According to a survey last year, the "study fatigue" situation among high school students in Taiwan is more serious than before! Why are students in Taiwan becoming more and more "overworked"? Is it caused by the 108 curriculum? Today, let’s talk about “the overwork problem of Taiwanese students”! Hiho~ Hello everyone, I am Zhiqi! In October last year, the Child Welfare Alliance released a survey report. They found that many students in Taiwan feel "study fatigue". Not only are they under heavy academic pressure, but their learning motivation is low , many students have even reported thoughts of self-harm due to academic pressure. After it came out, there was a heated discussion in the community . Some people thought that this meant that the 108 curriculum was a failure. It did not reduce the pressure, but made students even more stressed . However, many people believed that the problem was not with the curriculum, but with parents giving too much to their children. There is also the lingering "study mentality". As long as this part is not changed, no matter how you adjust it, it will be useless. Today, we will take a look at how much pressure Taiwan students have now . Is it caused by the new curriculum? What do frontline teachers think? But before we start today’s discussion, let’s go into some business service time! [Is student pressure increasing? ] Last October, the Child Welfare Alliance held a press conference to release the "2023 Taiwan Children and Children's Learning Situation Survey Report" , which surveyed the learning status of more than 1,800 junior high school students across Taiwan . Among them, 58.9% of students felt that "Study fatigue". Among them, the average fatigue level of high school students is significantly higher than that of junior high school students. The average fatigue level of urban students is significantly higher than that of other students . In addition, 24.8%, almost a quarter of junior high school students, have experienced academic fatigue due to academic fatigue. What’s worrying about the number of stress- related thoughts of “self-harm or death” is that these data are even worse than the 2017 survey results! Well, this situation sounds really serious. The pressure on Taiwanese students seems to be increasing. Why is this? [Why are students so stressed? 】 In the report of the Child Welfare Alliance, they summarized the three major sources of pressure for students. First, it is "a large number of exams." They found that more than half of Taiwan's junior high school students face large and small exams every day from Monday to Friday . Not only do schools have to take many exams in cram schools, but also many students have to take exams in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening with no chance to breathe. According to a survey by the Child Welfare Alliance, 60% of students in Taiwan have enrolled in cram schools , and 40 of them have enrolled in cram schools. "Take up one part every day" and once you take it up, you often can't go home until 9:00 or 10pm, which seriously compresses students' rest time, which is also connected to the second source of stress, which is "lack of sleep." According to the American National Sleep System The foundation recommends that students of the age of junior high school students should sleep at least about 8-10 hours a day to get sufficient rest. If we look at the sleep status of Taiwan's junior high school students by this standard , they completely fail! Surveys show that only about 5% of junior high school students can really sleep for 8 hours a day. Most students do not get enough sleep and are physically and mentally exhausted . Finally, "parents' expectations" are probably the biggest source of stress for 40% of students. They said that their parents always compare their grades with others , which puts them under a lot of pressure . 20% of the students believe that their parents care about their academic work more than anything else , and 15% of the students said that they will be "verbally humiliated" by their parents because of poor grades. " You don't get enough sleep and are drowned in exams . The pressure of high school students who don't do well in exams and are scolded by their parents makes it difficult for most of them. These long-standing problems are situations that we hope can be solved with every educational reform. However, the emergence of the 108 curriculum seems to Failure to solve these problems is even considered to be adding insult to injury! 【108 What has been changed in the syllabus? ] The goal of the 108 curriculum is to hope that students will have more room for "independent exploration" and also hopes that the education scene will pay more attention to the "cultivation of cross-field abilities" in addition to the original subjects , which is the so-called "literacy." Therefore, the number of schools has decreased. "Flexible electives" and "cross-field courses" have been added to the required courses to give students more opportunities to explore different interests and gain a sense of accomplishment beyond their studies . In addition, the new curriculum has also changed the review materials that were previously handled by senior high school students to high school students. The "learning history file" accumulated over three years is intended to truly present students' learning trajectories, personal characteristics, diverse performances, etc. to make up for learning outcomes that cannot be presented outside of exams . However, judging from the results, these practices do not seem to be effective in implementation. Achieve the originally expected results [Under the 108 curriculum, students are more stressed? 】 There are many reasons why students feel stressed after the new curriculum is launched. We will briefly mention three points . The first is the "learning history file" . Although there is no need to rush to prepare review materials after taking the academic test as before , but for high school students There is no less pressure, mainly because the study history file has a stipulation that "there is a deadline for uploading every semester" and "the file cannot be modified in the future." This has also made students fearful of messing up the study history file since they were in their first year of high school. In addition, after the impact on college applications , teachers, parents, and students are not sure how to write their learning history portfolio, so they have to make the academic portfolio as "rich" as possible . Many students are overwhelmed with various reports throughout the semester , not to mention Time to rest . Secondly, the new curriculum has added "flexible and elective courses". Although it gives students more room for independent exploration , many people complain that many of the courses they want to choose are not available at all, and there is no way to truly "explore their interests" . Moreover, The teaching quality of these elective courses also varies . Some teachers just let everyone watch videos without attending class, or treat the elective courses as math classes or Chinese language classes, making the elective courses meaningless . Third, "the examination and admission system" "The changes have made students one after another . On the one hand, everyone does not know what application materials university professors want to see. On the other hand, the newly launched "literacy test questions" are not relatively simple. Everyone is not sure how to prepare except what I just said. In addition to the three points reached, many students said that it is already very hard to adapt to the new curriculum , but school teachers sometimes are not helpful! [Is the teacher the key? 】 This year, a team of 28 high school students and college students (EdYouth) proposed the "108 Curriculum Observation Report." The survey showed that 40% of high school students believed that the "literacy test questions" of the National Examination Center really made them understand and feel What is "literacy"? However, only 15% of high school students believe that the school section test has made them understand or feel the gap in literacy. This may mean that many teachers ' teaching methods and question-setting directions have not been connected with the new curriculum . This survey also showed that less than 10% of students were "actively cared about" by their instructors when making learning history files, and less than 40% of students would seek help from their teachers when they encountered difficulties. One student said that he wanted to The subject to be tested is too different from the teacher’s professional subjects , even if the teacher tries to provide suggestions He also felt that it was not very helpful and sometimes the advice given by different teachers was completely opposite! In summary , many students believe that "the teacher's understanding of the new curriculum" is also a key factor in determining whether they are stressed or not! If you are lucky and the teacher you meet has a full understanding of the new syllabus , then learning has a chance to become easier and more interesting. But if you are not lucky and even the teacher does not know how to teach the new syllabus and how to ask questions, then the students will really know how to teach it. Very devastated! However, why are so many teachers "maladaptive" to the new curriculum? [In addition to the new curriculum, the school still has a lot of problems! 】 According to a survey conducted by the United Daily News on nearly 1,000 national high school teachers in the past three years , teachers have faced three major difficulties after the new curriculum was launched: "difficulties in teaching and lesson preparation", "explosion of administrative work " and "insufficient teachers". Many teachers teach cross-field courses on literacy teaching or create learning history files, etc., all of which are new things. Many teachers are rushed to start classes and teach before they have time to get familiar with them . Some teachers have indigestion and have to choose to return to the original teaching mode. It also greatly reduces the effectiveness of the new curriculum . However, even teachers who have done serious research and can implement the concepts of the new curriculum will still encounter difficulties. Under the atmosphere of "admissionism", schools, parents and even students themselves still feel that "achievement" "The most important thing." A teacher mentioned that he spent a lot of effort designing literacy courses to teach children cross-field skills. As a result, students said they only wanted to learn the fastest way to solve problems. Some parents would call the teacher to complain, "There are too few test papers." ” Or require teachers to focus on required courses so that teachers don’t know how to prepare lessons . In addition, many teachers say that they have no time to prepare the content of the new syllabus! Many teachers hold administrative positions in schools and are chased by various reports and evaluations every day. They also have to cooperate with government units to "do performance" and handle various publicity and lectures , which makes them breathless . In addition, new courses are available. After the program was launched, a large number of teachers were added for various courses, but the number of teachers did not increase much. As a result , each teacher was burdened with a heavy burden. "The administrative work was exploding and the manpower was insufficient." The result was that the quality of teaching was affected. Teachers were unable to prepare lessons properly and help students face the challenges. Various Challenges of the New Curriculum So, in the final analysis, what should we do now that Taiwanese students are too stressed and overworked? [What can you do to help students reduce stress? 】 Some people think that before saving students, teachers must be saved first! By reducing the burden on front-line teachers, they have more time to prepare lessons and more energy to provide guidance according to each student's unique interests and reduce the pressure on students facing the new curriculum . Then, if we want to solve the current dilemma of teachers, perhaps Efforts can be made from three directions: "increasing the number of teachers", "reducing class sizes" and "reducing administrative workload" . Facing various changes in the new curriculum, the Ministry of Education also needs to provide more training and resources to teachers so that they can be sure In addition, some people believe that the Ministry of Education and universities should also provide clearer guidance on the "examination and admissions system." For example, university professors and high school teachers can have more exchanges to confirm each other's understanding of the application standards for learning history files. If this is the case, it will be easier for students to know what the key points that professors will look for when applying to schools , and perhaps they will not be so anxious! [Our point of view] In the process of researching this episode , we found that when everyone sees the news that "students are becoming more overworked", they seem to intuitively think that the 108 curriculum is bad and everyone hates the new curriculum and the like. But according to surveys, 70% of national high school teachers are confident in continuing to promote the 108 curriculum! It's just that the school still needs 1-3 years to be in place. Many students also agree that "independent learning and diversified exploration" are the right direction. The reason why everyone feels pressure is not entirely that the reform direction is wrong , but that the transformation is too fast and the supporting facilities are not well prepared. It makes them very painful. In addition to the pressure from parents and the lack of teacher resources mentioned earlier, we feel that the core problem may be that Taiwan's long-standing "educationism" has not been eliminated . As long as the "entranceism" lingers , then all It is difficult to implement the goals of the reform. We want to encourage students to participate in extracurricular activities, but students only dare to join camps or clubs that are helpful for further studies. We want to add flexible courses and cultivate students’ abilities outside of their subjects , but parents will protest that it does not help with exams or even The school authorities will also worry about affecting the enrollment rate and hope that teachers will focus on students' grades . In the end, if society still regards "getting into a good school" as the most important thing, it may be difficult to reduce the pressure on students no matter how the education reform changes . Then we think To change this trend, it is not only important to change the policies but also the attitude of every citizen! As mentioned before , most of the pressure on students comes from the vision and expectations of parents and society as a whole. If students can feel that their value does not need to be measured by grades, they do not need to be admitted to a "good school" to be recognized . Maybe when everything doesn't have to be linked to further studies , everyone can be less stressed! In your opinion, what should be the top priority to improve the burnout problem of Taiwanese students ? Finally, if you like today’s video, please share it so that more people can discuss why Taiwanese students are overworked! In addition, you can also click here to read the "108 Curriculum" and "Technical and Vocational Education" issues . So, today's Zhiqi Qiqi comes to an end here . See you tomorrow night!
