Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) (26 page)

Smile Chaoyang

What is not naïve? Everyone must find his or her way through competing value systems. For a functioning faculty member, in particular, to keep things smooth, to not expose cracks, and to bridge the fissures are as important as
lux et veritas
. This much is clearly not naïve. However, ironic implications arise for this writer. For although this chapter is critical of the institutional context of its production, the substance of this critique matters little to the university, so long as it is published in an international forum of some repute. In part, this is because this publication will appear in English and have little import to the local customer base; but, more important, the school profits from
research numbers
via MOE inflows of capital and judgments.

Bill Readings has cannily compared the contemporary university to a financial market that extracts surplus value “as a result of speculation on differentials in information” (1996: 40). Publications in number reduce risk exposure. As the published production of information in local and international journals
adds
to the school’s spreadsheet, the university becomes further entrenched as a node in the global information exchange system. Critical intellectual projects dissipate into universal exchange systems. From the standpoint of the contemporary university, all intents transform into activity (student assistants, grant processing, interlibrary loans, database management) that serves, according to Readings, to advance “the optimal input/output ratio in matters of information” (1996: 39). As Readings further notes, the activity does little more than guarantee “technology’s self-reflection” (1996: 39). This chapter certainly exemplifies the latter point, though its intended target publication misses the former, as ideally defined by the MOE.

The MOE—or what I will call here Taiwan’s “Central Bank” of Education—has determined that the coin of the realm is marked by ISI and Ei indexes, though all currencies are useful because convertible. International research publication numbers (or foreign currencies) are only a small part of the university’s holdings, however. Students (or rather their images) become the local banknote by which the institution turns its productive capacities into a profit stream for all involved. This includes myself, as I work away in an air-conditioned office that overlooks the foothills of Taiwan’s central mountain range, and it also includes students, who trade on CYUT’s good name for future considerations that include economic advantages.
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New Taiwan dollars generated by this exchange can be traded for greenbacks, which are backed by nothing, save investments in U.S. debt instruments. The arrangement is secured by the U.S. military, which serves policy objectives that sustain the dollar’s place as
the
global coin of the realm (Frank 2004). We might naïvely say the system is quite corrupt, unreasonable, and unsustainable; but, at least in the short term (depending, of course, on your point of view), it does seem smoothly efficient (the temporary disruption of the global financial crisis of 2008 notwithstanding). Via universal exchange, the global financial system turns anything local into its component.

The despair of traditionalists can be inserted here. Traditional notions and practices of harmony and reciprocity become as convertible as utilitarian science. The school is aware of this and trades openly in its capacity to manufacture well-behaved and technically skilled youngsters. On the front page of the October 2006 edition of the university newspaper, this predilection is given clear exposition in an article entitled, “The President Says Hello: The University Promotes a Successful Courtesy Campaign”:

The
sun has risen. President Chung, Dean of Student Affairs Peng, administrators, and teachers stand in front of the gate to greet fervently students and teachers who have just arrived. It makes everyone feel warm, as if this is a home-like school full of politeness.

To make a happy school and to carry out the plan of full-blown life education, our school has continuously promoted the “courtesy demands reciprocity” school politeness campaign. A year has gone by. . .

President Chung with sincere words and earnest wishes said, “While IQ affects the learning of professional abilities, EQ affects the development of interpersonal relationships. But what really can promote the competitive attainment of employment is something called BQ, which includes the appearance of bearing, manner, accomplishment, and attitude.” . . . After graduation from Chaoyang, everyone can be trusted by employers and show the characteristics and tolerance of people at Chaoyang. . . . In the research of “the most trustworthy freshman in business in 2006,” our school was chosen as the most trustworthy technology university among all of the universities in central Taiwan by the 1111 Manpower Bank website. At the same time, personality education has already become one of Chaoyang’s accents that can make us proud. (
Chaoyang Times
2006)

The Manpower Bank, an online service that links employers with workers, passes judgment,
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and the school receives recognition (perhaps equivalent to a bond rating if we are to continue with this metaphor) for its production of BQ, which can then be traded in turn for more students, jobs, and profits.

But what exactly is BQ? Following Goleman’s (1996) quasi-intellectual book,
Emotional Quotient
, and Howard Gardner’s humanistic manifesto,
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
(1983), many different Qs have emerged—often disseminated by business consultants intent on finding a competitive advantage for their clients (for example, Freedman, n.d.). While many top administrators and faculty at CYUT find the humanistic approach elucidated by Gardner to represent a high point of Western thought and have urged subordinate faculty to take this approach to teaching, the choice of Qs (or intelligences) appears determined by the bank as
Beauty Quotient
—that is, brains, beauty, and behavior. The market accomplishes what teachers can only hope to do: define standards that discipline students (for example,
Administration Magazine
, 2007).

The
two twentieth-century value systems at work at CYUT fit nicely with brains and behavior; beauty (in the form of a smiling CYUT) puts an appropriate face on it. Everyone is to be warm as if a part of the family—precisely the rule of the state in the twentieth century; everyone should have technical skills to enhance the march of progress; and all are to be happy, not because they are young and healthy—a fact elided, assumed, or ignored; rather students should be happy to insure that everyone who graduates from CYUT can be trusted by the job bank and its investors/customers, called employers.

While students often treat this injunction with the same indifference that they bring to the flag-raising ceremonies, the bottom line remains: They act out the smiles, and they expect others to put on a face for the school, too. The injunction is reinforced via seemingly insignificant and perhaps unconsciously crafted devices. For example, the title for this chapter was found on a university-wide questionnaire handed to all students early in the spring semester of 2006. Under a large-font English heading in bold, “Smile Chaoyang,” students were asked in Chinese about their general satisfaction with all university units. For example, “Are you extremely satisfied, satisfied, a little satisfied, a little dissatisfied, not satisfied or extremely dissatisfied with the library?” At the bottom of the page, students were given room to write comments, which they generally ignored. Meant to provide feedback that spurs administrative staff to higher levels of customer service, no effort was made to create a statistically reliable survey. Students were only asked to rate their satisfaction; nothing was learned of the dedication and intentions of those surveyed. In its presumed anonymity, equality, and terms of inquiry, it resembled a cross between a consumer survey and a democratic ballot. It served, moreover, as a circuit through which the imperative for satisfaction moves from producer to consumer and back. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the command to “Smile Chaoyang,” which hovers above the survey, is written in English—the sign of globalization par excellence. Even when filling out a bureaucratic evaluation, students sense they are standing before a higher power for which they must practice their BQ. The smiles say it all.

Numbers determine rankings as they emulate sales figures, which further determine rankings and so forth in yet another feedback loop. Each response is itself numbered, and one can be certain the feedback received by the administration is numerical. The focus on numbers is similar to teaching evaluation forms, handed to students a full month before instruction ends. Scores in the humanities and social sciences tend to be highly inflated, with average scores ranging around 4.3 on a scale of 1 to 5. CYUT is indeed a
school
where all teachers are above average; for to receive scores between 4 (agree or good) and 3 (no opinion) is to put one’s teaching methods and classroom charisma in doubt. In fact, an administrator will exhort occasionally all teachers to teach
above average
. Impossible. Yet in the context in which marketing rules, it makes sense. This sensible irrationality is demonstrated insofar as this very measurement device is unscientific.
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Consider the types of questions asked and their numerical responses. The first question: Is the teacher on time? There are only two logical answers, yes or no. Yet on the survey, there are no fewer than five possible replies, which ask only the degree of the student’s
agreement
. Moreover, the fact that agreement, like satisfaction, is expected of both producers and consumers is given expression in the mantralike repetition of the first phrase
feichang tongyi
(uncommonly agree). As has happened elsewhere in the global educational marketplace, teachers are told that the evaluations are used only for reference; yet they have become the primary means by which promotion recommendations are made in the area of teaching precisely because they are expressed as a numeric measure in a system demanding some kind of metric. Thus, teaching is not evaluated in terms of empirical facts but in term of student
perceptions of facts
—the preferred perception of which is uncommon agreement or satisfaction. Teachers naturally become perception managers or, simply, marketers. It should come as no surprise that demanding lessons are as unpopular with teachers as they are with students, as consuming subjects invested with the power of evaluating the measure of their own satisfaction.

Baudrillard writes, “The globalization of exchanges puts an end to the universalization of values. This marks the triumph of a uniform thought over a universal one” (2003). The message is simple: The hope of universal Enlightenment has become one with marketing (see Yan,
Chapter Six
in this volume). Graduate students in my department demonstrate this fact. They copy the questionnaire methods of the school as they research the perceptions of students, parents, or teachers toward certain teaching methods or parenting styles. Such studies become tools for their professional advancement on graduation insofar as they give a quasi-scientific aura to a new and improved teaching method that they claim to possess. Up front with their bias toward perceptions, students are not concerned with the empirically testable reality of student achievements or failures; they have simply adopted the methods of CYUT, which has adopted these common and poorly constructed research designs from business and education journals. Students, therefore, know that these methods are valued. Moreover, they learn that
perceptions
can be traded for hard currency, which buys houses, cars, trips abroad, stable families, more education, and all the trappings and signs of middle-class success (for comparison with PRC constructions of middle-class status, see Ren,
Chapter One
in this volume).

Where does this leave us? Confucians believe, as they have since the turn of the previous century, that the world is on the wane. Bill Readings tells us we now dwell in the ruins of the Enlightenment University. On the wane and in ruins, State Neo-Confucianism and Enlightenment values nonetheless structure much of the activity that occurs at CYUT insofar as these values serve to facilitate the new terms of universal exchange.

Looking out my window, everything appears perfect. The air-conditioner hums; Radiohead plays through the computer’s speakers; students cheer occasionally; the electronic bulletin board, posted permanently in the central commons, flashes neon messages amid subtropical trees and smiling students.

Notes

1
. Asian values were reenvisioned as a form of Confucian capitalism during the rise of the Asian Tigers in the 1970s and 1980s. Following the Asian economic crisis of 1997, however, their cachet as the cultural infrastructure for economic success has begun to unravel. See, for example, Arai,
Chapter Seven
in this volume.

2
. Readings (1996) argues that the modern university found its rationale in its support of national-cultural projects; for example, English departments at British universities. National culture and Enlightenment ideals have been practically intertwined. The nation was certainly a great hope for common people as a ground of resistance to monarchy. Similarly, early-twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals thought that Chinese national culture would provide resistance to colonialism. In this way, reactionary nationalism was tied to progressive Enlightenment. In Chinese history, State Neo-Confucianism seemed antithetical to modernity; yet State Neo-Confucianism depended on modern technology for its propagation and its importance as a ground for Chinese identity.

3
. I have considered the problem of posing before the world in greater detail in a chapter on Taiwanese photography; see Pazderic 2009.

4
. Taiwan had been a colony of Japan from 1895 to 1945, ending with Japan’s defeat in World War II.

5
. After eight years in office marred by scandal, Chen Shui-bian was defeated by the KMT candidate in 2008 and then imprisoned on petty charges