A student from a prestigious university tried to give his girl friend a surprise on her birthday. He checked in a hotel and worked hard to set one hundred candles on the bed to make words ‘Happy Birthday’. After he finally finished his big project and lit up all the candles, he happily walked downstairs to bring his girl friend up to the room. Certainly, he expected to see her face lit up with surprise and happiness. Unfortunately, what he saw was smoke out of the room and firemen putting off the fire! The night was ruined and the boy was brought to the police office. It was not the end of the story; to the worst, the episode was reported everywhere and the boy was labeled as highly educated idiot.

Obviously, the boy was very intelligent because he passed all the competitive exams to study in one of the most famous universities. However, he acted like an idiot outside school. Is there anything wrong with this boy, or our education?

A few years ago, my son who studied in Ching Hwa University which was considered as MIT in Taiwan. After he finished his freshman year, he couldn’t wait to found a club and named it ‘Love Business’. His idea was to teach college students how to make friends with different sex. We teased him for his innovate ideas because he never had any girl friends before. How could he consult people what to do? I remembered that he asserted firmly. His points were that most boys in Taiwan grew up in man’s world. They never had chance to meet girls. Finally they entered college and they were allowed to find girl friends, but the idea of ‘girl friend’ meant sex only to some boys. In fact, most boys didn’t even know how to act in front of girls.

It is true that many boys went to boy schools only, served in the military, and worked with men after they landed on a job. They didn’t know how to make friends with girls; in fact, they didn’t even have chance to meet girls. In the past, most marriages were arranged by the parents, but nowadays people prefer to find their own love. However, how can they find it if they don’t even have chance to make friends? Many people think there is just sex between man and woman because the mass medias are filled with pornographic stories and pictures.

It is nature for young people to look for their sweethearts, but why they need to celebrate birthday privately in a hotel room? Why a grown-up doesn’t know the consequences of keeping lit candles on the bed? What is wrong with our education? When the teachers in schools or the parents at home tell the youngsters that they should focus on schoolwork only, should we teach them something more important in the life?

Bih-Hua Chen
October 18, 2010