Have Taiwan’s Students Lost Their Direction or Not?

     In an attempt to seek an answer the concerns of many people in Taiwan on the issue that the younger generation, or the “Strawberry Generation”, a nickname that stemmed from the perception that these kids are “fashionable” and pretty to look at yet “fragile” in spirit, and seems to lack a sense of direction on where they are going in life, Lai analyzed the situation from many different social contexts, but he didn’t provide any comments on how long will the phenomena last or how will it change.

      Lai believes that an important reason that such an attitude of young people exist is because of the economic reality that lies before them. Many high school students and college students in Taiwan are either now facing the challenge of unemployment after graduation, or they do have a job, but they start from the ultra-low salaries. And as the economy is slowly just rise again after the global financial crisis, Lai concluded from investigation that “half of students don’t know what they want to do in the future and lack role models to inspire them”, and “the island’s young urgently need to find their way in the world”. But Lai is unable to provide exact examples to support this viewpoint.

     On the other hand, society on the whole and the education environment in Taiwan has both largely shaped the students’ outlook on life. Compared to students of other countries, Taiwan’s students and their parents have different expectations for their future. High school students and college students have grown up living with stress, and these stresses mostly come from family and society. High school student’ parents focus on the grades more than the talents or what students are interested in, and most of students are infused with the concept that their responsibilities are getting good grades so that they can go to the good university, and after they graduate from the college, they can get a good job. Chen Fei-Chuan, director of National Yunlin University of Science and Technology's Counseling Center, suggests that “young people take a broad read in their search for a direction in life, not limiting themselves to business or political figures, but also considering examples from the fields of religion and public service”(Lai).

     In Lai’s interview with Dr. Shyu, who has a Ph.D. in education, Dr.Shyu remarks “[N]early half of college students newly emancipated from the stress of high school academic advancement, ‘don’t know what they want to do with their lives’”, and points out the importance of having role models to inspire young people, since “growth routinely begins with imitation”(Lai). Lai adds in suggestion to the generation by quoting psychiatrist Dr. Wang, who highly recommends that kids today take more steps to know the world better and broaden their horizons, like “knock around a bit, get a part-time job, hang out with different friends and take part in different social group activities” (Lai).

     Another cause for the lacking of role model was attributed to the social structure of families. In Dr. Wang’s analysis was based on the observation that nowadays, family structures are different from the last generations. According to him, there are more families with one kid or two kids, and the relationship of family is getting weak, and this is crucial to the development of character for young kids. Dr. Wang was surprised that near one forth of students had been thinking to suicide at some point, and he says that based on his experience of clinical work, “many only children ‘collapses when they lose a relative’”. Dr. Wang also found that children don’t like to choose to go to universities far away from home. “The desire for new and different life experiences is evidently fading”, Dr. Wang said. Because of this phenomenon, Dr. Wang give suggestions to the parents “many only children can naturally become ‘lone rangers’, and it is at this point parents need to understand to back off. Let them head out on their own” (Lai).

Yet Lai fails to back Dr.Wang up with more solid data on how exactly is the family structure is impacting the attitude of teenagers, and how family relationships are more “weak”, or “only childs” are not stronger in character.

     Lai notes on the difference of gender roles and how it impacts young people’s sense of knowing where they want to do. Girls seem to think that to make their dreams become true is more important than getting married and having a wonderful family, and boys surprisingly think the opposite. Chen comments that girls no longer think that “starting a family is no longer seen as a given”, because Taiwan’s society has changed to the point that girls are more self-reliant (Lai). Yet Lai denotes that there are still a lot of boys that are bonded to the traditional way of thinking and still consider finding a partner and starting a family are the main purpose of life, such thoughts bestowed on them by family.

     In this article, Lai successfully highlights a crisis of high school students and college students that exist in the Taiwan’s society and bringing it to many people’s attention and illustrating the concern for Taiwan’s future. Yet amid attracting more people’s concerns about this topic by citing his interviews with three “professionals”, Lai fails to bring the thoughts of the generation that he dubs the “Strawberry Generation” to the table and let them have a say, so he is speaking from a limited viewpoint and does not give a direction on how this phenomena will change either.

Works Cited

Lai, Jerry. "Have Taiwan's Students 'Lost Their Direction'?." CommonWealth Magazine.

 19November 2009: n. pag. Web. 28 April 2010. .