Many Paths, Not One: The Rise of Experimental Education in Taiwan - A Conversation with Tang Kuang-hua

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. My name is Tim Logan, and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. Back in January 2025, I heard my brilliant friend Amanda Scott on her Accidental Gods podcast interviewing Audrey Tang. Audrey is Taiwan's youngest ever Minister of State and first Digital Minister, and as part of that conversation, I was absolutely fascinated to hear Audrey talk about the evolution of education in Taiwan. With Manda's permission, here is an extract from that conversation.

When we changed the curriculum in 2019, we say from this point onward, only 3 things matter in education: agency, interaction, and the common good. So agency means that the child's curiosity, the child's initiatives should determine their personal curriculum. Interaction means that they need to interact with other people as friends, right? Not seeing each other as predators, but rather learn the very important skill of prosocial friendliness, right? So this idea of being friendly to people who are different from you are often— just papered over when you're in a competitive environment in a school, right? Because there's not enough capstone projects where you can usefully collaborate or something. So maybe you have a lot of agency, a lot of initiative, but you see the world from a zero-sum perspective. So that's the other one. The third one, the common good, is also interesting because it's— Mm-hmm. Essentially, in any place where it's zero-sum, it's a systemic teaching of how to play a different game, how to see the games that we're playing as lose-lose games and then refuse to play and say, no, I'd like to play a different game where there is common good to be had and not getting trapped into this collective FOMO thing.

Ever since then, I was keen to find out more to share an episode on this channel about the history of experimental education in Taiwan that led to these exciting developments. Through a kind introduction from Anting Liu, the founder and board director of Teach for Taiwan, I was able to make contact with my wonderful guest this week, Mr. Tang Kuan Hua. Mr. Tang and his wife Li Yaqing have been instrumental in the education reform movement in Taiwan for the last 40 years, including in the homeschooling of their own children, Audrey and Sung Hao. Mr. Tang Kuan Hua. He spent 25 years working as a journalist and editor at the China Times during Taiwan's transition to democracy. And since the 1990s, he's been closely involved in Taiwan's experimental education movement, helping to establish its first community college and supporting the founding of democratic schools. In 2010, he founded Optimism Academy, which teaches philosophy to teenagers through Socratic dialogue. His family have contributed in many significant ways to the building of a democratic Taiwan. And so it was an absolute privilege to discuss with him some of what he's learned from these experiences. As Mr. Tang preferred to conduct the conversation in Chinese, we used live translation to support us. It worked remarkably well as we were able to have a very relaxed and warm conversation, but it means that the subtitles for this conversation are only available on the video recording, which you can find on our YouTube channel linked in the show notes. I really hope you do take a moment to join us as it is so worth it. Huanghua is one of the kindest and wisest people I've had the privilege to meet on this podcast. Among much more, we discuss self-directed learning, multiple pathways for young people, how experimental ideas reach mainstream curriculum in schools, and what artificial intelligence might mean for education.