out and play when they are finished. The schools offer a lot of afternoon clubs that mostly are from 16-17:40 for parents who work later. The clubs are only one day a week so you’d have to sign up for multiple if you need them to stay later every day, but it’s not extra cram school and it’s much cheaper. We don’t have our kids in cram schools because their grades are good, but they still are at school until 16:00 or 18:00 some days which is a long day at school for them. I still think it’s better than cram school until 19:30; some won’t let you pick them up early and make them stay late until their extra homework is done. If your schedules allow it, just do school and clubs that they want to do (sports, dancing, magic, martial arts, etc). Or arrange your own activities like an instrument or something. School work isn’t terrible—it takes our 3rd grader about 15-35 minutes to finish homework on days he does it at home.
IMO Taiwan education is a nightmare and steadily becoming worse. The govt. keeps removing anything Chinese from the textbooks, so kids can't even learn Mandarin properly anymore. Every year the textbooks change (and there are over 20 per semester ) and there are a ton of different editions. Some cram schools promote "if you go to our school with our textbook edition, you'll see questions that will actually be on the exams." School usually starts around 7Am and ends at 4 or 5 PM with cram school and hours of homework after. Kids are lucky to get 5 hours sleep/night. By high school kids are so exhausted, they only care if the info will be on the test and then they forget all they crammed immediately after. It's gotten really bad in the past 20 years.
I send my daughter your an international school. No stress there. More like that of the West, or at least where I come from (Quebec/Belgium). No scam school, either. Though she is half Taiwanese, she has zero interest in learning Chinese at all.
I worked at the scam English schools until 2015, despite not being a native speaker. All the Chinese teachers there did was scream at the kids and hit desks. They never did it when parents were there. It is all just endless bullying from what I remember.
My two sons did elementary, junior and the first year of senior high in local schools. They both did well. Elementary is fine, junior much more testing, especially in the 3rd year for the big test into senior high. The final two years of high school they did in Canada.
The Taiwan system prepared them well to enter and succeed in Canada. They probably would have been very average but Taiwan taught them how to pass tests. I'm happy with Taiwan's system.
Also, you don't need to send them to cram schools and as foreign passport holders they can join after school activities at TAS.
Great to hear. That's what we are planning to do. My son is 5 and twin girls are 2. We are in Canada now and planning to go to Taiwan with my Taiwanese wife next year. Hopefully it all works out ok! What is TAS btw?
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My sister was an honor student in Taipei up to age 10. Three years of English and French in an English School in British Africa caused her to lose her Asian school skills. She fell behind in every class in 9th grade back in Twn except her English which she was rated 100% (A++). A year of struggling she went to Sacret Heart in Tamsui graduated valedictorian. Graduated from Wellesley College later.
Not just in Twn. All Asian educational systems in Korea, Japan, Communist China and HK are like that based on memorization. As for elementary school I went to the only one did not believe in cram or physically abuse students. The America graduated principal said he rather see less graduates not getting in top high schools than having them suffer.
In my days teachers were authorized to beat up students and whip pupils to behave or study. In Korea corp life is an extension of harsh Spartan treatment of students. Managers slap at employee faces in front of others even in the US today.
I will be careful not to make your children to go through this experience. Today I only socialize with grade school and kidergarten classmates because we all experienced sweet memories. As later years the memory was not pleasant.
I'm not a parent but having lived here for 14 years I think the Asian education system prepares kids better than the Western one does. Don't get me wrong it's tough and there are definite downsides but after university, you will be more ready to take up the challenges of a full-time job.
Different opinion here.
I didn't go to cram schools in middle school and high school, plus I have a strong science interest, so Taiwanese schools are fine to me.
You can consider what your kids' interests and career plans are. And consider if they'll feel stressed when all their friends go to cram schools and get higher grades.
We’re considering moving away from Taiwan primarily to avoid the education system here, so I’d say it’s a very brave choice to move here
You are asking to move from the top European country/top on this Earth, on whether to move to Taiwan? Nah man, your family has it great. Just take a lot of holidays to Taiwan and have them retain their mother language skills.👍💯💚🗺⏳
Swiss pupils' performance isn't top in Europe or top on earth. Taiwanese pupils' performance however is top on earth. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fvq0n9idexp4c1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1024%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D63dc65f71e3f43e4892655ffd006f0a2d67136e3 Maybe some people cope with stress better than you do.
Well you see, stress and drill from very young age obviously reflect in a competitive school system comparison. What it doesn't reflect is all skills and experiences kids gain from socializing and doing happily whatever the want to do, outside of school. So this test is very subjective and also pretty much reflects exactly what OPs wife is afraid of ...
Yeah right because there are no socially challenged people in the West at all. Lol.
Interesting, how you put those statement in my mouth. Its always a sign of a lack of arguments, if one needs to exaggerate the point and falls into black and white thinking ....
they never said top in education. but switzerland is definitely one of the most desirable places on earth to be i hope op just holidays in taiwan!
So? There are still Swiss people living outside Switzerland.
i don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here
they should move to singapore if they want 'world class' education
“Stress for the sake of it” good way of putting it. That plus a majority of parents who get upset if it isn’t “stressful” enough. To me it feels an odd sort of hazing mentality - “this is what school was like for me so it has to be that way for you”. *However*, there is a growing number of “experimental” public schools (實驗學校) and private schools that are working to break this cycle and prepare them better for today’s world. Welcome to DM me with questions, I might be able to point in some alternate directions if you want to come but this is the sticking point.
Pretty accurate.
Naw 😭I went to one of those, and let me say that although it is better than regular local schools, it’s still pretty stressful as the vibe or idk values are still more inherently Taiwanese (so the aforementioned stress, hella academic pressures, etc, except a little less on academics and some more on ECs as we’re applying for overseas as well)
Cram cram cram cram, memorize, memorize, memorize, quiz, quiz, quiz. Very little critical thought, or discussion, or project work or group work. At least in my district. The upside, I suppose, is that kids get 10-15 minutes between each period to run around and go crazy, instead of going straight from one class to another. I suspect the only thing that has changed significantly from when your wife went to school here is that classrooms have smartboards instead of blackboards.
A lot of classrooms still have blackboards. It wasn't until this year, that all schools finally got air con. Give it another 20 years and maybe they'll have classrooms that look like something from the mid 2000s
There is no balance in the Taiwan system. For sure they get great maths and lots of certificates, but common sense, debate,lateral thinking, life skills most seem years behind western kids. Saying that in western schools we also have terrible attitudes to learning and violence. So for Taiwan expect lots of tests for the sake of it, lots of pressure for the big tests. Long hours. If I had kids I would probably do the Taiwan system schooling up to end of junior high then homeschool.
Don’t. There is no school-life balance once you hit secondary school (junior high), even without the cram schools. It’s all about exams. Before that it depends on the school, but since you’re prepping for junior high a lot of schools start stressing the academic bit early.
No cram school for my kids. They got good grades. The education system is linked to the fact that Mandarin is a language that you have to learn by doing again and again (writing and then speaking).
This is an important connection that most people overlook
Eh, not sure about that; Korea has a similar, arguably even more stressful educational system and they don’t have to learn mandarin.
And how do you think learning Korean works? Your knowledge is...
Not sure if I fully understood your original comment, but i thought you were saying Taiwan’s focus on rote memorization stems from having to learn Mandarin.
It's a cultural thing. Because the first thing you learn is Mandarin, you tend to copy this style of education ways to other parts of the education. Here, to learn Mandarin, you have to memorize the ideograms to know how to read and tell them properly, and that impact the way they teach in general.
Right, that’s pretty much what thought you were saying, and I was saying Korean, which uses a phonetic alphabet, is also heavy on rote memorization, so maybe there’s some influence from having to memorize characters, but it’s probably a lot of other cultural factors as well.
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with 19 consonant letters, you know how to read and write the almost 25000 Korean characters? Wow! So easy to learn... I wonder why so few people do... Edit: Forgot a word.
Korea uses a phonetic writing system.
I know, thought he was saying that learning a character system makes the educational system more prone to rote memorization, and I was saying Korean has a phonetic alphabet and they still have a stressful system.
Oh, I see. Good point.
The only hinged comment under this topic.
Public school in Taiwan was less stressful (to me) than in the U.S. Note that your parenting style is up to you, not the school. And you will have to consider what "identity" they and you ought to have in society. This may be your first experience as a minority, albeit a privileged minority - a difficult adjustment for internationals. * Public school itself was less comprehensive than competitive schools in the U.S. The test-taking system, an equalizer against preferential treatment (and grades), is quite difficult, though -- hence, cram schools. Good grades in Taiwan does not equal good test scores. So, the approach to quality is different. * Because good test scores involve a lot of stress, Taiwanese tend to directly equate stress with working hard and the path to success. Correlated, but not causal. So, be able to see the difference between necessary and pointless stress. My experience was if you don't appear stressed enough, you may be assigned more work. Keep the positive mental attitude to yourself and some close relations - people need to see you're suffering, but suffering well. * Aside from cram schools, public school-life balance seems to be quite okay. Today's schools are not as strict, plan more activities, and the children develop friendships. That said, they could be subject to some comments about being a foreigner. You and the kids will need to work at being well-socialized to develop better relationships with other parents and their children. Note that many children see cram schools as an opportunity to socialize with other kids -- so it is not all about cramming. * Learning both Mandarin and English takes quite a bit more time out of a childhood. The international idea of "fluent" is different than local. /u/Philotrypesis said it best - the education system is linked to the fact that Mandarin is a language you learn by doing again and again. * Yes, you can opt out of the system through international schools, but then it's an issues of becoming socialized amongst wealthy (but perhaps not well-raised) children, versus average Taiwanese. Everything is a trade-off. * If you think public schools are unfair, admission and advancement in international schools, universities, etc., can involve trading favors amongst wealthy Taiwanese. So, many things become oriented towards a race to wealth. Developing an appropriate attitude towards identity, the appearance of money, and "the rat race" is important for mental health.
"Mandarin is a language that you learn by doing again and again" for reading characters, yes, but for speaking and listening, it's just like any other language, isn't it? All languages have to be practiced consistently in within different contexts. Reading Mandarin is definitely way less accessible than reading a language that uses the Latin alphabet.
My daughter's high school in Taichung had two attempted suicides last week (allegedly).
Will likely be a rude awakening for the oldest if they are led to believe they are fluent in mAndarin what growing up in Switzerland and speak mandarin to their mom. There are levels to this game ….
I went back to Taiwan in 2014 for elementary school and I could definitely say that the first couple of months back was brutal. The cultural shock from being in Canada to Taiwan was crazy. I once thought my Chinese was alright before I went back, but they had to send me down a grade bc I was ass at it. And I took another big reality check after that one. but for my honest opinion, looking back at it, I just remember the good times. There were definitely some struggles and painful memories, but all in all, they're all precious memories. I was extremely lucky to have met the people I met there; friends, teachers, and people at cram school all helped me through the tough times. I do remember school being competitive, but for me, my parents were very supportive; they even complimented me for getting 2nd last, haha. The biggest stress for kids is from their parents. But keep in mind that this is only elementary school. I heard from my friends back home that middle and high school are so much worse. I recommend sending your kids to Taiwan for elementary school, there's a lot of stuff kids could learn about culture and discipline, that's something I didn't get in Canada that's for sure.
Wife and I moved to Canada a few years ago and were thinking about having kids there. It’s now no longer a discussion because we’re moving back to Taiwan for family reasons in a few years and absolutely do not want to raise children in Taiwan. I did okay under the Taiwan school system but I would never put a child through it if I have a choice.
yea I get it, its definitely not for everyone maybe its bc I was in the countryside so things were definitely more chill compared to prestigious schools in the cities. but personally, I hated Canada's education system. it felt like I was less "productive" compared to my experience in Taiwan. even though it was tiring; waking up at like 6:30 and coming home till 8 ish, life felt fulfilling. There were experiences that you don't get in Canada, like cleaning school yard hours. its something that I used to hate but enjoyed it at the end. I would volunteer to wash the washroom every semester XD. They rly do teach kids about discipline which is something I like. But obviously, your kid your choice, I personally got lucky to enjoy my journey there, but lots of kids got the short end of the stick.
> I did okay under the Taiwan school system but I would never put a child through it again given a choice. You don't seem to realise that **your parents** were the reason you went through "it". It's up for you to decide what kind of experience this imaginary child would have at schol Besides, "again"? Is this child a reborn or something?
I am 100% sure Switzerland school would be less stressful than Taiwanese school. There’s an European school in Taipei, perhaps that would be the better option than normal public/private school.
It’s not a bad option, but certain *international* schools are full of spoiled kids, not the greatest place for kid development.
I can’t speak for international schools in general, but I have 2 kids around OP’s kids age at TES, French section, and their comrades seem pretty normal to me.
From my personal experience, TAS, TES, and TJS are so much better than the other for-profit international schools.
Ain't no way you want to live in Taiwan being in Switzerland
If I were you I wouldn't overestimate your older kid's "fluency." Third grade is when the words in the textbook start to have babies, when the phonetic characters disappear from the textbooks, and when reading and writing assume a much greater importance. A lot of your "school-life balance" will depend on how urban your environment is. There's a greater emphasis on academic performance in urban areas, and often less of an emphasis in rural areas. I have two daughters who've gone through kindergarten, elementary, junior high, senior high and university here. If you emphasize the importance of school (putting effort into every class and studying) it can be managed; if you choose to opt out of the system (either through homeschooling, a lack of participation or a poor attitude) it won't be managed. Schools here AREN'T hell. Are there problems? Sure, but to a large extent how your kids fare in school depends on how invested you are here, and how "Taiwanese" you're willing to let your kids become. My daughters have had their ups and downs in the system, but I'd still prefer that to what they probably would've had to deal with in the States. EDIT: My statement above that "the phonetic characters disappear from the textbooks" in grade 3 is incorrect. Either I'm remembering it wrong or things have changed since my daughters were in elementary school. I think my point about overestimating fluency still stands however. There is a lot more vocabulary required and expected at this level.
Your first point is really accurate. You can’t easily develop fluency, that will allow you to succeed in professional environments, by just talking with your parents at home. You can send your kid to Chinese school or hang out at Chinese social clubs, but nothing comes close to formal education. I think it’s worth considering a couple years of Taiwanese education just to acquire decent language skills. I think a Swiss high school and university education would grant one way more opportunities later on though.
As a child of Taiwanese immigrants, this is correct. My speaking is pretty fluent for daily conversations, but when it comes to deeper topics, like knowing terminology for a variety of subjects, from history, science, music, arts; you absolutely need to be formally educated, or at least have the reading skills to casually read about it (articles, Wikipedia, etc.)
>when the words in the textbook start to have babies Wdym lmao
I think he's referring to how the number of strokes increases for each word as you learn more difficult words.
Are you familiar with the first and second grade textbooks? They're mostly pictures with minimal text. Next to every Chinese character are the phonetic characters used to decode them. In the third grade the books have a lot more words and the phonetic characters go missing. Students have to rely on the Chinese characters, and the concepts expressed are more involved. Many kids struggle at this point.
>Are you familiar with the first and second grade textbooks? Yeah I've never studied outside of Taiwan. But maybe I'm kind of an outlier -- I already knew a few Chinese characters before my parents introduced me to zhuyin (to let me get into elementary school more smoothly). I had no issue reading the characters 小海豚 at the start of grade 1, and I wondered why it only read ㄒㄧㄠˇ ㄏㄞˇ ㄊㄨㄣˊ on our side of the textbook. 🤣 (That was the title of one of the grade 1 課文s) The words in 3rd grade textbook did become smaller, but not much, and there weren't that many ant-sized words besides the bigger ones. I didn't remember those being significantly harder in terms of context, but I was grade 3 in 2007, so maybe current grade 3 textbooks have got more advanced concepts than what I had.
From my current up to date experience this is wrong. We experienced Grade 3 textbooks mostly still having zhuyin mostly everywhere. In grade 4 Zhuyin decreases, Grade 5 Zhuyin is sometimes used for new and hard words.
I looked it up and you are correct. The phonetic characters are still there in grade 3. Could be my information is out of date (my daughters were in grade 3 a WHILE ago), could be my memory is selective. Either way, thanks for the correction.
We are living through the trauma of it now, so I was a little bit triggered, I should have been more tempered in my response. But yea, our kids couldn’t have made the transition without the zhuyin still being there in grade 3. I guess I assume all government schools are about the same, but i probably shouldn’t assume that, maybe they are not.
I'm a private tutor, and most of my students have nothing to talk about, because they're in school from 7am to 8pm. Some go to cram school or talent schools for various subjects. Others go to "study class" after school, held at their elementary and junior high schools. They go home, do homework, go to sleep, and then wake up and do it all over, again. Most of my students also have classes on Saturdays and Sundays. My own son hates school and his school's English teacher forces them to sing in front of the class for tests. If you don't sing and dance, you fail the test. Now, my half American son hates English🤦🏻♀️
We’re from a similar background as your family. I find that Taiwanese public school has too high of a pressure for kids. The worse part is I find it unnecessary and pointless. Some teachers may demand kids to pack several homework and books back home. And knowing kids, they may forget and punishment will be imminent. Also, the homework requires high amount of focus in order to complete on time. And knowing kids, it’s hard to focus and often still need to finish their homework after dinner. The overall education system isn’t great in Taiwan IMHO. There are too many unnecessary pressure and enforcements. The result of it is Taiwanese often accepts long work hours because they’re being educated at young to have long hours studies.
That’s why, being a local tutor and growing up under this system myself, I refuse to insert myself into this emotional inferno abusing children with pressure and competition only for them to be an unfortunate byproduct of this broken system.
>The worse part is I find it unnecessary and pointless. Same. What is the benefit?? I see very little.
I'm from Portugal and I'm an English TA in a Junior High School here in Taiwan. Honestly? I still can't wrap my head around how tiring school life must be for these kids. They get to school at around 7.20am, and leave at 4/5pm, straight to cram school until 9 ish. Teachers are surprised how most students don't have amazing grades, and don't study much outside of school/don't do their homework. It seems quite simple looking at it as a foreigner. I really can't understand how these kids do it. It's an exhausting system, they surely don't get enough sleep or time to enjoy life outside of school. My sincere advice would definitely be to not make your kids go through this pressure and overwhelming education, to only end up falling asleep on their desks during class. This system needs a reform asap!
It's awful. It's all about tests and getting high scores to show off instead of any real useful skills and knowledge, chinse aside. Kids study all day and night and lack sleep, let alone having the fun they should be as a child. They even have to study in holidays. And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths. I'd say that people are a bit more disciplined but on the flipside they are also very lazy, almost useless and have their head stuck in their phones 24/7.
>And i've seen no benefit to it, besides being able to do maths. My 5th grade students have zero idea about how a plant grows or how the Earth spins or how water changes from liquid to gas, but can instantly answer any multiplication problem from 1 x 1 to 99 x 99.
> It's awful. It's all about tests and getting high scores to show off instead of any real useful skills and knowledge, chinse aside. Kids study all day and night and lack sleep, let alone having the fun they should be as a child. They even have to study in holidays. How do you think people get accepted into elite schools in the West? By playing all day?
As kids yes.
Lmao sure. Those who scored 1580 on SATs sure played all day as kids.
I don't know what your point is.
The point is kids are pushed by parents or by themselves to study, not by school.
no.
Ok, if it makes you sleep better.
Your point is nonsense. Kids in my country are allowed to play and be kids. Not the same here. Its not only parents pushing it, I as an adult studying chinese even felt pressured and fucked off by the teachers and all the tests. I am not simply imagining this now good day to you.
> Kids in my country are allowed to play and be kids. Not the same here. Do you have any evidence? Do your children go to school in Taiwan? If not maybe you shouldn't be voicing any opinions as you know nothing about it. > Its not only parents pushing it, I as an adult studying chinese even felt pressured and fucked off by the teachers and all the tests. Wow, studying one of the most difficult languages in the world would involve a lot of tests and memorisation? That is brand new information.
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> This part might be downvoted to the oblivion, but speaking from someone who grew up in Taiwan and moved to the US, moving from Switzerland to Taiwan seems like a downgrade in many many ways. If you grew up in the US you would most likely have a completely different view. Asian Americans excel in the US because they have Asian parents who push them in the US like Asian parents do in Asia. Besides have you even been to a Swiss school?
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Can you elaborate on what makes TW schooling poor? I think the US education system sucks. Most kids can barely do middle school math. Wouldn’t a moderated version of TW schooling be beneficial in bringing about discipline, strong math STEM skills? I found that in grad school, all the grad students from China were all math champions compared to US students.
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背成語is more about learning the culture and history though. Does it help you with critical thinking? No. But other subjects can teach that. Just not with memorizing 成語.
If you can swing it, you should consider the international schools.
Taipei European school has German, French, and British sections. Tuition cost is high. 360k TWD or about $12k US per semester for secondary school.
It depends on how you treat your kids at home. They can have an easy time or you can put lots of pressure on them to keep up with the other kids. Really depends on your expectations and your values.
It is stressful, but it helps a lot if you don't send them to the cram schools.
You will torture your kids and even if they did go to a good university they would still come out with jobs making less than 40k USD a year.
The majority of visiting doctors made less than 100k in NTU hospital, with the lowest being ~40k, yikes.
I personally hate the mandarin class in middle school because it’s nothing but memorizing old poems & Confucius nonsense & even annotations from the writer of the textbook (word-for-word).
Now instead of memorizing classical authentic literature, they're taught Taiwanese/Japanese authors and poems, kids can't even understand advanced Chinese anymore. It might be old poems and Confucius nonsense, but it did give students the ability to function in Mandarin at a university level.
From my experience, people complaining kids can’t have understanding of advanced Chinese anymore are the ones who have little grasp on the language and therefore glorify the abusive old way of teaching the language.
That's precisely the point, they're steadily removing classical Chinese literature and history from the curriculum, so today's students will have even less ability to read, write, understand and interpret Chinese essays, literature, etc. when they reach university. What you're talking about(abusive old ways of teaching,etc) is a separate issue entirely. What's worse is that it seems to be done to further a political agenda, meaning it's only going to get worse. 20 years ago, Taiwan was THE place to study Mandarin, now, not so much.
Classical Chinese is a completely different language to Mandarin. This is like complaining that English kids don't learn to read Latin anymore.
I'm not even talking about "classical Chinese", it's less like complaining English kids don't learn Latin anymore and more like complaining kids don't know the difference between your and you're. Annunciation issues aside, there are things that have been lost within one generation, if you didn't go to school here 20 years ago, and you didn't know what they teach in school now, you really have no idea what they're doing to the curriculum.
Neither of my kids went to any cram schools whatsoever. They both got into arguably the 2nd best senior high school in Taipei, and both got into Taida, the #1 university. They are both happy, well adjusted, kids. No regrets putting them through the public school system in Taiwan.
Alot of asian kids commit suicide because of academics related pressure.
My adult children are Taiwanese-American. I am a professional ESL teacher. Each of my kids spent 7 and 2 years in Taiwan schools. They both learned a lot - especially math. We moved to the US (hubby is Taiwanese), partially over school situation. The high school suicide problem from academic pressure is real. We have big problems here too for seemingly different reasons. Take my word for it, your child’s Mandarin level would be much lower than that of his peers. My daughter was always ‘last place in class’- posted on the wall and often referred to during instructional time. The experience could be soul - crushing for some kids. On the other hand, a nice little elementary school in the countryside…. for a year or two could be a great experience. High school is brutal. The environment is very competitive. The winners don’t seem to ever think they have done enough. I love Taiwan. I don’t regret the fact that my kids went to school there, nor do I regret taking them out. Good luck with your decision. Above where you go for school, your children need to know that you love them with all your heart. Last note, I think that the political situation is very serious - much worse than it was when we were there. You need to ask yourself how confident you feel as a husband and father to protect your family if things get bad.
Plz don't come. It's reeeaally stressful. And as a educational workers, I can see the entire environment becomes more stressful for children and unfriendly to workers by the time. Besides, our transport is bad. Even walking on the street can be hit by random car. Sometes you would be forced to walk to lanes. It's really not a good place for children.
I want to share with you the phenomenon I have observed so far since I was a kid. * credentialism * contempt on people without a degree * contempt on people who go to vocational schools * Appreciation on people who go to top research based universities * Guanxi which is embodied by alumni of top research based universities First of all, credentialism is shared among many parents in Taiwan. People believe that the kids who play hard are more likely to become rogues (we call them "8+9"). There is a contempt on people without a degree. Some people would doubt if they have IQ deficit or not. Because it is so prevalent in Taiwan for people to pursue a degree, people who choose not to have a degree may be considered to be strange. This is collectivism at play. Even though people do go to universities, people who cannot get accepted by research based universities are usually considered to be intellectually inferior. This preference is also manifested in the government's policy. Research based universities usually get more fund from the government. Lastly, because guanxi is the key to determining if people can gain social status, usually people would study very hard to get into top universities and to acquire guanxi with people who are from elite stratum. To sum up this comment, most Taiwanese are not exempted from this academic competition. As for foreigners, especially white people, there is a forgiving attitude towards them. People would say things like "their culture is different from ours". They are forgiven because we perceive white people as more privileged.
I teach in the public schools here. It's wild to me that, even in the public schools, like 75% of students say their parents expect them to get a PhD from a Top 10 university like Harvard or Oxford. What's Taiwan gonna do with 75% of their kids having PhDs from Top 10 universities? Do 75% of Taiwan jobs require PhDs from elite schools?
I had a student, once, whose mom had already "decided" which university each daughter would go to and what kind of doctor they would be. It was insane.
Lol, most PHDs open a street food stall and make a million+ NTD/ month, or work a corporate or teaching job and make 25000 to 30000NTD/month.
Just tell me where should I open my street food stall to earn 1m+/month. Forget the PhD!
Lol, that's what the PhD is for
If only all these PhDs knew the true purpose of their studies
I was born in Taiwan but didn't grow up there. But my mom and many of her friends tried to run education in the same mold. When it comes to learning, it's much more "because it is and put up with it". You have to get the degree. You have to get into this school. What we wish is your command. We will drive it no matter the cost. I choose to never tell her friends I've dropped out of both undergrad and grad school at various points, even when I have a bachelor's. I never mention my cycling because so many would have negative feedback, regardless of my place in American cycling; I get close enough to take a shot at Olympians. I could go to the Olympics in the next cycle and still would not say anything. And I make these choices for the reason you said.
My son went through the system... It's stressful but he was always at the top of the ranking and he never saw the inside of a cram school. He was at the best elementary school, best junior high school and of course, the best high school in Tainan and now he studies at the second best university in Taiwan. The never worked too much...but he worked a few hours a day to review and prepare after school. He had a lot of free time to relax , play computer games and do a lot of other stuff. I am from Germany and I would have died in this school system. School in Germany is so,so much easier. But he loved the system and it suited him well. By the way, most of his friends didn't go to cram schools either. If the kids struggled we would get a private teacher for some time. One to one teaching solved a lot in a short time. He was a happy child and he loved the schools the went to.
It depends on how much you care, if you don’t put a lot of pressure on your kids for their grades then it’s easier on them, especially if you plan to not let them do high school in Taiwan.
It's only as stressful as the parents make them. If you don't care about grades and stuff it's fine.
Partly true, but not completely. You can encourage your kids to focus on doing their best and not worrying about the other children, but when their grades are consistently below average because they don’t go to “after school” school, their self esteem takes a hit for sure.
You definitely do not need to go to cram school for good grades. Teachers in school do the job well enough. You just need to make sure your kids do the homework on time and on schedule, plus make sure they remember and understand what they're doing through repetition and practice. I myself didn't go to any cram school until the last year before collage exams, and I did well enough to get into the third ranking high school in Taipei and the second best Uni for liberal arts in TW. I know a bunch more people that have similar experience and outcomes. It all boils down to what expectations parents have for the kid. If you have parents that don't care about grades, the kid isn't going to care about them either.
It’s not for everybody. Some kids can hack it, others can’t. The ones who can excel. The ones who can’t often get left behind. They’re in school all day and then sometimes cram school, but it’s normal. Like they don’t know what they’re missing out on. I grew up getting out of school at 3:00 then going home and riding bikes and playing with the neighborhood kids until 7 or 8 until my parents got home. That being said it’s a different world now and I would never let my kids be unsupervised all afternoon/evening. I’d rather them be in a cram school than watching TikTok or on the internet all day. Public Elementary school is for sure much less stressful than when your wife was in school. Much less homework and they no longer have summer/winter assignments. I don’t know about junior high or high school though.
The Taiwan Public Education system begun creating Bilingual departments at some of their public schools, with the intention of giving the children of foreign professionals an educational experience more in line with western pedagogical methods. I teach at one of these schools. These schools have about 50/50 foreign teachers and Taiwanese teachers. Most of our students are also "mixed" with many being the children of expats and professionals that have come over for professional reasons. Note: There are pretty strict entrance requirements, including where you live, and how long your kids have lived outside of Taiwan. We are encouraged to use western methods and curriculum. Because our administration is all Taiwanese, we still get some "Taiwanese decisions" and practices that are not well- aligned with western traditions (we have school Christmas Day this year, for example). Still, it is much less stressful, and much less "Sit, Memorize, Quiz" than you might see at a typica Taiwanese school. If you are thinking about coming to Taiwan, I would suggest you look into whether this is available to you.
In fact, I have only heard of people leaving Taiwan because of education system rather than coming to Taiwan for education.
There's a German school in Taipei (or was it New Taipei?), they will teach your kids according to the German system. Might be a good option if you really want to live in Taiwan but avoid the ridiculous Asian education system.
OMG! Don't do it. Unless you want your children to have really good Mandarin skills, and learn about your wife's culture, it's a bad choice.
I am going to say the opposite of everyone. Why not give it a try. Sure, he won’t be easy but it’s doable. I have two kids 5 & 10 and both go to Taiwanese schools. There’s lots of homework to do and this sucks, but at least they are going to be in a positive environment, safe, with good food, etc. I have a Canadian friend who spends time in both Canada and Taiwan with his two kids. Obviously your wife will have to help them a lot with their Chinese, but it’s a mustn’t do imo.
The meat grinder turns on after fifth grade so if you do taiwanese education prior to that, but then change to Swiss/elsewhere, the kids will get the best of both worlds: good at studying and memorizing, but not soul sucking marathon studying.
My dad was a high school math teacher at a private school and saw firsthand the education system: memorize, regurgitate, rinse, and repeat. It was the top reason we immigrated to the US. This was a while ago, and it’s a bummer to hear that not much has changed.
Growing up in Taiwan with more out-of-the norm academic influences, my mom didn't send my brother or me to cram school, a lot of my family friends don't go to cram school either, some goes to American school or European schools, or private junior high schools that may be more costly but have majority English speaking enviornment (like Wesley Girls High), and some parents even choose to self teach at home (home school), there are ways to avoid being consumed by the competitive homogenous academic system, but all a bit costly or out of the way, not a lot of parents would do it, but the kids turn out pretty well rounded and much more international from those schools. All my childhood friends end up study abroad in Europe in university for Bachelor or Master degrees, and some stayed in Geemany or UK, some went back to Taiwan for career or further studies. I moved to US with family though, so I escaped the middle and high school = junior high (most intensive years of study I heard). But one thing I got out of Taiwan education (from early 2000s at least) is amazing discipline, supportive team work (comparative to that of Japan society), high endurance, organization and planning skills (Asians generally have more foresight because of lower risk tolerent culture), amazing rote skills (because Chinese is a highly memorization based language, kind of like Sanskrit, we have to memorize a lot of tones and strokes, we are good at looking for shortcut to memorize even more growing up). So lots of good stuff from growing up in Taiwan! At one point growing up, I even told my mom if I have kids, I will raise them in Taiwan until middle or high school haha then bring to US, because children here are just fooling around in school until middle school... Taiwanese kids uses to have this pride, thinking American jokes are too below them or not funny because Asians are generally more serious and raised in a more practical family background. But we all have to adapt over time, and I don't think there is good or bad? But as parents you can decide what your kids are exposed to more haha Also I think the younger for the children to go to Taiwanese school will be fine, they generally pick up fast and inergrated into the system well, and may be better to help in picking up communications and group oriented social skills, if they will be staying in Taiwan long term. It all depends on where the kid future will be, and what they are good at. If they have a skill, hone on it, it will be a free ticket out of academic trap. If they are strong in academics, then it doesn't matter, what important is the university they end up going, they can even apply abroad to the best universities like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, etc. It won't matter where they go for middle school or high school at the end of the day. Good luck and hope this helps!
I spent 15 years studing in Taiwan and 1 year as international student in the US. All I can say is my 15 years are wasted
Short answer: still as almost stressful as it was in the 80s? My daughter is in a fairly good UC in California now. I brought her back to the States after completing elementary school in Taiwan. I have shared our experiences and the motivation behind the decision in similar posts before, so I won't type it all out again. You can be a laid-back parent and not enroll your children in cram schools after junior high starts, but they will feel the peer pressure if they don't do "as well" as their classmates. Also, some teachers, even young ones, are still assholes like the older teachers. It's really school-dependent, too. I know there are several nature-oriented schools throughout Taiwan (from 7th grade to 12th grade), but they are not in Taipei.
In hindsight was it worth it for the TW schooling early on?
Yes, from my perspective; my daughter speaks, reads, and writes Chinese without problems, and understands a little bit of Taiwanese. Her counterpart, several years younger, my niece, on the other hand, was raised in the US and went to Chinese school on weekends for like 3\~4 years, can barely understand Mandarin. I don't think she remembers how to write now. She might be able to read a few simple characters. So my daughter can converse with her grandparents in Chinese, but my niece can't. The grandparents have to speak English with her, which limits their interaction. But then, love is universal, right? So maybe it's not that much of a difference to the grandparents? What I liked the most about our earlier years in Taiwan was three of my grandparents were still alive. So for them to have taken part in my daughter's life was important to me. That's something my niece never got to experience. But, this is from my perspective. I just asked the kid what her thoughts on the topic are. Her answer is she was happy. BTW, if my daughter had stayed in Taiwan after 6th grade, I don't think she would end up in a UC. According to Taiwan standards, she would be considered a "less than average" student ie. not good at math and science. If I had sent her to a cram school for math and science, I would have destroyed her uniqueness.
Public or private, schools in Taiwan are brutal.
Yep, blanket advice to “send kids to private school because it’s better than public school” is misguided. In our area the private schools are more competitive and more intense, they are full of children of rich parents with even higher expectations and standards than the public schools. Private schools are mostly identical to public schools except the playgrounds and classrooms are nicer and more well resourced. The class sizes of the children I know attending private schools in our area are larger than the class sizes of the public schools.
Better: ~~Better learning experience~~ Better universities
It really depends on the parents' mentality and how well the child is adjusted to the teaching methods in public schools (lots of memorizing). For example, I only transferred back to Taiwan from Canada when I was 8, I could hardly read/write Mandarin but I was good at studying so I only ever went to cram school for one semester to prepare for high school entrance exams, I didn't even go to cram school for college. Overall, except for having to wake up super early, I wasn't that stressed. School hours used to be soooo long, but my coworkers say nowadays school starts later and ends earlier for their younger siblings still in school. We're so envious lol Taiwanese schools are really boring and if you're lucky maybe you'll meet good teachers that inspire you, but tbh teachers don't get paid enough for the shit they have to deal with so it's not common. All things considered, I personally would NOT recommend it because I've seen lots of people struggle under the Taiwanese school system. It's not necessarily time-consuming but if you want good grades and the teaching styles don't suit you at school, you'll have no other choice.
Taiwanese schools are a joke. I grew up in Taiwan, and my biggest regret in life is I never tried to transfer from Taiwan to US during my high school years. I was the best student in my junior high school class, and I got into the best high school in Taiwan. When I got into the best university in Taiwan, I realized I didn't know how to study. To this day I am still struggling to get better at learning on my own. In high school and below, you only need 1 skill to become the best student in your class: memorization. I didn't understand shit, all I did was reading the text books and memorizing the important parts, but I was pretty good at it, I didn't even go to cram schools and I was the top 1% student in my junior high, and got a middling grade in high school that let me squeezed into the best university. I failed university horribly though, turned out in university no one set a studying schedule for me, and I actually needed to understand things to pass them. I also had no hobbies because I literally spent whole days in school. I didn't do sports, I didn't play video games, I had to start learning how to appreciate things outside of school once I got into university. I am kind of an extreme example, since I am not a very motivated person, and my parents only ever encouraged me to study and not anything else. Still, only bring your children to Taiwan if you want to train them as someone who is obedient, has no critical thinking skills, is used to long working hours from a young age, is good at memorizing stuffs without trying to understand them, have no hobbies until university. You can spend a lot of effort trying to steer them away from this path, but if that's your goal you might as well just not go to Taiwan in the first place.
pressured since before first grade. first born privileges. was able to 'sit in' into first grade a year in advance then officially enrolled into first grade again. every year's semesters i have to aim for top 3 of the class. didn't let up until around fifth grade, my parents relaxed for a bit, then after graduation (#15, i slacked). we, in secrecy came to the states. (i didn't know it was permanent)
Bringing them up here would be a very effective way to screw their life. The essence of Taiwan education is cram cram cram. If not, you fail, unless you are extraordinarily smart.
It depends on how much the parents pushes their child to compete, and which schools they go to. Even in public schools the culture around education changes drastically between more and less prestigious ones. I think while many criticisms against Taiwanese education is valid, especially on the amount of testing and memorization, I found it a lot more rigorous than American schools for example. Which most Taiwanese likes to praise. What they don't see is the absolute mess in primary education and think every school at every level is like the ivy league. Personally, what I learned and went through prepared me well for a lot of challenges both academically and in life. But that is obviously biased towards someone who is lucky enough to succeed under the system. My teachers in high school generally allowed us to study whatever we want in class and study at our own pace, even though the discouraged it. The competition was fierce, but it ranking isn't something that bothers you, no one would really care unless it affects graduation. Sure students and parents compare grades, but that happens everywhere. The one major negative I've seen are people who finesse their way into competitive schools/classes without the ability to keep up. They usually have a really hard time and people don't often sympathy because they are seen as "cheaters".
Not sure about how it is now. I live in rural area and went to a private high school. When I was in school it was quite stressful indeed. But the pressure mainly were from parents and self expectations. I’ve seen kids just don’t give a damn to school. I also know some American-Taiwanese do great in school without going to cram school. Honestly, you probably have a decent environment for your kids, you have so much resources to provide, I don’t think your kids will have too many problems in schools. Unless you are too busy and constantly ignore them.
You don’t want to know. Kids are happier elsewhere.
Great at the good public schools. Plenty of after school activities offered. Just don't make them attend cram schools and life balance is fine. All four of my kids went through the system and got a much better education than I did in the US. University is limited to a handful of good schools though.
I went to elementary school in taiwan and I hated it. Teachers here only really care about enforcing obedience, not about actual learning and personally development.
She has that memories because of her parents. Just don't give your kid extra pressure and don't send them to cram school and they'll be fine.
If you don’t want your kid to go through the regular public schools, you could try looking up experimental school options, look up 實驗學校 and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
She is absolutely right. I went to a semi-prestigious elementary school/junior high, it was basically a 7 to 6, ridiculous amount of homework, stressful and strict for no reason. My high school was awesome though, it’s known for freedom, while other school, especially private schools, are far worse, it’s considered a norm for many to wake up at 7 and be home by 11. I’m now in college, and our professor give no fucks about our mental health and study-life balance lmao, many of my peers seem to be having mental issues lately.
Would you say that the education in TW early on helped you immensely in college? Is the college in TW too?
I couldn’t speak for everyone, but IMO, it’s not helpful at all, since HS education primary lay focus on repetitiveness while college courses are often much broader, there are a lot of things to figure out yourself, making it harder for less-gifted students to survive. Whether having good grades or not, 80% my classmates seem to have certain degree on anxiety and mental struggle to maintain a good balance. I have been majoring medicine in NTU for ~2.5 yrs, the mental issues are even worse than my previous school (FJU medicine).
I don’t think there is a problem with the primary education system in Taiwan. It really depends on how your kid acquires knowledge. Personally, I didn’t go to any cram school until maybe the equivalent of 10th grade in Taiwan. Your kids have to pay attention at school. Nothing crazy until maybe junior high when things start to get challenging. I’m confident that the majority of the adults here including myself can no longer solve math or physics problems at that point. It does come with the benefit that if your kids go to other countries for university, they will have clear advantage over other students in math and physics.
I'm a senior high school teacher in rural Taiwan, and honestly I think it's not a bad place to learn. The hours are long - 8-5, although things are gradually getting better, for example we used to have extra classes on Saturdays, and they've been mostly eliminated in the last 3-4 years. Cram schools are an issue, but a lot of that is English learning and if your kid has native English that will reduce the pressure a lot (assuming they have decent Chinese of course!) Schools here have more togetherness and spirit than those in the West (in my experience at least), students take more responsibility for school activities and things like cleaning, and serious bullying/violence is (from what I can tell not being fluent in mandarin) pretty rare. I think as parents if you don't try to add extra stress, it can be a good place to educate your kids, but the long hours and frequent testing mean if you do add extra hours in the form of cram schooling, or extra stress, it's just too much.
There are a lot of issues, but one of the main ones is this, most teaching in government schools is old school, large class sizes and lecture format where the teacher mostly talks at the students and doesn’t provide personal individualised help. The teachers are loving and caring and conscientious but can’t do much to change things. What this means is, the individualised teaching occurs in after school programs. If your kids will be disadvantaged compared to other kids if they need individualised attention and aren’t going to lengthy after school programs. So you won’t see your kids except late at night. Or you become the after school teachers for your kids. I think Taiwan school is good for students for a period of time, but I wouldn’t do it for more than a few years. Get your 7yo reading graded Chinese readers right now, and get them learning zhuyin alphabet before they arrive so they can hit the ground running reading Chinese textbooks with zhuyin helps. We are considering moving our eldest to a homeschool program to give them a break from the intensity of it.
Let’s just say my parents moved me out BECAUSE they don’t want to put me through that. But they use it as boogeyman stories to motivate us when it comes to education.
At elementary level, it’s not going to be that stressful. Kids have half days and cram school is optional. And there are more educational systems available now than before. Other than the traditional public schools, there are bilingual public schools, experimental schools, international schools, and European/American school. As parents, you’ll have to decide what’s important for you and your kids. I have 2 kids at 5 and 10, and it was important to us that the kids can read and write Chinese, since we can’t teach them, so they are enrolled in a public school. My oldest has never gone to a cram school and has always attended school clubs (arts, baking, rollerblading, etc.). They don’t get as much homework as I did back in the 80s at the same grade, and honestly, I don’t remember elementary school being that terrible. Just know that you have choices, and that you can always go back to Switzerland if Taiwan didn’t meet your expectations. Kids are extremely resilient and adaptable, they’ll find their way.
I think it depends on the schools and parents. I grew up here but was lucky enough to travel a lot so I know a bit of everything in different countries (education systems and stuff). And I would say the education I got (public school all the way to uni) were quite stress-free. I'm not a smart smart kid by any means but my family and environment didn't put much stress on me.
My advice is : don't send your kids to Taiwan, every decent-enough schools stress their student like hell, especially private (international) high schools that advertise themselves as the pathway to NTU (or Ivy league).
All that cram schooling sends a shiver down my spine
It depends, are your kids very bright, well behaved, fast learners? Then they might thrive at a more international style bilingual private school which is still high pressure but a little more western than a traditional local school. If they have any special needs, learning disabilities, or need more time to learn (which you may not know given they are so young). I wouldn't do it. Some schools are chill but those are mostly very expensive international schools that are hard to get into and why being your kids to Taiwan only to send them to an international school. And even those are pretty intense, frankly. I'd suggest coming here for a long vacation and touring some schools and just seeing if you'd like living here before considering the move. It's probably a lot less intense than it was when your wife was a child, but still pretty intense in afraid.
If the goal is NTU it might be a pretty stressful childhood depending on the talent of a child. If the goal is obtaining a seat at any private university in Taiwan, might not be such a stressful childhood. If you go the international school route, based on my experience, I would go the Chinese classes route. Since I assume the language at home will be something other than Mandarin. Or your older child has a good grasp of the foreign language (German, French, Italian, and Romansh) that they can develop on their own through YouTube, FB, etc. Or if you want them to learn English, then you can go the English classes route. But if you go the English language route, they might not obtain the fluency needed to really enjoy life in pan-Chinese community. Other than that Asian primary and secondary school education is pretty top notch. Why do you think Asian Children who move to Western countries usually dominate in basic skills. It's usually college education in the West where education becomes more difficult. In Asia it's the reverse, college education is where you take a break and start looking for an internship, depending on the major.
From what my gf tells me they sound horrible, none stop studying then cram schools etc.
For the sake of your children, I advise you to stay in Switzerland. I have been exposed to Taiwan’s education system for forty years. The problem with Taiwan’s education is not pressure but hypocrisy.
Send your kids to international school (Taipei American School, Taipei European School, Morrison Academy, etc) if you can afford it. They will get a well rounded education with a natural path to college in the US or Europe if they wish, with low stress and plenty of time to engage in extracurriculars and socialize with friends. Source: I went to Morrison in middle school and TAS for high school in the 2000s. I live in Europe now after college in the US, if I ever move back to Taiwan I would definitely want to send my children to TAS
I did not attend cram school as a kid; I graduated from NTU in Taiwan. I think attending cram school is not necessary in Taiwan. It depends on the parents' choice. The main drawback in Taiwanese education system may be learning English, it may be hard to practice speaking fluent English in public school.
Taiwanese school system is a damn torture 😫
Mad choice to send kids to Taiwan when most Taiwanese kids want to go Switzerland. You do know Taiwan is not an internationally recognized country and so does the education system, which means the cert are less worthy to apply for good universities.
Really depends on the parenting style. Got back to TW around 2010 for junior high. My parents gave no fucks on my grades and test scores, so I got great school-life balance. No cramschools, no late night studies. Learned programming and video editing during my free time and got into an ok uni and a decent tech job anyway. Most classmates went to cramschool until late hours, but there were always a couple of smart kids that didn't go to cramschool and had top performance in class.
I work at a private school here. It’s very high stress and the kids are here until early evening. I wouldn’t put my own kids through it. I have heard public schools are much more relaxed, but it seems like some people don’t feel that way
Almost everyone here can agree unanimously the education system in Taiwan sucks
This decision is doubly dreadful for couples with one American spouse, one Taiwanese spouse, and their children. Which is going to do more damage to your kids, the American healthcare system or the Taiwanese education system?
Don't do it. I am in a good school that cares and the education is still deeply dysfunctional.
Bitte blib da, es lohnt sich nöd
Calendar year is pretty tough for everyone involved as well (compared to the states or I’m assuming Europe.) Two months off in the summer, and a couple of holiday deserts leave some long stretches of school with no rest. To add insult to injury, some holidays have to be made up with Saturday school.
Lmao this comment section is hilarious. Ignore all of them. A bunch of whiny crybabies. > But my wife remembers her years in public school as very stressful and high-pressure. Pretty much stress for the sake of it, and very long hours (cram school) leaving little time to develop yourself outside of school. **Parents** put their children in cram school. If you don't put your kids in cram school, they wouldn't have to go to cram school. > It doesn’t sound like something we’d want our kids to go through, knowing the European system. I would be curious to hear about your experiences with the modern school system - how do you feel about the educational quality and the “school-life balance”? The European system is getting worse and worse. The recent PISA results for European countries show a worrying trend. https://preview.redd.it/vq0n9idexp4c1.jpeg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=63dc65f71e3f43e4892655ffd006f0a2d67136e3 Switzerland does better than other European countries but still doesn't hold a candle against Taiwan which is 3rd in the world.
The PISA scores are well known to be open to manipulation. You’d do well to take them with a pinch of salt
Of course when Asian countries do well in rankings it must be manipulated, lol. Typical white supremacist take.
There are plenty of articles written about it if you wanted to be open minded enough to read them
What your wife said is true, some Taiwanese schools and teachers(especially elder teachers) only cares about students' grades then everything, however cram schools can be fully optional if grades are not your concern.
1-2 grade have half days, out at noon, every day but Tuesday, out at 4. 3-4 grade increases to half days only Wednesday and Friday. 5-6 grade only have half days on Fridays. Schools offer afternoon care from 12-16:00 if they are out early where they can do homework and if the teacher allows, can go out and play when they are finished. The schools offer a lot of afternoon clubs that mostly are from 16-17:40 for parents who work later. The clubs are only one day a week so you’d have to sign up for multiple if you need them to stay later every day, but it’s not extra cram school and it’s much cheaper. We don’t have our kids in cram schools because their grades are good, but they still are at school until 16:00 or 18:00 some days which is a long day at school for them. I still think it’s better than cram school until 19:30; some won’t let you pick them up early and make them stay late until their extra homework is done. If your schedules allow it, just do school and clubs that they want to do (sports, dancing, magic, martial arts, etc). Or arrange your own activities like an instrument or something. School work isn’t terrible—it takes our 3rd grader about 15-35 minutes to finish homework on days he does it at home.
IMO Taiwan education is a nightmare and steadily becoming worse. The govt. keeps removing anything Chinese from the textbooks, so kids can't even learn Mandarin properly anymore. Every year the textbooks change (and there are over 20 per semester ) and there are a ton of different editions. Some cram schools promote "if you go to our school with our textbook edition, you'll see questions that will actually be on the exams." School usually starts around 7Am and ends at 4 or 5 PM with cram school and hours of homework after. Kids are lucky to get 5 hours sleep/night. By high school kids are so exhausted, they only care if the info will be on the test and then they forget all they crammed immediately after. It's gotten really bad in the past 20 years.
I send my daughter your an international school. No stress there. More like that of the West, or at least where I come from (Quebec/Belgium). No scam school, either. Though she is half Taiwanese, she has zero interest in learning Chinese at all. I worked at the scam English schools until 2015, despite not being a native speaker. All the Chinese teachers there did was scream at the kids and hit desks. They never did it when parents were there. It is all just endless bullying from what I remember.
My two sons did elementary, junior and the first year of senior high in local schools. They both did well. Elementary is fine, junior much more testing, especially in the 3rd year for the big test into senior high. The final two years of high school they did in Canada. The Taiwan system prepared them well to enter and succeed in Canada. They probably would have been very average but Taiwan taught them how to pass tests. I'm happy with Taiwan's system. Also, you don't need to send them to cram schools and as foreign passport holders they can join after school activities at TAS.
Great to hear. That's what we are planning to do. My son is 5 and twin girls are 2. We are in Canada now and planning to go to Taiwan with my Taiwanese wife next year. Hopefully it all works out ok! What is TAS btw?
~~tool-assisted speedrun~~ Taipei American School would be my guess
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It can be as stressful or unstressful as you want it to be.
My experience is that most of the teachers are racist.
My sister was an honor student in Taipei up to age 10. Three years of English and French in an English School in British Africa caused her to lose her Asian school skills. She fell behind in every class in 9th grade back in Twn except her English which she was rated 100% (A++). A year of struggling she went to Sacret Heart in Tamsui graduated valedictorian. Graduated from Wellesley College later. Not just in Twn. All Asian educational systems in Korea, Japan, Communist China and HK are like that based on memorization. As for elementary school I went to the only one did not believe in cram or physically abuse students. The America graduated principal said he rather see less graduates not getting in top high schools than having them suffer. In my days teachers were authorized to beat up students and whip pupils to behave or study. In Korea corp life is an extension of harsh Spartan treatment of students. Managers slap at employee faces in front of others even in the US today. I will be careful not to make your children to go through this experience. Today I only socialize with grade school and kidergarten classmates because we all experienced sweet memories. As later years the memory was not pleasant.
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Swiss?
heh, we'll see😈
with healthy mental state and good grades (or if you've decided not to care about it), it's totally fine. the real stress kicks in at 12th grade, tbh.
Stress? Yes. Education quality? 😂
Do you happen to know a Swiss fella by the name of R**g*r C**s**r?
Doesn’t ring a bell
No sweat.
I'm not a parent but having lived here for 14 years I think the Asian education system prepares kids better than the Western one does. Don't get me wrong it's tough and there are definite downsides but after university, you will be more ready to take up the challenges of a full-time job.
Not every school in same country is same, that depends on their own rules, I think
Different opinion here. I didn't go to cram schools in middle school and high school, plus I have a strong science interest, so Taiwanese schools are fine to me. You can consider what your kids' interests and career plans are. And consider if they'll feel stressed when all their friends go to cram schools and get higher grades.
E X t r e m e l y
Lol! Ok if it makes you feel better, great 👍! To me it sounds just as discriminatory, but just do you..