High School

Part of the reasons why people in Asia went to university and stops studying probably due to the horrible days of high school. Sharing my experiences. I went to high school from 2001 - 2007. Over the years, teacher after teacher. I’ve experienced the following in Taiwan:

  • Can’t dye your hair.
  • Can’t drink during class. Some teachers said I am the one who is speaking here and I am not thirsty, and you folks keep drinking. If you are allowed to drink, you can only drink water during the 45 minute class.
  • Can’t grow your hair. Your hair needs to be at certain length (For boys 5cm, boring shape)
  • More than 9-5. School starts at 7:30 (officially 8 but you must come for some early morning self-learning....)
  • Very badly organized "all-hands" meeting on Tuesday morning and Friday afternoon. Mostly to check your hair, your bag (for cigarettes), your appearance (hair, accessories), and announce something that could be done better. Basically make your day miserable (few hundred people gathering under 38C in formation, sweat)
  • Teacher categorized students into good students and bad students. Good and bad are determined by scores, not who they are.
  • Good students (high scores) can get away with few wrong donigs. This further segregate students into classes.
  • Teacher shames top-3 wrost students constantly
  • Teacher beat you for a scoring standard they set (some parents consider this kind of teacher is better because they "care"). Sounds familiar now for company setting imaginary deadline?
  • Punishments ranging from: Write down repeated sentences (you know how many strokes and how hard Chinese characters to write...), keep the squat position and hold bucket of water with both hands, beat your palms with wooden sticks (the caning the farmer used to beat cows) or glue stick. Face to the wall. Clean up the blackboard.
  • Some teacher beats you and ask for your gratitude. You have to say thank you to admit your wrong doing (not study hard enough) and appreciate the teacher who loves you so much but they must punish you becasue they want you to grow (WTF)
  • They force you to study more after school til 9pm1 unless you go to cram school which costs money.
  • The teacher judge you more if you go to cram school and still can’t answer Qs perfectly (Didn’t your cram school teach you that?). Some teachers look down of cram school teachers because they followed the standard path and worked hard to get the teacher certificate. But cram school teacher makes way more money than them.
  • Teacher arranges a private study group that advertises it’s a privilege you even got invited (only top 15 of the class can participate)
  • Not important subjects’s class (music, virtue) time got used by taking exams for more important subjects (Math, Chinese, English)
  • Last year of (junior) high school are composed of exams (80% of the time)
  • You can’t date anyone
  • You must sleep after lunch til the 1st class in the afternoon. There is someone who sits in front of the class and checking if anyone is not sleeping and note down the people who were not sleeping to the class teacher. And those people will get punished...
  • Your free labor is consider a reward for you. The teacher could get you to do some work for them in the noon sleeping time (A lot of people do not like sleep during noon time because heat and no air-conditioning).
  • You must write a diary on the "contact book". The contact book has all the homework you must do and important announcements from the school. This contact book you must get your mom or dad to sign off every day. The teacher take this contact book every morning, and communicate with your parents.

In General, the school make great people less great, good people become normal and amplifies the bad things. They give you the wrong idea that make you think Time is free.