I heard that while it may look like the Taiwanese and Thais control their own fishing industries, there are actually white people behind the scenes directing them. They wanted to just fish for their families without profit but Kingpin made them take on slaves.
It is like the drug trade in Taiwan. Can you remember the foreigner who killed another foreigner by the river? He controlled all the drugs in northern Taiwan. He walked in and took over by himself. The rainmaker.
I’m going to take this as sarcasm and not a serious comment.
I’m still pretty new here, a link would be helpful…
I was being sarcastic.
Some in the media did try to say that the guy controlled a large part of the drug industry in Taiwan though. A pretty ridiculous claim.
Let’s try to go back to the topic?
I wish I could help with the math. Unfortunately the assignments are not just X÷Y=__. Each question is its own entire paragraph written out in Chinese. Often times the questions are even worded in a way to throw the kids off like a riddle. Other questions require the kids to cross reference charts and previous question to get their answers. It’s absolutely ridiculous. My wife has even had to contact the teach a few times in the past to confirm what the hell a question was even asking.
We tried to organize an alliance of sorts with some of the other parents to possibly lobby the teachers to lighten up the work load but very few of the parents were interested. My guess is that their reluctance to recognize the problem was due to there egos. They would rather just push their kids harder than admit that the work load is problematic.
TRUTH!
I’d love to do that…If I could convince my “Tiger mom” wife to cancel Violin class, dance class, and an art class all of which run back to back from 9am until 4pm on Saturdays. God help me. 
With all due respect this is completely impractical. First, if you think my wife and I would take lightly the decision to just “give our daughter drugs” as you say, your completely out of line. We have done our homework on this subject and have come to a very informed decision based on a myriad of tests and therapy sessions. My daughter has many talents which we DO encourage her to pursue. However, those talents are not a substitute for a proper basic education. Even if homeschooling was and option for us, which it is not because like most parents these days, we both have a careers, the idea that you could simply hand a 9 year old child with ADHD a school book and keep them company while they “self-learn” is ridiculous. Again, with ALL due respect, I’ve come across opinions about ADHD medication such as yours many times over the years, and in every case those opinions were being shared by someone who was either not a working parents, not parent with an ADHD kid, or not a parents at all.
I don’t think staying on topic is part of the rules on this forum…
I think you’d be smart to unstructure her schedule. I hear there is a ton of HW at Dominican also, but at least it’s in English.
Are you outside of Taipei?
I offer a few thoughts.
Regarding ADHD, there are many forms of medicine with which to heal the body. There is western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic, naturopathic and such. I find that western medicine excels at acute injuries - gun shot wounds, reattaching limbs and things of that sort. But when it comes to chronic disease, I think it is less than attractive. Its sole tool for chronic disease is drugs and a perusal of the history of medical drugs is frightening indeed. What was all the rage in one decade is a couple decades later spurned due to all of the medical problems the drugs resulted in (not that these problems were unaware at the time for the anecdotal evidence was always there). Besides, the drugs never are a cure but merely a management of symptoms (at the probabilistic expense of unknown new diseases brought on by the prolonged use of drugs).
It is certainly fringe of the fringe but I’d offer taking a look at German New Medicine and see if you think there is anything there that could assist your daughter.
(note you need to read the basic intro to GNM before any of this makes sense)
Regarding education, I support your desire for your daughter to have a basic education. But given that you just lamented how absurd her third grade homework is - that it is so confusing that your educated wife (probably 12+ years of primary education and maybe 4 years of college?) needs teacher assistance to resolve it, it seems clear that these are indicators that your daughter is not learning a “basic education” right now. Instead what she is participating in is a masochistic rat race and given that you are here discussing how this “education” (read: rat race) is seriously harming your daughter and family, I suspect that this is something not beneficial to your family.
Societies have instiutionalized methods with which they inculturate new people into their society. Religion, traditions, customs, education, laws and things of that sort. On the whole these are wonderfully beneficial things. But it is worth noting these are great for society as a whole, but not necessarily for each individual. The East Asian educational & Confucian systems work wonderfully for forming children (as a whole) into good obedient workers, but not that every single person will become as such. God gives different people different talents, personalities and defects and not everyone will excel in a one-size-fits-all approach.
For every East Asian who becomes a well paid doctor working slavish hours at expense of family life, there are many other East Asians who went through the same system but were not suited to it, spent 20 years of their life learning pointless things of no utility to their adult labors as a McDs cook, real estate agent, package courier or factory worker. Given that the vast majority of the labor force are such people, one marvels at the countless manhours wasted “learning” things that the person will never use and almost invariably forgets after graduation.
Of course most of modern education is about two things. First it is to, as George Carlin jokes, make people smart enough to be able to read the instructions to operate the machines, but not smart enough to realize how they are getting screwed. The second objective is as daycare so that both husband and wife can toil away as laborers, thus doubling the size of the workforce and increasing competition for lower salaries (to the benefit of the elites).
For some people this system works quite well. They were designed to do well sitting at desks for hours on end doing mental tasks. Most people are not born as that intellectual type though and so they flounder, as this system is not to their benefit (and the system doesn’t care). They will be taught to read and write and inculturated to the system of school bells and authority so that they can function as workerbots later on in life, reading instructions and obediently doing tasks which never require the things they wasted literal years “learning” as a child. A lamentable situation once one considers it.
And while most flounder through these 12 years (+ maybe 4 more of unbeneficial college), a lesser percentage actively suffer in these situations. Can call it ADHD or whatever, but these people were not meant to be doing the things the system is telling them to do. It is like demanding a square peg go into a round hole. This by no means means that these people are destined for failure or any such nonsense, rather they may be gifted great talents in life that merely are not of the 3R’s type. Perhaps she will be a wonderful artist, musician, theatre performer, home maker, mother, gymnist, caretaker or what have you. None of these meaningful and valuable roles require 12 years of 200 days of 8 hours a day droning over esoteric problems that are so bizarre your educated adult wife needs to phone the teacher over. Should a painter have a basic education? Yes. But one really needs to carefully consider what such a basic education really means and whether what one is currently doing is furthering that goal.
There are options out there. As I noted, interestingly given that it is East Asia, Taiwan has fully legalized homeschooling. Another option would be just to take the modern formal education as the joke that it is. If, for example, you recognized your daughter had great talent in the arts, you could foster that privately. And during the hours of daycare (schooling), just tell her not to sweat it. Explain to her what’s really going on here, its daycare, do her thing and whatever happens happens. The serious effort is going on in the private realm of her arts, the grades in the formal schooling are irrelevant (so long as she does reach whatever basic level of education you deem important for her to have - which likely has nothing to do with what the education system is actually offering).
If you or your child do not fit the system, do not try to change the system - that is a recipe for frustration and tears. The system isn’t changing for you. You instead can choose to “opt out” in various ways and do something designed for yourselves so that you all can flourish.
Best of luck to you all.
It is. I don’t know where you got that impression from.
If the discussion he’s way off topic, it gets split into a new topic.
AP Calculus = Asian Pride Calculus
That’s our test, don’t culturally appropriate it without permission.
This should actually be a good thing. They’re not just testing the student’s memorization of math formulas, but instead the students are forced to think and apply the knowledge they’ve learned.
In theory anyway - maybe it’s not implemented well.
Exactly…
School work load isn’t a problem here. Making kids attend cram schools all day instead of getting exercise / playtime is.
I get off work at 6, and have a 45 minute commute back home. Cram school is just another form of babysitting
I hope teaching the school system at for-profit cram schools becomes illegal like it is in China. That will level the playing field and you can keep your kids home.
Honestly if you believe primary school pupils here have too much homework maybe you just had too little homework when you were at school.
I think it has to do with the type of homework. Taiwanese homework was very repetitive and about memorization. For someone with ADHD, repetitive work is rather painful.
Maybe it can help you get over ADHD.