Parental guidance needed
After reading National Taitung University lecturer Shiao Fu-song’s (蕭福松) article about parents needing to raise their children well and fulfilling their responsibilities (“Moral compass for young people,” Nov. 3, page 8) I, as an assistant professor, would like to argue that using parental discipline is quite an oblique statement that brings confusion when discussing the role of parenting.
Parents might use authoritarian discipline when leniency has failed completely. From my perspective, parents should focus on demonstrating to their children how to develop good manners.
First and foremost, it should be clear that the school system must take on the responsibility to teach and reinforce students’ knowledge to develop their competitiveness on the job market. On the other hand, parents are in charge of training their children’s societal standards. Thus, parents should remember the statement, “learning by doing.”
According to the Chinese saying, “Example is better than precept” (言傳不如身教), parents are actually in charge of training their children to develop good social skills. It should be relatively easy to teach good manners to children; parents just need to show good manners when they are face-to-face with their children. In line with Shiao’s opinion, three moral values are considered essential in this letter: gratitude, self-control and cooperation.
First, parents should show gratitude to their children during outings by appreciating the time they spend with them and avoiding playing online games. Parents should demonstrate how to spend quality time with other people to increase the value of their friendship. Otherwise, it is highly likely that children will feel bored and fall into a malicious trap.
Second, parents must practice self-control over their emotions and attitudes if they want their children to listen to their guidance and to develop good behavior. Parents should demonstrate that it is possible to control emotions and desires otherwise their children would believe that it is okay to do and say whatever they want without any limitations.
Finally, cooperation is a combination of gratitude and self-control. As a matter of fact, anyone who has a job needs to cooperate with another person or company. Who would like to be associated with a person who has lost control of their emotions and good manners? That also implies a form of respect for others.
All in all, it is well known that children are kinesthetic learners; they mostly learn by seeing and doing. Children would live a fulfilled life if parents would demonstrate good manners in the first place.
David Blasco
New Taipei City
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
Within Taiwan’s education system exists a long-standing and deep-rooted culture of falsification. In the past month, a large number of “ghost signatures” — signatures using the names of deceased people — appeared on recall petitions submitted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) against Democratic Progressive Party legislators Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶). An investigation revealed a high degree of overlap between the deceased signatories and the KMT’s membership roster. It also showed that documents had been forged. However, that culture of cheating and fabrication did not just appear out of thin air — it is linked to the
RSS