Learning Taiwanese Literature with a twist and single-sex classes in USA

A Taiwanese teacher used popular singer Jay Chou's songs to set a Literature exam paper for her students. Most of them failed the paper and there were protests against it. One of them was found on a student's website as follows: "I flunked, thanks to that stupid Jay Chou!" I wonder what Jay Chou himself thinks of this. He must be either amused, flattered or apologetic, I reckon.

As a Literature major and tutor, I admire her innovation in coming up with such questions. The songs were reproduced in full so that the questions could be answered more easily, with reference to them. Thus it was a matter of applying one's knowledge of literary concepts to the questions.

She was merely trying to make Literature more accessible to her students. The format was somewhat like the unseen prose section in the O'level paper, where any text can be used as a contextual question. She used university students' work to come up with the idea, a form of intertextuality really. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this act of hers really.

Splitting the genders when it comes to learning is beneficial because males and females operate in different ways. Also, there will be no unforseen distractions of romantic relationships being formed between them when classes are conducted. However, ultimately as they mature in age, they will be placed together in classes in higher institutions of learning. This is inevitable. One must note though that it is really up to the individual to possess the ability to cope with such distractions while learning.

Someone I know wanted to prevent his son from encountering such distractions during his secondary school life, as he felt his son was still not mature enough to be exposed to boy-girl relationships. Thus, he placed his son in a single-sex school which is situated at the other end of the country, causing his son to be obliged to wake up very early in the morning so as to reach his school on time.

He could have placed his son in a mixed school which is so much nearer to his home, and hence eliminate unnecessary travelling time. I feel that in this case, it does not really make a difference if his son is exposed to the other gender early in life, since his son will ultimately have to encounter them sooner or later. It is really practicality that should have ruled his decision in this case.