First-World Problems

I started working/teaching at an young age. One can certainly say that I learn almost everything in work. My career is indeed my life. That's why whenever people talk to me about kids, learning or problems they encounter, I could always relate and talk on and on about my believes. However, I was not always this person. Recently, people asked me how I became who I am now which got me thinking... Yeah, how and when have I turned into Andy now?

I've been interested in education ever since adolescence. Certainly, I had many mistakes along the way but there was one thing that I was right about throughout time. Being a teacher requires patience and skills; being an educator however, demands affection and compassion. Without love, we cannot be happy and without joy, we are too vulnerable to sacrifice our happiness to help others. I couldn't say this 10, 15 years ago because I simply lacked the maturity and temperament 

Here in Taiwan, we live in a society where only less than 2% of the population is illiterate. That means most of us are educated and intelligent to an extent. We went from doing  things by instinct to being able to analyze our actions. Our education went from "one way fits all" to individualization. We categorize and we become specialized. As we found more solutions, problems and challenges race alongside. What's wrong with civilization? There's nothing wrong really... We simply over-complicated it.

From infancy, we were fed with love and that's how education should be. People (mostly parents or misleading articles) have countless questions and problems with children regarding the best way to teach or when to learn...etc. Those are really the first-world problems. You forgot the most fundamental factor of life- love. As cheesy as it may sound, love really is the universal power above all; love conquers all. A person without love or incapable of love, can never be happy.

In modern day school education, I regret to share that I found that because we seek solutions in order to better meet the needs of individuals, we have entered the era when every child is not just labeled but overly. There have always been the "basic", "advance" or "lower" groups. But now it has come down to personalities. I'm talking about Asperger, Autism, ADHD...etc. and especially the third one. I'm not making this up. There's a mania of putting children on medication in Taiwan. In the name of early treatment for the sake of children's future, these "teachers(school and institutes alike)" and whoever makes money in the process will do anything to create fear for the parents because that's the way to always make business thrive. Fear is what drives people away from their senses. Look at politicians, religions and businesses. Once you make people scared, they'll pay for anything to insure their status quo but they'll never care long enough to see things through.

What parents worry about nowadays breaks my heart even worse than before. They used to care senselessly about test results because they were too busy on making a living to care for their children in details and now... because the internet is filled with various information and people lack the ability to determine whether it being true or false, they look at articles regarding children's education and start to worry senselessly about the personal straits of their children or "syndromes" as they call it now. It really kills me to see a child, being defenseless, wear all kinds of "tags" around just because their parents become convinced by the devil that they have a "special" child.

If only you could just think back on the time when there were none of these medical terms for a second, think about how people raise those special children that we call special now. We developed names, treatments and medication but can we "cure" those problematic children? We can't cure them because there's nothing to cure. We simply suppress their nature and comfort ourselves, nothing more. For those who could read this, do not be a part of this evil. I beg of you. All we need is love. Love children/people for who they are; love their strength as well as their flaws. Love them unconditionally, or let them be.

#education