Overworking teachers
As part of the 12-Year Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines that started last summer, every senior-high school is required to increase available elective courses by more than 20 percent. However, many schools are unable to employ more full-time teachers due to the government’s strict faculty quota.
As a result, schools can only relax restrictions on overtime hours to solve the personnel shortage. As teachers’ hours greatly increase, overwork has become increasingly common.
In particular, teachers who work in remote schools need to teach as much as 10 additional hours per week, and they have no time to prepare for classes, which means that the effectiveness of such instruction may be questionable.
Compared with the courses under the previous curriculum guidelines, it takes more time to design syllabi for the courses to meet students’ diverse needs under the current guidelines. How can we maintain teaching quality without enough teachers?
The educational environment is affected by unavoidable factors, such as a declining birthrate and the government’s faculty quota control, and it seems that there is still a long way to go until schools can expand the quota limit.
To reduce the overworking of formal teachers, one solution is to provide more openings for supply teachers and substitute teachers. Another flexible measure is to make good use of so-called “stray teachers” and retired teachers by treating them as a valuable human resource.
Besides, many experienced retired teachers with teaching certificates are professional educators with great enthusiasm.
The Ministry of Education should take a broader view and try to expand the teacher pool. It should amend regulations to allow retired teachers and once again give full play to their talent by bringing them back to classrooms to continue contributing to education.
If the ministry could do so, older teachers could pass on their wisdom to younger colleagues, and the low teacher-student ratio could be improved. With Taiwan turning into an aging society, this could solve the biggest educational and social concerns simultaneously.
Chou Yu-chuan
Taichung
Support the NHI system
I am fortunate to be a citizen of two nations, both of which I love. Like all birth families, the US — the country where I was born — tolerates my many faults because I am one of theirs. Astonishingly, my second nation, Taiwan, has decided to accept me in spite of them.
I want to speak to the gift that living in Taiwan has given me — a longer life. This is the result of one of the world’s most extraordinary healthcare and health insurance systems. Receive care from any clinic or hospital and you will see how highly trained, hardworking and dedicated to their patients Taiwan’s excellent medical personnel are.
You might be surprised by how little they are paid. Only your mom would stay up all night taking care of you for the low pay that most nurses receive, and most mothers put in only the occasional night shift, not days and weeks at a time.
The National Health Insurance (NHI) system strives to stretch its premium pool to help as many people as possible, but as a society, we should give this national treasure the full financial support it really deserves (by being willing to pay higher premiums).
The NHI system stands proudly for Taiwan’s values — that every human being is precious and deserves good medical care. We should leave the world in no doubt of how solidly we support this ideal.
Alicia Lloyd
Citizen and cancer patient
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