Education Minister Wu Sehwa has returned from a visit to France, where he went to promote the study of the Chinese language. Nearly 100,000 French nationals are learning Chinese.
Wu said he met with French officials, who agreed to promote Chinese learning in France in return for the promotion of the French language in Taiwan. Education official Rebecca Lan explains:
"If they don’t have enough teachers, we can send our teachers to in France," said Wu. "We have been doing this for some time. Also, we need French language teachers as our high schools are offering second foreign languages. They can show us how to teach our second foreign languages better."
During his visit to France, Wu was also able to visit the innovative Ecole 42. The information technology school has no classes, teachers, books or tuition. Rather it places about 1000 students into a building in the heart of Paris and gives them Macs and programming challenges, which they must cooperate to solve. Wu said this innovative mode of learning could inspire Taiwanese universities to develop new educational methods.