Flipped Education at a Nursery School: Going to School Is Not About Leaving the Countryside
The closure of 5 rural schools in Miaoli County has once again drawn nationwide attention to the consolidation of rural schools. In recent years many small rural schools have raced to launch food-and-agriculture and ecology courses to attract urban parents, hoping to boost enrollment and dodge the consolidation threshold; yet given the reality of continued rural outmigration, how long a "stall and wait" strategy can hold out is not a promising question.
Mei Shijie, who has promoted the Montessori method in Changhua County for 17 years and is principal of Miaopu Montessori Primary and Secondary School, observes that most rural farming schools are steeped in a fatalistic atmosphere of inevitable consolidation, with no visible future, so of course people choose to leave. He believes that if mixed-age education and connections to daily life could be introduced, it would not only solve the problem of teaching resources but also keep people from leaving: "Only through education, by helping children develop an emotional bond with farming villages, can new hope be brought to rural areas."
Rural Schools Steeped in an Atmosphere of Failure or Waiting for Retirement
Tin-roofed factories, dark coffee-colored ditches, and patches of rice paddies scattered all around: this is the most common scenery in Changhua. But at the junction of the three townships of Changhua, Xiushui and Huatan, amid a cluster of tin-roofed factories, one finds an oasis garden: this is Miaopu Montessori Primary and Secondary School (Miaopu Primary School for short).
Miaopu Primary School uses the "Montessori method" (see note). Mei Shijie (Rober William Major), who came from the United States, and Wang Ruinei ran a mixed-age grade 1 to 3 class in 1999, and it was once Taiwan, China's first Montessori primary school. Today the school is not only still standing, but its enrollment grades have expanded to grade 12 (senior year of high school). Over 17 years, the Montessori method has not only taken root in Changhua County but has also brought a glimmer of vitality to agriculture and rural primary schools.
"Many rural principals and teachers either have no chance to leave or are waiting to retire," says Mei Shijie. Apart from educators driven by passion, teachers who cannot leave have no heart for teaching, while those waiting to retire hold even more to the attitude of the less trouble the better, "How can there be hope? How can there be innovation?"
Zheng Fangyu, who once assisted with reading work in rural areas and now trains seed teachers at Miaopu, says rural schools do have different atmospheres depending on student numbers and resources. For children growing up in extremely resource-poor, typically outmigrating farming villages, their imagination of the future is simply to leave and study elsewhere, while teachers are anxious about where they will go once the school is consolidated.
Mei Shijie observes that whether in school, family or society at large, education is seen as a tool for escaping a harsh environment and moving upward in society, "So I am not at all surprised that the rural population is shrinking, because this is how students are educated, with no emotional connection to the place."
News Dictionary: The Montessori Method
The Montessori method was founded in the early 20th century by the Italian female physician Maria Montessori. It argues against the tradition of one teacher leading all students and reducing students to passively receiving information; instead it views the child as an independent individual, and, with self-directed experimentation and learning at the core and the adult "guide" and specialized teaching materials as support, children learn independently, re-examine their results, and ultimately gain a sense of achievement, with no more traditional grading or directly giving standard answers.
For more on the spirit of the Montessori method, one can inquire at Miaopu Montessori Primary and Secondary School. Currently the primary and secondary schools in Taiwan, China that use the Montessori method are homeschooling institutions, and Guanyu Primary School in Changhua County is also cooperating with Miaopu School to open mixed-age Montessori classes in the new semester.