(Photo credit: Chiaoyu Elementary School)
According to the county government, Chiaoyu Elementary School has carried out the bilingual education program for nearly three years. Approved by the Ministry of Education, the school will become a bilingual experimental primary school with its educational philosophy based on multiple intelligences, including mathematics, physics, music, spatial reasoning, kinesthetics, interpersonal development, intrapersonal skills, and naturalist intelligence, in addition to linguistics.
School principal Li Wen-chi (李雯琪) said, as a Hakka, she noticed the loss of mother tongue as she took over the school three years ago. Since then, the principal has thought about how to make the Hakka take root. The school participated in a program on school-developed curriculum, which was launched by the Hakka Affairs Council (HAC), re-designing the Hakka courses for the pupils to speak their mother language more, Li said.
Li pointed out that Hakka and English are used as the medium of instruction in class to seek the balance between the native language, Hakka, and the international language, English for students to “think globally and act locally.”
Miaoli County Magistrate Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌) stated that Hakka people account for 65 percent of the county’s population. However, Hakka attrition is happening as many children can understand the ethnic language but not speak it. Magistrate Hsu hopes that, through the promotion of Hakka education by Chiaoyu Elementary School, the students can not only have more opportunities to speak their mother tongue but also explore their own strengths with international outlook.