Trip to Taitung: Intercultural Education

Last Thursday we left our daily three hour language classes at Tzu Chi Buddhist University and hopped on a train to Taitung. We knew we were meeting Siraya, Bonnie’s colleague who teaches at a University in Taitung, for a fire ceremony at the beach, but it was fitting that our Taiwanese friend Dave was also there to meet us. Dave and some other students of Siraya’s came with us on the first hike we took in Taitung three weeks ago. He came with us for the weekend, to the hot springs, to dinner. The next day to the museum of aboriginal history and then to a discussion about ethics with some of Siraya’s adult students. He was there to help guide us in this new place that he knew so well, and to be our companion in cultural learning and conversation.

This Thursday’s trip to Taitung, happening three weeks later, started off with the same spirit by our reunion with several of these friends meeting us at the train station. We visited the ocean, pounded a drum by the fire and many of us took the opportunity to sit or walk with our thoughts and reflections in front of the fire or the ocean. It was both exhilarating and relaxing and so wonderful to process the last several weeks in front of the dark and erratic Pacific. I couldn’t keep from singing out.

The next morning we showed up for the start of school at Junyi Experimental High School We were greeted by the principal and a group of several students dressed in their formal uniforms. We chatted on the walk to a cafeteria that had been transformed into a warm and open presentation space. We broke into groups, and the high schoolers led us in icebreaker games.Maxim and I shared a name game we’d done with our OOPS participants earlier this year.

Next came presentations from the students about the countries of origin of all nine COA students: Israel, Netherlands, Thailand, Japan, France, El Salvador, Colombia and the U.S.A. There were so many things that struck me. One was the students’ bravery for speaking, sometimes haltingly, faltering in their second (or third, or fourth) language in front of all of us, and the way that their fellow students would clap or shout encouragement when a student was stumbling to remember or find the right English word.

But perhaps most impressive was the students’ ability to ask meaningful, sometimes controversial, but always respectful questions about our various countries of origin. The questions raised included wondering about the safety of marijuana and prostitution legalization in the Netherlands, if the U.S. education system allows learners to be more creative, and how Israelis viewed compulsory military service, contrasting it with how people generally view Taiwan’s compulsory service policies. The basic format of the next several hours was these presentations and then some open time to talk to students, followed by more structured time to talk in our country groups again to come up with mini-presentations about some of the similarities and differences between our countries and Taiwan.

Next the students took us on a tour of their school. We passed by student painted signs, some Waldorf-inspired kindergarten and grade school classrooms, and then up to a space where there were many colorful hand-painted canvas kayaks being stored. The charismatic teenage boy walking with me proudly showed me which boat he had made. He said that in the 11th grade, they do a boat-making process for a week; he told me often the students worked long hours outside class on the boats. They spent another several days kayaking on the ocean. He said the school aims to incorporate this hands-on activity as a way to reconnect to the ocean, of which, he said, many Taiwan people today are afraid (the waves and undertow is very different and powerful compared with the Maine coast.)

The Experimental High School, which is a private school partially funded by the Alliance Cultural Foundation, that keeps a ratio of one third aboriginal students, which is higher than the percentage of people in Taiwan who are aboriginal. The placed-based and experiential ways of learning and teaching at Junyi may serve aboriginal students and potentially all students better than rote-memorization and test-focused instruction.

At lunch, our COA group dispersed into the cafeteria, each sitting and chatting with a different group of students. We continued our conversations from before and asked each other new questions like, “Do you like to sing?” and “will you sing for us?” When I responded that I loved to sing, but since I was eating my lunch too slowly because I’d been so chatty, I asked if they’d start by singing to me. The shyest boy in my conversation group began to sing a soft aboriginal tune and was joined by another girl, and then someone else and before I knew what was happening, the cafeteria was silent except for everyone who knew the song, and it seemed like many were singing loudly. It gave me chills. I’ll remember that school and its students, and I think it’s a fascinating school model to look into further.

Hardly able to process the warmth, challenges, and fullness of that experience, we hopped in a car and drove to the nearby aboriginal village of Taitung’s Rukai tribe. The village was established in the 1940’s when the Japanese government who held control of Taiwan at the time, either convinced or coerced the chiefs to relocate the tribe to grow rice in the flatlands below the mountains.

We were accompanied by Dr. Li-Wei Wang, a wonderful man who in his “retirement” from teaching at National Taitung University and leading a lab school now works for the Ministry of Education’s Collaboration Center for Teacher Education, Curriculum, Instruction, and Evaluation of Basic Education and serves as a part-time vice principal for the Junyi school and director of their Center for Teaching and Learning. We were also met and accompanied by a respected Rukai language teacher from the community and his middle-aged son, who served as our translator, while visiting from completing a Master’s degree in Divinity. When we walked to the local aboriginal primary school, we were greeted by a performance from the students who sang with powerful harmony and beautiful red costumes to greet us with a millet harvest song and a rain beckoning song.

Following this performance, we walked next door to where a kindergarten class was underway. The children were learning the Rukai language, and we watched the immersive lesson and then participated in the craft afterward. The tribal elder and other Rukai language teacher who was taking us around the village and school explained to us the urgency of language learning in schools. He can speak Rukai, but shortly after he went through school, the colonial forces providing schools at the time banned the language in school and so his son, our translator, does not speak Rukai. He explained the importance of the current historic moment in time because many of the parents around his age who do not speak the language are off working in the cities, while the grandparents who do speak the language stay in the village with the children. It feels the stage is set for revival and cultural preservation but the language is not spoken by many people and is only taught once a week as a mandatory class until middle school, at which point it becomes an elective, and is not offered at all in high school. Classes in the schools are taught in Mandarin, but children have second language classes in English and Rukai.The Rukai tribe faces so many challenges with preserving and revitalizing the language. It was hard to hear about this damage done, but I’m left with a thread of hope and I wonder about this model in the United States.

The father and son took us around the village giving us an incredible oral history (translated by his son) until finally, wending our way to the home of a retired military officer, we enjoyed a dinner prepared by his wife, who runs a very successful restaurant business. It was an amazing spread. She had prepared a whole slew of foods, wild boar, tilapia, chicken, noodles, and some traditional foods such as banana leaf wrapped glutinous rice rolls with pork inside, millet winter squash porridge, pigeon bean soup, and millet wine. Until the moment we had to leave to catch our evening train back to Hualien, we sat all together around the diminishing food listening to his stories, asking questions about education, language and cultural preservation in schools, the Rukai tribe, among other questions; his patience for our inquiries was endless.

Back at the train station, Dave, the second year college student pursuing an education degree, who had accompanied us for the entire day after his college class ended mid-morning, attended our debrief and reflection on the day while we waited for our train. Honorary human ecology degree?

Writing this sitting back in Hualien at Tzu Chi University, I have the persisting feeling of gratitude for everyone who spoke with us so openly and for the space that so many people made in their schools, villages, homes, hearts and minds to help us learn and to share in this cultural exchange. I believe It will be a lifelong lesson for all of us as we continue to take the learning from today into our lives in the U.S. and abroad.