On Sunday, the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) published an article by a teacher, Lee Yi-nung (黎亦農) titled: “Reflections on high-school boys putting together groups to support McDonald’s.”
The response piece is related to a story from last month about several male high-school students, many of whom attend the elite Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, making misogynistic comments online mocking the suicide of a female employee of a Shilin District (士林) branch of McDonald’s after she was allegedly sexually assaulted by her manager for more than one year.
Lee made the point that a small number of male high-school students’ bad behavior “being self-centered and lacking compassion” has roots in the intellectual axis of the nation’s “new curriculum,” but this is unfounded.
The same crop of rice nourishes an entire populace. We do not need to put the blame for all of society’s ills at the foot of our national education curriculum.
Education could reduce the need for prison cells, but it could only do so up to a point — it cannot render them redundant. Neither could an open and democratic society extinguish the lack of compassion through the malicious words and deeds of a minority of people — it could only use education to steer mindsets toward fairness and justice.
Hopefully, these students, through their schooling and social discourse, have received a profoundly reflective lesson on women’s equality after the uproar surrounding their behavior.
The progression of our technological development, paired with differing opinions from our democratic society’s diverse ecosystem of information and a flourishing online world, have formed caustic communities with speech and behavior that evince a severe lack of civic, socially beneficial and constructive personal conduct. It is not surprising that such commentary keeps coming to light. This is not a curriculum issue.
This incident is not the only example. Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is alleged to have verbally abused female representatives, and a cohort from the same school’s alumni association had allegedly posted an image of a “menu” consisting of 30 “dishes” with culinary names that objectified women.
That such behavior could come from students with some of the highest ranking scores on the nation’s standardized tests and who successfully reach the highest institutions of secondary education is evidence that their behavior has nothing to do with schools or education.
The problem is rooted in the cultivation of personal values and upbringing. When a high-school student exhibits behavior that shows such a lack of compassion or empathy, the matter boils down to how that individual was raised or influenced by family members and their living environment.
Caustic Internet commentators and online trolls pursue speech and behavior that runs counter to the mainstream because they want attention.
Regardless of these students’ vaunted educational pedigrees at elite institutions, they cannot avoid the reach of our fair and just society, with its unequivocal and overwhelming response that forces them to reckon with where exactly they went wrong.
From the sincere public apology by the administrations of the schools involved in this incident and the alumni who created that misogynistic “menu,” to the strong critical response from public discourse, at least one facet of the online community inhabited by Taiwan’s diverse society still possesses the capacity to hold social fairness and justice in high regard.
Liu Shih-ming is an adjunct associate professor at the National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture.
Translated by Tim Smith
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