Students who don't know when World War II was

Discussion Open Forum
1

The other day I discovered something disturbing. Most of the college students in one of my classes literally did not know when World War II happened.

The problem wasn’t the Minguo calendar–I asked them for both sets of year-dates. And it wasn’t something easily explainable, like arguments over whether to start with the invasion of Manchuria or Poland. Many just drew a blank. Others seemed to be confusing World War II with the Chinese civil war and thought it ended in 1949.

I asked a few other questions, just to see how well-informed they were apart from this. One person in one class knew approximately how old the earth is. About ten people in a class of 25 knew the name of Japan’s prime minister, nobody knew who the prime ministers of Korea or Indonesia are. Nobody knew which world religion has the largest population. Nobody had heard of Flores Man.

What’s going on? How could this happen?

2

Who or what is Flores Man? (should I have googled and kept my mouth shut??) :astonished:

3

Yeah, the more contact I have with Taiwanese people, the less impressed I am with their educational system. I have one Taiwanese friend who seems highly intelligent and well-informed, but others …
Some of my teaching assistants at the buxiban (including two planning on going to the States to get an MBA, and one planning on going to medical school) could not do simple addition in their head, and had to count on their fingers to figure out 6+7.
When a Japanese acquaintance mentioned that his grandfather was killed in the war, Taiwanese present first asked what war, and then wanted to know who the Japanese were fighting during WWII!
My personal favorite was the discussion I overheard among three Taiwanese adults about whether the sun revolved around the earth, or the earth around the sun.
Other whack opinions I have heard from supposedly highly educated people: There are so many black people in the United States because the US was considered a highly desirable place to immigrate to in centuries past; the pioneers that settled the Western USA were very poor, so poor that they couldn’t afford airplane tickets (or even train tickets) and so had to travel by wagon; since Brazil is in America, people there speak really good English. However, since these are Western things, it is easier to understand why someone with a Master’s from Taida or whatever wouldn’t know them; but not knowing basic scientific and mathematical facts, or basic info about their own culture, is less understandable.

4

I’m surprised that you folks find this surprising. :ponder:

5

Xpet, Flores is the name of an island in Indonesia where a week or so ago, paleontologists discovered the remains of an archaic human (but not homo sapiens!) who lived up until at least 13,000 years ago. The buzz now is that they were a dwarf form of homo erectus.

The newspapers have given this regular coverage, but my students didn’t hear about it. Which is a shame, given that Taiwan aboriginal tradition teaches that a race of wooly black midgets once lived here.

6

If someone had asked me the dates of the Japanese War of Aggression when I was a student in the UK, or even the rape of Nanjing, I’d have had to look it up, but I bet your students would know, SJ.

7

Ditto!!!

There are quite a lot of things our Taiwanese friends are seemingly unaware of. After I bought my first scooter here in Taiwan I asked the laoban where the oilcap is…you know, for the occassional oil check… Guess what? He didn’t know! Neither did I, but I don’t sell scooters, do I? Was he taking the piss? Guess he was…you can’t possibly sell scooters and not know… :s

A couple of weeks into my stay here back in 2000 I decided to join a gym. Any gym. “Oh we don’t have gym’s in Taiwan”, I was told. Believe me, I asked lots of people…got the same reply. Found’em myself later…more than 4 gym’s we have in Hsinchu!

Now…people selling scooters without knowing the things have oilcaps…or people who have been living in Hsinchu all their lives blissfully unaware of the existence of gyms, can’t possible know anything about WWII or Flores Man can they?

I’m sure there are many other examples of this insanity…

Don’t take me wrong…I love this place and it’s people…

I just realized I’m not as stupid as I always thought I was. Wasn’t it the governor of one of the off-shore islands who said something like “foreigners/westerners are just not as smart as the Chinese…” :noway:

8

Most college students were in elementary school during WWII, so it’s not surprising that they don’t know when it was.

9

:notworthy: :bravo: :notworthy: :laughing:

According to one of my Taiwanese aquaintances Morocco (edited after MaPO’s criticism) is in Eastern Europe. But then again, the person in question only went to primary school, cause his family didn’t have any money for education.

It’s sad, but then again, do we foreigners know how many provinces there are in China, when the cultural revolution was, what year 228 was, who the Vice Prime Minister of Taiwan is? :loco:

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I suppose these historical facts could compare with WWII. :s

11

What’s a battle?

12

feel free to disagree, but i think that after students finally finish the long course of rote memorization that is junior/senior highschool for a large number of students, they really lose some of the drive that kept them going during those 6 years of utter hell.

i’ve watched some of them in freshman through junior university classes, and the weekly reading of some 10 pages is rarely, if ever, completed before class. these students are waiting for someone to tell them the answer, so they can fill it into their short-term memories until the test passes. outside reading is by and large ignored, cause if you ain’t gonna read the text …

this is also true of a number of north american students, in that they also do as little as possible b4 class etc. ( i was one of them for a few years :smiley: ) however, there’s a pervading sense of “if it ain’t on the test, it’s not worth discussing”. and when that is instilled in students, it becomes really hard to see outside that little box that is the testable information. the news on tv and the newspapers (apple daily) are full of gossip, and political gossip, with the real stories pushed back, and therefore largely ignored by the masses who watch the first 10-15 minutes and then take off/turn off. the story about flores man was on the chinese news, at about 25 after the hour … 10 minutes on the american election, and then the required blue/green show, then taiwan news, then somewhere in international. meanwhile, it was in the top stories listings on the internet 5 hours earlier …

i dunno if i’ve come to any points, but i think that a lot of students get pushed too far, and then they just don’t care anymore, and it’s a little sad. not all students, mind you, but a lot of them. current events class is always full of new and exciting things.

13

You should not be surprised for not knowing political things…

my wife is a computer hardware engineer, Taiwanese, and she hardly knows where her behind is. She is 100% clever to negotiate price, she reacts quickly to unusual thing in business or private life, she can negotiate like 100 merchants from good old Europe in one man, but she hardly knows other things.

We went on vacation and she pulled the plug of the fridge to save engergy. Coming back after 2 weeks, everything was green. My swiss choclate imported from Europe! She said she thought it works like a TV, pull the plug and that’s it, then turn it back on.
I talked to her about bacteria spoiling the food and she did not know what is that. Even decribing bacteria did not work. “Germs” gave her an idea, but she did not know what that is really, only “small and dangerous”. But she did not know where they are and why.

I could extend this list forerver, of course she told me (being German) Hitler was a good man and such nonsense. She did not know about the Holocaust. I explained, she did not care. She is simply not interested in all those things we all know or want to know. Okay, showing her pictures of Holocaust solved the Hitler-problem, but it takes drastic measures to make her understand anything which is not related to money or business.

She asked a colleague if he knows that mysterious thing with the fridge and why the food gets spoiled, the colleague said NO.

Some of my Taiwanese colleagues in my computer hardware company ask my wife,

  • If I go to toilet like Chinese also ??? *
  • If I sleep as long as Chinese *

They were not interested in architecture of the toilet, but they really asked for body fuctions, if there is “water” and “solid” coming out of me as well.

My wife drove for years past the Taipei river wall, a huge grey things. When I asked her what it is, the first time I came, she did not know. We went on it to find out. She did not know the park and lake is just a few hundred meters away. She gets lost in a big restaurant.

And and and.

Completely alien compared to western people.

Things Chinese are more clever than others though.

Explanation: she told me they do not learn what we call “general knowledge” at school, only math and read/write etc. And her parents raised her by placing her in front of a TV with japanese cartoons constantly on…

:astonished:

14

That’s ok. Your parents wasted lots of money on your education, and you can’t even spell Morocco.

15

As a non-native English speaker who actually never took English classes, I take the freedom to make mistakes in my English spelling. :raspberry: :raspberry:

16

Most Taiwanese I have met aren’t that bothered about international affairs. The most switched-on guy I ever met in this regard was a taxi driver who’d been all over the place before his business went tits up. He’d even been to Ireland ferchrissakes!

17

That’s ok. Your parents wasted lots of money on your education, and you can’t even spell Morocco.[/quote]

I wonder how many languages mesheel speaks. :ponder:

Oh, that doesn’t matter. She has to be perfect in English before she can be taken seriously. :unamused:

18

[quote=“mesheel”]:notworthy: :bravo: :notworthy: :laughing:

According to one of my Taiwanese aquaintances Marocco is in Eastern Europe. But then again, the person in question only went to primary school, cause his family didn’t have any money for education.

It’s sad, but then again, do we foreigners know how many provinces there are in China, when the cultural revolution was, what year 228 was, who the Vice Prime Minister of Taiwan is? :loco:[/quote]

taiwan doesnt have a prime minister it has a premier. um do we include taiwan as a province of china? um 228 was in 1947 i think tho it could be 1949. and the cultural revolution was around 1963. is there a prize for this quiz??

19

Not including English :raspberry: 5

Do I get free English lessons? :unamused:

Pardon my English again. I really should take classes I guess. Any volunteers? Anyways…So what’s the name of the vice premier?

No, failed. Sorry

Back to the topic. How can one expect Taiwanese to know about international affairs if Taiwanese news only report local news? A fire in the neighborhood, a suicide, a food fight, a car crash that’s all I’m hearing from the news here. Sad, sad…

Any news reporter here? Why, oh why is that so? :loco:

20

If there is, you won’t get it. Every book I’ve read on the subject has the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966 and lasting a decade.