Halloween invades schools
A couple days ago, I walked past a few cram schools and daycare centers and could not help but notice that the main doors and glass walls were plastered with Halloween images of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. At first glance, the displays could make you jump back in fright.
Halloween in Taiwan has evolved into a more recognized holiday, tied closely to the country’s growing ties with the rest of the world. Only a handful of years ago, schools opened up to more global viewpoints as they sought to give students a broader, more international outlook — so, they started adopting Halloween.
The activity planning and budgeting for the holiday is a bit easier to work around and schools do not have to do much more than hand out candy, put up a simple haunted house for students to dare each other through, and tack on a few English classes about the holiday somewhere along the way.
In the realm of international education, that suffices to hit the mark, yet adding some Halloween kitsch to run-of-the-mill cram schools and daycares to improve student enrollment and retention comes off as little more than a cheap gimmick. In any case, fun activities and spooky decor entices students, boosting enrollment numbers, so what is so frightening about that?
The decision to incorporate the holiday puts increased pressure on schools that previously did not do anything to mark Halloween.
Still, traditions and holidays are as numerous as the world is vast. It is only because of the rash rush forward of adults who are not thinking about the future that Halloween has become a beloved children’s holiday in Taiwan, albeit with a rollout that is just plain wrong.
If we could arrange the way it has come about more carefully, then it becomes a children’s holiday that we can prepare a couple fun activities around and not an advertising gimmick. As children’s holidays around the world differ in how they are celebrated, Taiwanese kids could use these activities to widen their worldview.
If we truly want a global outlook, then we should not be shortsighted, only look for quick gains and do all sorts of nonsense for convenience’s sake. I hope that in the coming years, our lessons on international holidays are no longer limited to the ghoulish door displays of a single holiday, but instead could don a much more diversified mask and costume.
Lai Yi-nung
Taipei
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