Looking back over the past few years, Wen Guo Shi (文國士) has graduated from TFT and has learned a lot about the educational inequality that Taiwan is facing. As an educator in other fields, he still remembers his motivation and passion for education.
Wen Guo Shi (文國士), also known as KuoKuo, is an alumnus from the Department of English Language and Literature. He is a teacher trying to improve the achievement gap between urban and rural students, and caring for children who lack family support. His teaching has already helped many children, and his stories and speeches have also impacted many people.
Wen's educational philosophy is “regardless of family background, every child should have the right to choose how to live their life.” Both of his parents are schizophrenic, forcing him to be observant from a young age and nurturing in him an ability to be good at comforting people. These traits helped with his application for the TFT (Teach for Taiwan) program. He hopes that all children can receive equal education and care.
“I'm actually a very good teacher,” he said confidently. From his perspective, a good teacher is not only a leader or mentor but also a person with a sense of self-awareness and self-reflection. “School is the place to experience love” where a good teacher can use positive methods to nurture students. A positive approach is how to react to a student's score. A good teacher would congratulate a student for getting 96 out of 100 and not question why they missed four points. As Wen said, “these subtle differences will reflect on the relationship with the students and affect how students feel.”
After graduating from FJCU, Wen worked in a cram school while figuring out what he truly wanted to do. He then quit the job and occupied himself with rural education projects for two years. When the projects ended, he stayed in experimental education institutions and is now working in a teen shelter institution.
Wen has dedicated himself to education in rural areas since he graduated from the Graduate Institute of Criminology at National Taipei University. Since then, he has been participating in the TFT program and started teaching in eastern Taiwan.
Wen pointed out family structure and poverty issues, such as intergenerational education, are more likely to occur in rural areas. Children who are brought up by an uneducated grandparent may receive less family education. When they have problems with homework, there’s no one in the family who can guide them. What’s more, their parents usually work in the city and thus are unable to stay with their children. These are only some of the problems underlying inequality in education.
After two years of experience in rural education, Wen is now in a more difficult work environment. He is currently serving in a teen shelter with a high turnover rate among employees and low salaries.
Teacher Kuo Kuo playing with students back when he worked in TFT. Photo by 小眼攝影.
Before entering the teen shelter, the child-clients usually undergo various tough experiences, such as trauma, emotional disorders, learning disabilities, among others, and they stay for about two to three years at the shelter. These children at the teen shelter were not well educated or cared for, which means they have been ignored, helpless, or under pressure for a long time. The teen shelter serves as the final stage of an educational path before entering the workforce. Wen said, “it’s a lot of hard work just to make the children feel emotionally and spiritually supported then bring them back to the right track. However, many of them still commit crimes or live extreme lives after entering the workforce.”