Taiwan Foreign Schools

The Taiwan Journal has an article on Taichung-based expat Doug Habecker and the international schools. Doug was raised here in Taichung, and for many years had a column in one of the local newspapers on things Taichung (hey Doug, when are you going to get us some Burger Kings down here? We don't have enough!):

TAS's Weislow has noticed this too. According to Weislow, who has been working at TAS for 36 years, students stay longer at the school than before, and more are returning to Taiwan after finishing college in the United States. "It's the nature of the economy, and the nature of the student body," he said. "It's definitely a trend."

The growth of the concept of "Greater China" means the language and cross-cultural skills that can be acquired in Taiwan are very much in demand here and in places like Shanghai and Hong Kong, he said. Also, more and more TAS students have relatives in the region, typically Taiwanese parents.

MCA has had to confront an issue not faced by TAS or KAS. Established to educate the children of missionaries, in recent years a majority of Morrison students have been from non-missionary backgrounds.

If the school simply expanded to meet demand, the current 70:30 mix of non-missionary and missionary children would be even more unbalanced, said Habecker. Drawn from five missionary organizations, the school administrators have decided to focus on MCA's core values and original function.

There is anecdotal evidence, according to Habecker, that some foreign managers have refused to take up assignments in Taiwan after finding out that they cannot get their children into their preferred international school. This shortage of school places--and its potential to impact foreign investment in Taiwan--is an issue Habecker raises whenever he meets with government officials.

Yup. Good point. Scott Sommers, who tracks all things education in Taiwan, has also been writing on foreign schools, specifically, Taipei American School (TAS).

Primarily, this post is about a struggle that's going on at Taipei American School concerning quality of education. As I began researching this problem, it became clear to me that it was about much more than that. Some of the people involved in the fight were concerned about something much different, but for an observer or a parent unfamiliar with the Taiwan political landscape, this might not be so readily apparent.

In the course of this post, I am going talk about an extensive Wikipedia entry for TAS. Some of this discusses the issue of quality of education at TAS. Other parts of it seem to be talking about the place of TAS in Taiwan society. In fact, I almost get the feeling that much of this argument is a mutated version of the Taiwan/China debate. I am much less concerned about the problem of TAS in Taiwan society, and what I hope to provide in this post is the kind of information that will help people wondering about the quality of education offered by the school.

Scott goes on to discuss some of the recent issues at TAS.

[Taiwan]