Archive for Academic

Another slack attempt at a blog roundup

via nostalgiphile

19 Apr, 2008  Comments off


Jane Fonda\'s daddy wore blackTo my great surprise I was able to get up early today–despite a wild night of drinking and wenching–so I had a rare chance to spend part of this Saturday making my way through the Taiwan blogs. Buncha great stuff to read, I’m pleased to report, and all of it worth recording here:
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First, Kerim at Keywords has an interesting post about his personal experience with Taiwan’s healthcare system:

“Now, over the past six months I’ve gotten to know Taiwan’s health care system better than I would have liked (don’t worry - everyone’s OK), and I have a pretty good sense of the good and the bad. The good is that one can go see any specialist just by showing up at the hospital and registering for an appointment. Its dirt cheap and you can see as many doctors and specialists as you like until you find something that works. The doctors are willing to do endless amounts of tests, and they dispense medicine generously (OK, that’s actually one of the bad things - but sometimes plenty of cheap meds is a plus). I’d say that the hospitals and doctors are all well trained and highly professional - even out here in the countryside.”

This matches my own experience with hospitals/clinics in Taiwan, and on the few occassions when I’ve had to visit a doctor it’s been amazingly inexpensive (less than US $30 inclusive of medicaments). It may have some problems, but it’s a highly efficient system I think.

Our fellow academic proletarian comrade at Talking Taiwanese has an article on “The Unbearable Rigidness of Being an Academic in Taiwan”:

“The academic for whom obtaining money for personal projects is more important than teaching or research contributions. The latest wasteful MOE “Teaching Excellence Award Projects” have given previously unpublished academics an outlet to become involved in pedagogically unproven schemes. The latter are more at place in commercial language schools rather than university language departments. Highly encouraged by university authorities (who appreciate the inflow of extra MOE money and exposure through a newspaper article or two), English Community Centers seem particularly popular as “Teaching Excellence” projects. Departments are given outrageous amounts of funds by the MOE to kick start schemes that strongly resemble the unproven “English villages” (in S. Korea and by the King Car Private Foundation in Taiwan). Departments’ main concern is on making sure to spend all of the money allotted to them, and on having enough community center participants and visitors, the two main MOE criteria according to which the project is ultimately judged. Where these participants come from and whether or not their participation results in effectively improving students’ English skills is not the issue.”

Indeed, TT pretty much nails them on this one, and in fact it’s probably an understatement to say “outrageous amounts of money”–both faculty members and departments are basically given blank checks (from MOE and the National Science Council) to produce “research programs” and language-training policies which are of dubious or null value to education at their institutions. But that’s the Taiwan Way, so what are you gonna do…

Taiwan’s temporarily resident gastrophile, Prince Roy, laments the lack of decent Mexican food in our lovely capital, the Paris of East Asia, and discovers Eddy Burrito:

“I ordered a burrito and a quesadilla, and while there are no vegetarian items on the menu, if you let him know, he’ll make a bean and cheese burrito and quesadilla. And of course, the burrito includes rice. I appreciated his offer to throw in some grilled onions in the burrito as well. The verdict: excellent! It’s easily the best Mexican food I’ve had yet in Taipei. He makes two varieties of salsas, both are quite nice. For those unfortunate, misguided souls like Poagao, and other Taiwanese like him who cannot handle spice, Eddy can make the food as bland as tap water. But that is a tragic waste. At least try the medium spicy, though I would recommend going all out.”

I must be neurotic for thinking of that Cypress Hill song “I’m goin all out, (nothing to lose)” here, but for some reason lately I’m a latino rap thing and it goes well with mexican food. But yes, isn’t it strange that when we USia expats miss our own food it often turns out to be non-own food, non-indigenous stuff like burritos, chili, and pizza (though that was invented by wop-americans in Chicago, I hear). Myself, I’d like to go all out w/some chili con carne and a bit of lemon meringue pie…PIES, PIES, WHERE ARE THE PIES, ASIA???

Mark, at Doubting to Shuo, writes about the whips and scorns of running and selling an English school to his competitors in Taipei:

“Their [enemy school] location was excellent– right by an MRT station, and the classrooms are big. They seem to have been on a downward slide for a while, though. Despite their excellent location and longer existence, we had more students than they did! Maybe that’s why they made the offer. From all calculations, it soon became clear that they were losing money and they were in debt. This made their initial offer to us impossible, but after several rounds of negotiation we managed to come to an equitable agreement.”

Congrats to Mark, it sounds like he’s busted his balls for this. Having been involved with a school like his before in TW, I can tell you he’s not at all exaggerating when he talks about how stressful it can be.

Finally, the notorious horror pundit Yak sox at Sunny Breaks has written vaingloriously about his new MacBookPro:

“I went out and bought a mac book pro. In the last six months I’ve given away three laptops. But the philanthropic feeling wore off pretty quick and left me with the condition of mobilelessness. The hardware itself is okay I guess. I remember back to when they changed from the Powerbook to the MBP and was not impressed with the new design. The Tibooks looked great. I thought to myself that I would pass on getting an apple laptop til they changed their look again.”

Poor guy, what he means is: “like a duck in a jet engine I was sucked back into the Apple cult because I couldn’t surf for pr0n at my leisure in Starbucks anymore.”

Angry black Fujitsu says hi to pretty white MacBook “pro”. ;-)

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Please to be rassing me over mistakes, omissions, and misc. oddities.

– I decided this post needed a villain, the evil Henry Fonda from Once Upon a Time in the West.

Separation of Powers

via Kerim Friedman

22 Mar, 2008  Comments off

考試院
Photo by 翔

If you ask most people, democracy is synonymous with elections. But, strangely enough, few people who live in electoral democracies feel that elections result in a government which truly responds to their concerns. At its best, electoral politics seems to solve the problem of succession which plagued previous forms of government. Although it is not unusual for violence to break out during elections in many parts of the world, my sense is that even the most procedurally flawed elections in a one-party state make for more peaceful transitions between rulers. By this standard a bloodless military coup is actually slightly better than a violent election, so we’re placing the bar pretty low.

I find it much more useful to think about democracy in terms of institutions. Separation of powers has been an important part of democracy since the early Greek City-States, and was a central feature of the Roman Republic. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been doing their best to undo this founding principle of democracy for some time. They object to any congressional oversight of the executive branch, and have appointed Supreme Court judges who believe in a strong executive. We all know the endless stream of abuses which have taken place under the Bush White House, many of them posing serious threats to civil liberties. And yet, somehow, the basic building blocks of US democracy remain intact - barely. (True, we are setting the bar pretty low here when we point out that there aren’t black-booted brown shirts patrolling our streets, but still…)

These thoughts occur to me as Taiwan slips back towards one-party rule less than a decade after the DPP first gained control of the presidency. During that time numerous reform measures which would have strengthened Taiwanese democracy were repeatedly defeated in the KMT controlled legislature. It is unclear whether any of these will move forward now that the KMT’s position is secure, although the KMT’s anti-corruption rhetoric during the past election will likely result in at least some minimal reforms.

I find myself reflecting upon my experience working within Taiwanese institutions. At college meetings, every speaker prefaces their comments by mimetically recreating the institutional hierarchy: “Dean, Department Chair, Colleagues, Everyone: Hello.” But those with real power are not at the meeting: the school administration and the Ministry of Education. Every decision is made at the top and trickles its way down the ladder, so our meetings are primarily reactive. Nothing we say or do can really influence the decisions which have already been made on top. And those at top are not particularly interested in hearing our views.

Now, to be fair, this isn’t that different from how institutions work in the US. What is different, however, is that some institutions, at least, have a history of struggle which has resulted in faculty assemblies, teacher unions, and even, in some places, graduate student unions. While these organizations don’t rightly represent a “separation of powers” at the institutional level, they do act as a countervailing force which dampens the tendency for power to concentrate at the administrative center over time. I have not seen any signs of such organizations during my brief experience working in Taiwanese academia.

Another observation is that Taiwanese separation of powers differs in one important respect from that in the United States. The Examination Yuan 考試院, which overseas the testing of civil servants, is one of the five branches of government. Wikipedia compares it to “the European Personnel Selection Office of the European Union or the Office of Personnel Management of the United States of America” but its stature as one of the five pillars of government seems unique (at least with comparison to the US). Scott Sommers has remarked upon these differences as well:

In the occupational selection of modern Western nations, I believe it is occupational practitioners themselves who construct the tests based on their personal ideas about what practitioner knowledge should be. In Asia, it is quite different. In Taiwan, for example, a great deal of the testing and examination that goes on is controlled through a centralized government organization called the Examination Yuan. While the Examination Yuan utilizes highly qualified representatives of the various organizations their tests select for, it is clearly distinct in its functions from the the various occupational groups and their interests.

At the end of that article Scott suggested that “expanded democracy places testing in the hands of occupational practitioners.” I don’t know whether there is truly a general trend in this direction, but this is the kind of thing I have come to think about when I think about democracy in Taiwan. I don’t think this kind of institutional reform can happen from the top down, but so far I see very few signs of Taiwanese professionals seeking to make their institutions more democratic. At my university there is some discussion about allowing Assistant Professors to have a vote in the faculty hiring process - but it isn’t even clear whether current rules allow us to make such changes…

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