The homeschool pioneers of China and Taiwan

Making bold moves in societies where certification trumps ability, groups of Christian parents in both China and Taiwan are starting to homeschool their children. The level of risk and availability of resources differ drastically in the two regions: Taiwan passed a law legalizing homeschooling in 1999, while China only allows public school or registered private school education.

When Steven Huang of Taipei, Taiwan, started homeschooling his kindergarten-age daughter in the late 1990s, only a handful of people had even heard of home education. Family and friends balked at the idea. How could he fathom not sending his child to school? What qualification did he and his wife have to teach his daughter? While many on the island were fed-up with the test-centric school system, few considered homeschooling as an alternative path. After an Institute of Basic Life Principles introduced Huang to the idea, he began homeschooling his daughter and meeting weekly with one other homeschooling family living in Hsingchu, an hour from Taipei.

Today, Huang’s daughter is a studying the violin at a local college in Taipei. Huang heads a 200-member Christian homeschooling association, and about 2,500 students in the island of 23 million are homeschooled. The surge began in 1999 with the passage of a law legalizing homeschooling. Parents are required to submit a teaching plan to the Ministry of Education, as well as attend annual assessments to present what their child has accomplished. Huang and his wife are now attending weekly co-ops and homeschooling their fourth-grade son, who has a keen interest in math.

Over on the outskirts of Beijing, Rebecca Deng (a pseudonym because homeschooling is illegal in China) plays with her 2-year-old son in the playground of her apartment complex as her 6th-grade son, Jason, finishes up an online English lesson. Deng started thinking about alternative education after teaching at a Christian international school for 10 years and feeling convicted that Chinese children should have access to that type of schooling. A Chinese-American mother started a homeschool co-op nearby, and Deng joined the biweekly meeting with about twodozen children. When the group broke up a few years later, she sent Jason to a church school, but health issues brought him back home. Today, she’s also started a small English club for her 2-year-old and a few other toddlers in her apartment complex.

The Chinese government requires nine years of compulsory education, so Chinese parents who homeschool completely pull their students out of the system. Once Jason reaches high school, he’ll need to start preparing for the SAT to apply to a school in America, the eventual fate of many of these homeschool pioneers in China. Conversely, about 70 percent of homeschool students in Taiwan end up in local colleges, Huang said. As the birthrate in Taiwan hovers among of the lowest in the world, the surplus of colleges and universities on the island are desperate to attract homeschool students to break even. Huang noted a few universities have specific programs for homeschoolers with particular talents.

Deng and other Chinese homeschooling parents share lesson ideas and curriculum through Wechat, China’s social media platform. She also uses online U.S. programs such as The Potter’s School and My Father’s World while creating some of her own curriculum. With a background in history, Deng teaches the subject by creating a timeline of Biblical events, Chinese history, and world history, assigning classics and Bible passages for reading. Yet she also notes unique limitations she faces; the lack of Chinese-language teaching material or even teacher’s stores makes homeschooling less accessible for the average parent.

Since most of the students in Taiwan plan to stay local for college and schools are less colored by propaganda, parents mainly use the school curriculum as an outline of their lesson plans, focusing less on testing and incorporating a biblical worldview. Huang explained that they look at education from four aspects: spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual. “Intellectually, we don’t need to create new curriculum. One plus one equals two no matter if you’re doing home education or school education.” But they also include Bible reading, use Sunday school material, and bring their children on short-term mission trips and service projects.

Because Taiwan has adopted a more Western society, the concept of individualism needed to step away from the herd and homeschool is more prevalent there than in China. Huang believes this is a way the Taiwan movement can help those in China since they have a shared background. He’s attended homeschooling conferences on the mainland and spoken about parenting.

Yet the potential for growth is massive in China, which has 200 million school-age children. If only a tiny fraction of these students begin to be homeschooled over the next few decades, the number could very quickly climb past the 1.7 million homeschool students in America.

Read more about alternative education in China in the latest issue of WORLD Magazine.