The City is a Vehicle for Fostering In-depth Inquisitiveness

It is afternoon in autumn. National Chia-Yi Girls' Senior High School (嘉義女中; CYGSH) is hosting a course called “City, Impression, Culture” (城市．意象．文化), taught by Professor Su-Chong Chuang (瓊教授) of the Department of Applied History at National Chiayi University (嘉義大學應用歷史研究所). By exploring how major cities around the world created atmospheres that are unique to themselves, students are learning how citizens of a city can cocreate their own “style” through “self-positioning”, city planning, festivals, and civic participation.

Lien Pei-Ying (連珮瑩), Director of the Office of Academic Affairs, explains that this is part of an ongoing effort. In 2014, there was a course on “Rediscovering Zhuluo County” (諸羅踏查尋跡趣). In 2016, CYGSH officially launched the mandatory course on “urban exploration” (城市探索). This was done because children living in cities are surrounded by electronic gadgets and weighed down by scholastic demands. They rarely have the chance to lift their heads and observe the world around them. 

Lien goes on to say that in the beginning, the goal was just to help children learn more about Chiayi. However, by using “urban exploration” as the central theme, the focus slowly moved from “urban” to “exploration”. The lessons went from the traditional method of memorizing standardized answers to an ongoing debate on important topics. Even the content of the course itself is open for discussion. The course has gone through four trial runs and it’s been tweaked multiple times.

Theme and Structure Must be Established Before Cross-disciplinary Education Can be Possible

“During the first trial run, the course covered three different subjects: history, geography, and civics. But after discussing, we decided that while the lessons were rich in content, they lacked a unifying central theme, and so they became a smorgasbord of different classes,” says Lien. 

Therefore, the second trial run put the focus back on cities. Student aptitude and their concern for society were raised through class work on topic-centric research projects.

But the teachers felt there was still work to be done after the class of 2017. “We had a theme, but we lacked structure. The topics we discussed were too broad in scope, so they were not very intricately connected to the goal of urban exploration,” explains Lien. 

So, during the third trial run, not only was experience from the first trial run used to make sure every class was closely linked to the core problem, the concept of sustainability, the spirit of the new curriculum, key skill sets and essential knowledge; but the goal and schedule for every school week, from week one to week twenty-one, were identified. 

Lien says they were fortunate to have the National Senior High School Teachers’ Union (全國高級中等學校教育產業工會; 全中教) arrange for teachers Chang Shu-hui (張淑惠) of  Banqiao Senior High School (板橋高中) and Chen Cheng-hung (陳正鴻) of Chengyuan High School (成淵高中) to step in and help lead the study groups.

A Mock Election for Mayor Fostered Civic Awareness

It’s worth mentioning that because the third trial run in 2018 coincided with the mayoral elections, the students spent the first few weeks of the semester on a field trip around Chiayi to learn about industry development under Japanese rule and the city competitiveness index. They then analyzed the results and made group presentations. This allowed the teachers to designate the ninth week of the course as “stump speeches from candidates in a mock mayoral election”.    

When some teachers reminded students that their political stances had a broad appeal but lacked depth, the students retorted, “Isn’t that how we get the most votes?” The teachers smiled at this; but they also looked for external resources to help guide the students’ thinking. For example, inviting Professor Chuang of Chiayi University to speak was a way to guide students to think about more sustainable solutions by introducing case studies from international cities. Wei Ying Lan (藍偉瑩), chief executive of the Junyi Center for Teacher Education (均一師資培育中心), was also brought in to help supervise course planning and add more depth to the lessons.

Lien says this experience helped them with the fourth trial run starting in 2019. The positioning of the three major mandatory courses—“cross-boundary reading” (跨界閱讀), “urban exploration”, and “scientific literacy in civic topics” (公民議題中的科學素養)—was better identified.  Cross-boundary studies linked the disciplines of humanities and science and helped students to accumulate their store of knowledge through reading. Guidance on research methods is then provided so students are equipped with the motivation and methodology to explore the environment around them and the civic topics in their daily lives.

“The mock mayoral election last year motivated students to proactively participate in student self-governance activities and assume responsibilities. You can tell the courses have had a positive effect on student awareness of public affairs,” says Lien. Even a student who was lukewarm about the urban exploration course at first volunteered to participate in the creativity educational expo “Creative Science in Chiayi 168" (嘉義市科學168活動) after six months of subtle guidance. She even played dungeon master in one of the science games. It made all the teachers very proud.

Lien explains that the focus on topic-centric courses was to help children regain their sense of curiosity. “Children are born curious and spend their childhood asking about everything. But the older they get, the fewer questions they ask, and the less they care about anything.”

The elimination of so-called “correct answers” allows children to fully explore everything. This is precisely the kind of innovative thinking the new curriculum injects into our education system. This kind of change not only solves the short-term problem of industry life cycles becoming shorter and shorter, which necessitates constant re-invention; it also unshackles our children and creates more diversified possibilities for the future.

Translated by Jack C.
Edited by Sharon Tseng
Content sponsored by Ministry of Education