What a lovely souvenir

Allow me to make a short post today.

Every Wednesday I have Speech and Debate Class and then Pottery and Aesthetics afterwards. The latter is in Chinese so I usually can't participate in the class. Did have a question today though, and I was a bit surprised as I was handed this thing as reward. For asking a question. Wauw.

Actually I did notice on our first class that the teacher would hand out these as a reward to students with questions, but I was assuming that it would only be to get people to listen to something very important.

He's still giving out little gifts though. The teachers is a quite respected artist here so his works aren't worthless. Beautiful aren't they?

Taiwanese students don't really ask questions in classes. At all. You really have to have some extraordinary situation to get them to ask just a few questions, and even though this teacher is giving away gifts for every question he gets from the students, there's not many to come for.
I think this is partly caused by the high schools not really expecting questions from the students and because everyone is under so much pressure from their parents about having to be number one student, so they don't dare ask a question that might show some weakness. Poor teachers.

Honestly. High Schools, at least, are crap here. I can say that with some high degree of certainty because it's just so easy to see. (Besides, I went to a vocational high school myself. One that is rumoured to be somewhat worse than other schools in Taipei. It was a vocational one. I feel sorry for my previous classmates. They are good kids.)

It's probably some sort of cultural problem. People are just used to the high schools being crappy and learning people not to think, so they just accept it the way it is. Of course that makes for a lot of frustration amongst teachers in other education institutions. Especially the foreign teachers that I've met. But I guess it's the way it is all over Asia. I hear that Taiwan should be somewhat better than so many other Asian countries.

Anyway. I'll see this little trophy as a nice souvenir. ("Earned" free stuff just feels so much better than anything else won't you agree?)
I don't know what's more impressing about it: The packing or the content. Anyhow, this quite made my day I'd say.