Asian Education on Film, Episode 11

Asian Education on Film, Episode Eleven

After School (成功補習班) (Blue Lan / Lan Cheng-lung, Taiwan, 2023)

The supplementary tutoring industry, or ‘cram schooling’, is a phenomenon we’ve already touched on in Episode 8 on the Indian film Aarakshan. There, the cram school chain the ‘KK Institute’ stood for all that was rotten in the Indian system: for rampant profiteering, for the antithesis of genuine education. But in many contemporary Asian societies, tutorial schooling or ‘shadow education’ has become an integral part of the education system, for better or for worse.

Taiwan, and East Asia more generally, has been at the forefront of what some see as a shadow education ‘craze’. After School (成功補習班) is set in Taipei during the mid-1990s, an era when, as we’re told at the start of the film, competition for university entrance in Taiwan was intense (with only a 30% acceptance rate). The late twentieth century witnessed a massive expansion of higher education across East Asia, but universities remained acutely stratified. The numbers competing for entry to the most prestigious institutions sky-rocketed, intensifying competition. Factors contributing to the peculiar competitive intensity of education systems in East Asia include rigid labour markets featuring seniority-based arrangements for hiring and promotion; and chronic insecurity stemming from minimal public welfare guarantees.

Cram schooling was already ubiquitous when I arrived in East Asia in 1992, as I quickly learnt when I started looking for work as a tutor. My first job was tutoring a five-year-old Taiwanese boy for the entrance examination to the kindergarten of an international school in Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards, when I became a teacher at a local secondary school, I found that most of my students were spending hours outside school receiving private tutoring. Cram schools were big business, and posters advertising them were plastered on billboards and buses around Hong Kong, promoting famous young tutors like glamorous rock stars. From my time in Taiwan in the late 1990s, I remember one cinema advertisement for a tutorial school chain. It showed two homeless men on the streets of New York. One says, ‘Life’s terrible here, Joe!’ The other replies, ‘Yeah, Bill! Let’s go to Taiwan and teach English!’ The punchline: ‘We only employ qualified English teachers!’

But cram schools are not just about examination preparation - for many teenagers, they are also places to socialise, away from cramped apartments, squabbling siblings and busy parents. It’s this aspect of tutorial schooling that After School takes as its main focus or theme. This is a story of adolescent friendship and sexuality, rather than soul-destroying academic competition.

It’s also a celebration of Taiwan’s reputation as an Asian beacon for progressive attitudes on gender and sexuality. Amongst many younger Taiwanese, the embrace of LGBTQ+ discourse and liberal stances on gender issues are integral to visions of Taiwan as a tolerant, multicultural Asian democracy. That’s not to suggest that the adoption of these values is merely instrumental. But Taiwan’s relative openness to these trends can certainly be attributed, in part, to the pride many feel in the island’s distinctiveness as a vibrant democracy.

You can watch the film via this link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8ytr74

**Further reading ** Ho M. (2019). ‘Taiwan’s Road to Marriage Equality: Politics of Legalizing Same-sex Marriage’. The China Quarterly. 2019;238:482-503. doi:10.1017/S0305741018001765

Chen-Dedman, A. (2022). ‘Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism’. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 6(2), 261-290. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20221267

Chao, T. Y., Sung, Y. T., & Tseng, F. L. (2024). ‘High-stakes test anxiety among Taiwanese adolescents: a longitudinal study’. Cogent Education, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2321019