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“Woe is me!” cried a Joe when his foe hit his doe, his doe hit a roe, the roe hit a hoe, and the hoe hit his toe.

A Question
When we chatted in the office, my colleagues liked to ask one another a question: “Is school education eventually useful or futile?” What we really meant was students’ manners rather than their academic grades. It was bizarre that we teachers were skeptical about our power. Still we discussed. Some teachers said students more or less improved their behaviors after attending school. Others disagreed. They regarded school education as futility. “Teachers are not as influential as we expect any more”, one said, “Students stay how they were. They just don’t change.”

I said nothing. I liked to keep an aloof stance when the topic was controversial. But in my bones I was for the former: kids are teachable. So to me it was more like a question of how and how hard a teacher tried. Students didn’t change because teachers neither tried enough nor touched their students’ hearts. In my long teaching career, I believed I did affect some kids and changed their ways of thinking as well as behaving, which always made me proud. Students tend to stick to their old bad habits, I decided, but unchanged they won’t be.

I had, however, made my conclusion too soon. Academy education turned out to be less and less authoritative. In the meanwhile, I gradually lost my confidence. I knew it was never easy to change one’s habits, especially bad habits. But lacking of motivation to change was the most depressing part. Take cursing for example. I used to announce strongly and clearly to my students that I disliked to hear people cursing in face of me. I tried very hard to convince them that saying bad words is not only insulting to others, but also degrading to the sayers’ own status. A decent person should, therefore, develop self-discipline of no cursing. Furthermore, the effects of saying bad words increase according to ages. Fewer people feel offended or hurt when hearing a small kid curse. Whereas an adult’s dirty words can quickly ruin his good image. Since a grown man can be a parent and have a career, he has to take responsibility for his own words. Consequently, the ruin of a good image can bring him great loss. “Very soon you will be grownups,” I warned them.

My students respected my rules and feelings. They watched their manners whenever I was present. I was grateful. But that was not what I only wanted. I wanted them to care about themselves and their future like I did to them. I expected them to become great adults. Did I overestimate my students, or myself? The other day, on my way to leave school, I heard a loud curse shouted fluently ahead of me. Raising my head and looking around, I was stunned to see one familiar face continuously spitting big dirty words among a group of party-hearty students who couldn’t wait to go home. I found him one of my favorite ex-students. Despite the fact that I esteemed myself a persistent teacher, I took a shameful action at that instant: I pretended not to hear him.The hilarious students slowly disappeared into the dusk, stepped into their future, and immersed into a society where degrading trends I could never fight against prevailed, and I–I belonged to yesterday. I was a dinosaur. I was defeated.

If you ask me the same question again: “Is school education useful or futile?”, I will tell you that I know no more now. And if students’ ill behaviors stay changeless eventually, should I try as hard as before?

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and light,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

讓我們坦誠相待吧，我的愛! 因為橫臥在我們面前這片如夢似幻的奇異美景，其實是沒有歡樂、沒有愛、沒有光、沒有和平、無法常駐、無法消弭痛苦的。
且讓我們在暮色漸合中並肩欣賞雲海，先忘卻塵世間的紛紛擾擾吧!
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Taipei, April 2 (CNA) Taiwan must raise its alert against a rare strain of avian influenza that has crossed over to humans in China, Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta said Tuesday. Chiu said President Ma Ying-jeou and Premier Jiang Yi-huah are both concerned about a possible outbreak of H7N9 flu, since three cases have been confirmed in China. All air and marine ports around Taiwan have strengthened their quarantine measures since China confirmed Sunday that two people had died of H7N9 infection and one was in critical condition, he said. They were the first reported cases of H7N9 human infection in the world. “The quarantine level (in Taiwan) must be raised as the situation will become increasingly tense,” Chiu told reporters. He said that if necessary, the Department of Health will convene an inter-ministerial meeting to discuss whether to set up a center for quarantine management. He reminded people who are planning to visit China soon to refrain from touching birds or eating foods that contain improperly cooked eggs. Meanwhile, a Chinese news website on Tuesday said there is most likely a new case of H7N9 infection in China — in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. The patient has been quarantined and is being treated, the news report on longhoo.net said, citing a post on a microblog site by “phoenix”from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital’s administrative division. The post said there is no need to be panic, but advised against eating poultry products and improperly cooked meats. As of the press time, the news site said, there had been no official confirmation of the case. (By Chen Ching-fang and Elizabeth Hsu)

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