In retrospect, the elementary education in Taiwan was unavoidably destined to fail.
Decades of twisted style elementary education has trained students into being education machines for taking examinations to enter a higher school, and the important training of the humanities and basic skills have been seriously neglected. Student life, which ought to be happy and easy, turns out to be a long nightmare of examinations which children have to bear. Most people know where the mistake lies, but no one has ever seriously, or successfully, corrected these mistakes.
Strictly speaking, the reason why the elementary education failed is very complicated, so the opinions are widely divided and no unanimous conclusion can be drawn. However, no one has noticed that the elementary education has an inevitable fatal destiny, because it has adopted the concept of "servicing" from beginning. Whether in a society of authority or a society full of innovation, people always have different explanations for the concepts of "servicing", but quite unanimously, people accept and enjoy the concept of "servicing". During the period of the curfew, the concept of "servicing" became government’s amulet to control the education. It could make people believe that elementary education was one kind of virtue to be enjoyed only by lucky people. Today, when the will of the people can be upheld, the concept of "servicing" is still people's most favorite. Because people are the master, people ask schools to show "respect" to the clients - students and only the concept of "servicing" can fit in this circumstance. Such a situation happened, not only in Taiwan, but also in most developed countries in the world.

In fact, it is only a one-sided wish and a kind of expectation unlikely to be realized. Because of the adoption of "servicing" concept, the school has become a place for servicing trades. Its customers are "students", while the management targets are "education and training". It seems that there is nothing wrong with that. However since students are customers, as the representatives of the customers, the parents can get involved and even play a leading role in deciding the contents of the elementary education. Take Taiwan for example, due to the combined forms of examinations and the means of threats and bribes by parents, the training for test-taking ability has naturally become a fairly important part of elementary education.

The way in which parents judge the results to run a school, especially the Middle School, is based on the proportion of students having entered schools of higher levels. Once schools become a "hotbed for the cream's" training, universal education (which makes the expected educational target) will be overlooked and it is inevitable to give up on the students who lag behind.

According to the concept of "servicing", such systems as "organize a class on the basis of the student's ability" have become quite a reasonable arrangement, for customers favor this, while Government's intervention inducing the mandatory requirement of "arrange classes on the basis of general students" becomes a behavior that shows no respect to the "customers". In fact there is no difference between the elementary education and the guidance classes. Embraced by the concept of "servicing", students are very oppressed and are not respected in their life. However, the parents are quite satisfied with their children's scores of the course examinations and it seems that schools are in favor of serving the parents' vanity.

If the elementary education is a service, it will be unfair to ask a school to be responsible to every single student. The inborn gifts of students differ greatly. As long as 80% ~ 90% of the students are achieving the target, the school will go on quite well with the fulfillment of the educational responsibility. However, no one should disagree on the normality distribution of abilities, so, elementary education is just like a monastery or convent, as the saying goes "the master initiates the apprentices, but their skills depend on their own efforts". As schools carry out the service policy, the schools can stop serving some eccentric and unreasonable customer, and it becomes a common practice for students to "leave school" or "be expelled from school". Vice versa, customers are able to choose to not receive the service and "to drop out of school" certainly becomes one of the students' rights. There are people in the society who are on the verge of "dropping out of school", or being ordered to leave school which is a bitter irony to the elementary education "in which there should be no class distinctions".

These children are deprived of the right of being educated, which is the declination of the social justice, at the end, the social justice will be challenged by those children in the future. These abandoned students won’t necessarily all do wrong things, but as everyone knows, indeed it will eventually mean our society pays a great price to abandon this group of students. If the elementary education can give no help in the improvement on the correction of the social confusion as the maintenance of public order, what is the point of the cost paid by the taxpayers for elementary education.

Why don't we turn over the basic theory of the educational management system, and try to change the concept of servicing into manufacturing, and see whether it can reverse the destiny of failure ?

If elementary education is built on the concept of manufacturing, the school is the "manufacturing industry", and the students who have finished their education are the "products". The customers of the schools are not the parents, but the majority of society, because it is the majority of society who have paid most of the cost for elementary education. Meanwhile, the students who have received complete education will contribute to society. The criterion for the educational performance is decided by the majority in society. The direction and connotation will definitely be very different from what the parents expect. What the society needs is ideal community residents, including healthy body, kind personalities with no intention to do harms and the basic skills to live in a community and to help each other. As the schools have to be responsible for the whole society, they must take the responsibility for every single student. Society judges the performance of running a school by the overall quality of the graduates, including health, good personality and capability to live, etc. The ability to take tests is no longer the key to the education because society just does not need it. After the target customers are re-established, the scope of the choice and argument on the direction and connotation elementary education will contract so that the twisted education can be soon corrected.

If the school is set under the concept of manufacturing, it shall move the students from "materials" to "products", in which the training programs carried out will be just as a "process". The final responsibility lies in the following, i.e. to lead each single student to a certain level of the development, including health, good personality, basic living capacity and so on. As for the different gifts of the students, the schools have to overcome through techniques such as arranging major assistance at school, or turning to other special educational organizations for help. In a word, it is the ultimate goal to "bring every single child to a certain level".

What the school guarantees is not the process, educational training, but the results of the educational training - the quality of students. Just like ordinary manufacturing plants, the products must be according to the specifications, while the manufacturing techniques are just the internal affairs which have nothing to do with the clients. According to the concept of manufacturing, the schools can neither expel the problem-bearing students, nor can they let such students drop out of school. It is the same as the manufacturing plants who cannot deliver inferior products or semi - finished goods to their customers. The school should be responsible for every single student and try to help them through the maximum and the best educational resources, including giving the follow-up help after the students have left school, which is just like the after-service the manufacturer should give to its customers.

Of course, there is a big difference between "students" and ordinary "products", for students are live products, they are independent living individuals with a sense of self-esteem. The majority of people cannot imagine to regard students as the products, or to regard teachers as operators on the assembly lines. Actually the reason which led to this kind of logical contradiction are that most of people have confused the "system management" with the "educational techniques". We introduce the concept of manufacturing into the system management, instead of the techniques itself. Society can give a strict definition to the students - the products. It can ask schools to supply students with an educational environment where students are safe both physically and mentally and can think independently, and their individual self-esteem can be ensured and respected, since the students are human beings. On the other hand, when the quality of the products demanded by the society includes the properties of "respect", "showing loving care for", "sincerity and faithfulness", "tolerance", and so on, if schools lack such educational techniques and processes as "humanism", "love" and "showing loving care", they are not likely to cultivate these kinds of properties. The students' dignity of being a human being actually can only be guaranteed in the concept of manufacturing.

In the end we have to admit, it is really technically much more difficult to impose this "responsible until the end" concept for product manufacturing on the Elementary Education organizations, e.g. secondary schools and primary schools, than the present concept of "servicing". The schools will therefore be faced with even tougher challenges. There is only one piece of truth, we cannot decry the significance of the system concept because of the technical difficulties. We should make clear and be sure as soon as possible, on the subject of system management for elementary education. It involves not only the contracted responsibility schools should have, but at the same time, the upholding of the principle of fairness and justice. As to the subject of difficult educational techniques, they can be improved steadily until they reach the ultimate goal through the efforts by schools.