A national survey found that 30.1 percent of elementary, junior-high school and high-school teachers were unhappy with their jobs — the most common cause being having to communicate with children for their parents.
The survey by Shi Hsin University’s Opinion Poll Research Center found that these teachers on average gave themselves a score of four or less on a 10-point happiness scale, suggesting deep unhappiness, the Future Taiwanese Education Society told a news conference yesterday.
Forty-one percent of teachers gave themselves a score of more than six, showing that a larger number of educators are satisfied with their jobs, a center spokesperson said.
Photo from Yeh Ping-cheng’s Facebook
The leading cause of unhappiness among teachers is being asked by parents to help with parent-child conflict, as educators consider this a responsibility of the child’s parents, the center said.
The second most significant cause of unhappiness among teachers are the unrealistic expectations parents and the government have, which result in an unreasonable workload, the spokesperson said.
That was followed by a fear of being falsely accused of mistreating or abusing children, the center said.
The government should seek to stamp out false allegations and help educators fighting to protect their reputation, society chairman Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said.
Government agencies too often demand that educators take part in policy initiatives without providing an action plan, guidelines or directives, while the Ministry of Education seems to accept the demands of other ministries with no care for the burdens placed on teachers, he said.
Kaohsiung and Penghu, Nantou, Miaoli and Changhua counties are the areas with the happiest teachers, but Chiayi City, Chiayi County, Tainan, Hsinchu City and Yilan County have the least happy teachers in the country, Yeh said.
A few areas were left out due to insufficient data, he added.
The distribution of teacher happiness seems to indicate that educators are happiest in rural regions and least happy in urbanized and developed areas, which could reflect the cultural differences in parents’ approaches to education, Yeh said.
Urban parents are more likely to demand their children get good test scores and turn the screws on teachers should their children fail to meet their expectations, he said.
Teachers tasked with managing a class or performing administrative duties were significantly less happy than those who were not, he added.
The society called on the Ministry of Education to reject other government agencies and offices’ bids to place unreasonable burdens on teachers, push harder for the digitization of paperwork, create realistic timetables for implementing policy and repair parent-teacher relations, he said.
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
STAY VIGILANT: When experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, such as dizziness or fatigue, near a water heater, open windows and doors to ventilate the area Rooftop flue water heaters should only be installed outdoors or in properly ventilated areas to prevent toxic gas from building up, the Yilan County Fire Department said, after a man in Taipei died of carbon monoxide poisoning on Monday last week. The 39-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳), an assistant professor at Providence University in Taichung, was at his Taipei home for the holidays when the incident occurred, news reports said. He was taking a shower in the bathroom of a rooftop addition when carbon monoxide — a poisonous byproduct of combustion — leaked from a water heater installed in a poorly ventilated
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