It depends on when it was that. Also, they might not have seen a handsome foreigner of their age.
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On the outskirts of Taipei.
They’d never had a foreign student in their school. My eldest son is handsome so that was probably the big attraction for the girls.
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And I’m just going to throw out there a reality check that I’ve been to many experimental schools here as an observer and sometimes teacher and there are literally no schools in Taipei or the surrounding area that I would recommend at the moment as being in anyway better (and caution that they can be much worse) than traditional public schools in every way.
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Could you be a little more specific about what is wrong with them? Or is this just another a case of a foreigner who is mad because Taiwanese people won’t do things the way he (?) wants them to.
One issue I have heard about is that some parents think there is a problem with too many special needs children (ADHD etc) for the experimental schools to support with their limited resources.
I generally have a fairly good impression of the regular public schools although the ones in Taipei City tend to attract tiger parents.
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Mostly they’re overrun with wealthy families that can’t get their kids into TAS but expect that level of snobbery from a school. So they want their children to have the test scores to prove they’re better than someone at TAS without actually going there.
Except that test scores and a traditional rich people private school education is literally what experimental schools are supposed to be thumbing their noses at.
Also, you end up with kids who were kicked out of everywhere else at these schools. Like, the whole class is children with various undiagnosed learning and social-emotional disabilities (cuz the parents refuse to acknowledge that their perfect child has special needs) and the teachers are never trained in special Ed.
Combine that with required extra classes that the kids don’t want to be at and you get violence on a level I’ve never seen in my life. At one school, a girl was smashing her cello around the classroom because she got upset. During a cello lesson that was happening in the same classroom that everyone else was also doing their learning in. A cello is no small object to swing around, yet she managed it AND the teacher was like “dude” but mostly just stood there, let her become exhausted, and then rolled his eyes and told me “she always does that”.
I’d send my kids to a public school if I had them, despite the reality that those aren’t great for their mental health in any way either.
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Thanks for the additional insight.
A good friend sent his daughter to the Gongguan elementary school which I thought was an experimental one but it is not. They had only positive things to say about it. The only reason they moved their daughter was that her English wasn’t coming along as well as her Chinese and they eventually wanted her to go to college in the US.
I have trouble believing that rich people send their kids to the Bojia experimental school…
In any event, here is a recent article with a complete list of experimental schools in Taipei and New Taipei. It includes brief details about curriculum.
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I should note, I was talking about private schools. This link is for the public ones, which I have not been to and cannot talk about with any authority. But I will take a look at this link.
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Just to clarify: my discussion of experimental schools and links to same earlier in the thread are all for public ones. I have a very low opinion of private education in Taiwan. Especially in Taipei. They attract parents who do not want their children to associate with the ‘lower classes’ and feel that the public schools are not intensive enough. A real nightmare.
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I checked the “That’s it School” in between Sanxia and Taoyuan and they look very nice.
It’s an experiment school too, but it doesn’t have this snobbery vibe you mentioned. Quite the opposite, in fact, giving a great sense of community.
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This one appears to be a private school that has evolved out of a colearning community. The location looks very nice but well out of the city up in the hills above Sanxia in Sanmin.
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Yes, but they have buses to go up and down the mountains everyday
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That would work. It’s not that far.
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Wondering if you mean that you actually went to the school and spent a day there, getting a decent grasp of how the day-to-day goes? Websites, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels are always well curated and often do not reflect the actual school in any way. It’s like these schools hire advertising agencies that haven’t even set foot in the schools to create their propaganda.
It’s amazing how many schools I’ve been to that seem amazing for the first 20 minutes I’m there and then the facade comes right off for the rest of the time I’m there, revealing what is most certainly the reality of the school. I’m not saying this school is like that, I’m just saying that it’s been my experience that the longer I stick around, the less these schools are able to convince me that they’re in any way better than traditional schools.
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Yes, one whole week in fact.
Granted, it’s not the same as one full semester, but I think it was enough to understand how things work there.
The ratio teacher-to-student is much better than traditional schools, which is great if the kid needs more cats to keep engaged in learning.
The main reason we haven’t made the change was the cost. We currently go to a very good public school, and it would be hard to afford if we had to go private for all our kids.
That private school should give your children free tuition, considering how much lifting you and the missus are doing to raise Taiwan’s population.
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Someone’s gotta pay to keep the school open though, and being private school, it isn’t the taxpayers.
It was a joke, @Taiwan_Luthiers, referencing the fact that my 4th kid was just born last week
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