I was a student in the first cohort of the nine-year integrated curriculum system, called a "lab rat" from first grade until I graduated high school.
On my first day of elementary school, I was shocked. The textbooks I received were a third longer than those of my two older sisters, and each book had a different cover. I came home and asked my mom, "Why are my books different from my sisters'?" But my mom, busy with factory work, had no idea. It turned out I was in the first cohort of the new curriculum guidelines—and the first cohort in Taiwan's educational history to not use textbooks from the National Institute for Compilation and Translation. My family didn't know until we encountered it firsthand.
After a few years, my oldest sister took the second cohort of the junior high entrance exam. Before that, there was no reference point in our family. When the school teacher said, "Fill out your preferences with the schools you most want to attend," nobody knew what that meant. My mom had my sister list Taipei First High School, Zhongshan Girls' High School, and National Taiwan Normal University High School in order, and she failed all of them with no school to attend. Failing to get into high school was rare in that era, especially for a student who had won the county superintendent's award. In the end, she could only enroll in a private high school in Linkou through independent recruitment.
Throughout our K-12 education, our family, because of our social class, suffered from "insufficient educational knowledge" and "limited information channels." While other parents and students had already done their homework—knowing that "the nine-year integrated curriculum would switch textbooks from the National Institute for Compilation and Translation" and "entrance exam results should determine your preference order"—we became orphans of the education system.
These events taught me that deficiencies in the innate educational environment and insufficient personal effort create gaps and misconceptions. This closure only began to shift when I pursued graduate studies and engaged in extensive self-directed research of academic papers, which sparked my interest in reading.
The real turning point came when I started covering education news for TVBS.
"Education is really boring! There's nothing good to report." These were the words all my seniors told me before I actually started working the beat. They nearly all abandoned education reporting within two or three months because they couldn't find any hot stories, moving instead to business, transportation, and other beats. But for me, education was different. Through interviews, I frequently encountered students from top universities and high schools, as well as students from schools facing closure—so-called diploma mills. These encounters brought entirely new inspiration and shock.
"I've already read all the books that senior students at National Taiwan University read in their second and third years." When an 18-year-old student from Taipei First High School said this to me casually, adding "Taiwan's universities simply don't cultivate our ability for self-directed learning," I was so shocked I stepped back. Recalling my own eighteen-year-old self, I spent every day immersed in club activities, ignoring the opportunity to truly explore myself. I deeply understood how students below the top-tier schools, student council presidents burdened with 800,000 NT in student loans upon graduation, and I myself lost the race from the very start of our mindsets—and that gap may truly be impossible to overcome in a short time.
I believe education means the more you know, the more perspectives and knowledge foundations you have to judge whether a value system aligns with your own and whether it's correct. This has nothing to do with educational credentials; rather, it relates to resources. Education today, through technology, can enable people from different fields to share their thoughts and perspectives. It can provide immediate channels for those seeking knowledge to repeatedly view and absorb information. Educational exploration is no longer confined to schools—it can even break barriers to social mobility, allowing people to choose what they want to learn.
