Why Taiwan’s exam-driven schools can feel like a processing plant — and how I help my daughter cope
It’s 8:30 on a Tuesday night, and my daughter is sitting at the dining table with a worksheet in front of her. She’s nine. She’s been awake since 6:45, in school by 7:30, then at a cram school until 6:15, then home, dinner, more homework. The worksheet asks her to underline the correct word in twenty Chinese sentences. She’s not reading the sentences. She’s just looking at the word before the blank and picking the one that sounds familiar. When I ask her to slow down and read the full sentence, she sighs and says, “But the test just wants the answer.”
That’s when I started seeing it clearly. Taiwan’s education system often feels like a processing plant. Kids come in at seven in the morning, get moved through the day by bells, stamped with scores, sorted into groups, and sent off to the next station. By the time they come home, they’ve been handled so many times that the sparkle is worn off. The goal isn’t really to learn. The goal is to get to the next stage without falling off the line.
This isn’t a complaint about individual teachers. Most of the teachers I know care deeply about their students. They’re stuck too. They have rigid curriculums, administrative pressure, and forty kids in a room. Asking them to slow down for one child’s curiosity is like asking a factory worker to stop the assembly line because one box has a pretty design on it. They can’t.
What worries me more is what this does to a child’s relationship with learning itself. My daughter used to ask endless questions. Why do birds fly south? Why is the sky blue? Now, when she doesn’t understand something, she doesn’t ask. She just waits for me to tell her the answer. If I don’t, she gets frustrated. Asking questions feels like a delay. And in a system where every minute counts, delay is failure.
I saw this clearly last month. Her school gave a “review sheet” for the social studies test. It was four pages long, with dates, place names, and definitions. She had to memorize it all. There was no discussion about why the information mattered, no story behind it. I tried to make a game of it, turning it into a sort of quiz show at home. She played along for about ten minutes, then said, “Mom, just tell me which one is right.” She wasn’t being lazy. She was being efficient. She had learned that the goal is not to understand. The goal is to pick the correct bubble.
I’m not against tests. I grew up in the same system and I know that exams are a fair way to compare hundreds of thousands of kids when you have limited resources. But we’ve created a culture where the test score matters more than the child behind it. And that shows in the little moments. Parents ask each other, “Did your kid finish the workbook?” not “Did your kid ask something interesting today?” We talk about grades the way factory managers talk about output.
One afternoon, I picked her up from school and she looked tired in a way that is normal for adults but shouldn’t be normal for a third grader. Her eyes were dull. She didn’t want to talk about her day. I asked what she had learned, and she said, “Nothing. We just did test practice.” That sentence hit me hard. How many children in Taiwan go home every single day saying “nothing” because the learning was so relentless and mechanical that it left no trace?
I’m not saying I have a solution for the whole country. I don’t. But I’ve started making adjustments at home, small ones, to create a little space outside the processing line. The first thing I did was stop asking about homework when she comes home. No more “Did you finish your homework?” at the door. Instead, I ask, “How was your lunch?” or “What was the funniest thing that happened today?” This sounds small, but it sends a message: I care about you, not your schedule.
The second thing is that I let her stare out the window sometimes. I know it sounds like nothing, but in Taiwan, empty time is almost considered a failure. Kids are supposed to be practicing English, doing extra math, or at least reading a book. If a child is doing nothing, people worry. But I’ve noticed that when she stares out the window, she’s actually thinking. Yesterday, she asked me out of nowhere, “How do they know where to put the line between day and night?” That came from staring. It didn’t come from a worksheet.
I’ve also started cooking dinner with her once a week. It’s messy and slow, and her knife skills are terrible. But there’s no timer, no grade, no right answer. She can ask questions about why eggs curdle or why the oil splatters. She can make mistakes and just fix them. She gets to feel like a person who learns by doing, not a machine that learns by absorbing.
There’s one more thing I try to do: I answer her questions with more questions. When she asks “What does this word mean?” I don’t immediately tell her. I say, “What do you think it means?” or “Where do you see it in the sentence?” At first, she was annoyed. She’d say, “Just tell me.” But slowly, she’s started to pause and try. It’s not revolution. She still has to take the exams. She still has to memorize the dates. But at least she remembers that she is capable of reasoning, not just recalling.
I don’t want to pretend that everything is fine now. The system is still there. Next year, she’ll have even more homework. In a few years, there will be the big entrance exams that decide her “placement.” I can’t change that. Some days, I still get swept along, buying extra practice books, comparing her progress with her classmates, worrying about whether she’s falling behind. The factory is loud and it pulls you in.
But at the same time, I’ve started to realize that the home can be a different kind of place. Not a school, not a tutor, not a backup classroom. Just a place where learning is slow, questions are open, and the person in front of me is more important than the score she will get tomorrow.
Tonight, after the worksheet, I asked her to put her pencil down and tell me one thing she saw today that was odd. She thought for a moment and said, “There was a dog sitting in front of the 7-Eleven like he was waiting for the bus.” We laughed. Then we talked about where the dog might be going. She didn’t solve any math problems. But she did something better: she used her own eyes and her own brain to make sense of the world.
Maybe that’s all I can give her for now. Not a different school, not a different system, just a small room where the processing line doesn’t reach. I don’t know if she’ll still be curious in five years. I hope so. But I also know that if she forgets how to wonder, that won’t be her fault. It will just be the price this island has decided to pay. I’m just not willing to make her pay it at home.
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