The ultimate goal of Tzu Chi's education system is to illuminate humanity with mutual respect, appreciation, love and care.

After the downpour, the air was unbearably humid. Thousands of earthworms crawled out of the saturated soil to breathe on the road. "D-d-ding-dong," the bell signaled the end of class, and students happily filed out. Some who saw the earthworms crawling on the ground screamed and jumped--not out of fear, but because they had been taught to be compassionate and they did not want to step on them. Carefully, they tiptoed away. One student asked, "What if the sun comes out and the earthworms don't crawl back in time? Won't they get dehydrated and bake in the sun? The teacher taught us to love and protect all life, so let's save the earthworms!" They began to pick up the earthworms gently with chopsticks, but finding the worms too slippery, they quickly reverted to using their bare hands. They thoughtfully divided the campus lawn into squares and put two hundred earthworms on each one, so that all the worms would have adequate space to live. The activity attracted the attention of other students, who joined in to save lives. In a mere fifteen minutes, they had saved countless earthworms.

Isn't this like a scene from the movie, The Sound Of Music? But this is a real story from the Tzu Chi College of Technology (formerly known as the Tzu Chi Junior College of Nursing). This institution was Tzu Chi's first school, established in 1989 to train capable and caring nurses. In 1994, the Tzu Chi College of Medicine (which has since been upgraded to the status of university by the Ministry of Education) was established to train skillful and conscientious doctors who would take care of patient's minds as well as their bodies. Then in August 2000, the Tzu Chi elementary and middle schools were opened, completing the Tzu Chi education system from kindergarten right through to graduate school.

The vision

Why has Tzu Chi embarked upon completing an education system from day care center all the way to graduate programs when schooling in Taiwan is commonly available and the literacy rate is as high as ninety-four percent? Nowadays most schools in Taiwan are geared towards providing students with academic and vocational skills, but hardly any are devoted to teaching students how to be decent human beings. In the process of emphasizing specialized knowledge and skills, the most significant values such as love, care and respect are ignored. Consequently, Taiwanese people have not become spiritually happier or culturally more enriched. We often see people who are successful in their professional lives and are rewarded with money and fame, but who still feel empty in their hearts. What went wrong? American philosopher John Dewey remarked, "Education is life." The ultimate goal of the Tzu Chi education system is to cultivate students who will love and respect everyone and lead lives of good quality.

The complete Tzu Chi education system includes three important aspects: whole-process education, whole-campus education and whole-person education.

Whole-process education

What is whole-process education? Master Cheng Yen, founder of the Tzu Chi Foundation, believes that a person's character is formed between birth and the age of thirty. Therefore, the foundation is building a complete education system from day care center to graduate school. If students grow up in well-balanced educational institutions, they will become capable professionals with sound characters.

Nurse Huang Shu-chuan, who graduated from the Tzu Chi Junior College of Nursing, is a good example. Huang remembered there was an old patient who refused to eat for days. Everyone tried with all their might to persuade her to eat, but she stubbornly refused. When it was Huang's turn, she did not know what to do. Holding the bowl of food in her hand and seeing how emaciated the patient had become, she finally went down on her knees with tears glistening in her eyes. Suddenly the patient opened her eyes to look at her. Holding out her hands to wipe away the nurse's tears, she said gently, "Silly child..." Then to everyone's surprise she took the food and started eating it. Huang cried with joy. The young nurse was not only skillful but also compassionate. She said her schooling at Tzu Chi had activated her compassion.

Whole-campus education

Whole-process education should take place on a well-integrated campus. The current Tzu Chi kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, technology college, and the future Communications Institute and Education Institute are all situated on a campus of over forty acres, near beautiful Meilun Creek and the Central Mountain Range. The gorgeous natural surroundings are bound to have a positive influence on the students.

In order to let students interact closely with and receive better care from their teachers, each class from elementary school through high school has a maximum of thirty students. In comparison, most classes in Taiwan usually have over forty students.

Another merit is resource sharing. For instance, middle and high schools usually lack the facilities to perform germiculture and other laboratory experiments. Professors at Tzu Chi University welcome Tzu Chi high school students to use their laboratory.

The integrated whole-campus education system allows students of different ages to interact with each other. For example, Tzu Chi college students take care of young children at the day care center. When students in higher grades go on an outing, they invite students from lower grades. The whole school feels like a big family, and students learn how to socialize with people of different ages.

In addition to educating children in Taiwan, some classes are open to children and adults from overseas. Many overseas Tzu Chi people want to send their offspring to Taiwan in the hope that they can learn the Chinese language and culture, as well as the teachings of Master Cheng Yen. Consequently, the Tzu Chi middle school established an Overseas Youth Culture and Education Center. As for Tzu Chi adults, they can apply for one-week to one-month-long Tzu Chi classes.

Whole-person education

Master Cheng Yen's vision of education is not limited to the educational institution. In truth, all of the Tzu Chi missions--charity, medical care, educational development, cultural promotion, environmental protection, bone marrow donation, international relief and community volunteerism--are part of whole-person education, since all these missions should be carried out with the Tzu Chi spirit. During the course of each mission, volunteers learn to make themselves better persons, and this is certainly a form of education.

To make a person whole, education should focus not only on providing specialized knowledge, but also on activating the love in a person's heart. Specialized knowledge makes up the structure of society, enabling it to function--for buses to run, we need bus drivers; for planes to fly, we need pilots; for children to swim safely, we need lifeguards; for illness to be cured, we need doctors and nurses. Yet regardless of profession, all people must perform with love for others. The ideal is to treat everyone like our own family members and friends.

Can love be taught with words? Students often reply that they know how to be a loving person. "It's a piece of cake," they say. However, few of them volunteer their time to do good deeds. Their excuses are often along the lines that they are busy with school on weekdays and busy resting at the weekends. But when we look at Tzu Chi people, we can conclude that almost all of them are busy during weekdays, yet they still appropriate some time to do volunteer work wherever possible. The truth is that the lack of money and time does not prevent one from volunteering if one really wants to do so.

The purpose of whole-person education is to make each person truly complete. If we only know how to play our professional roles, there is something missing in us. There will be a day when we must retire from our careers as doctors, nurses, teachers, businesspeople, etc. But even after retirement from professional life, we are still humans and we need to play our roles as human beings until our last breath. A true human being should know how to love others.

The Tzu Chi humanities

The courses on the Tzu Chi humanities are the backbone of Tzu Chi education. From elementary school to university, there are courses on the Tzu Chi humanities, which hope to convey the importance of appreciating aesthetic beauty, living simply, working mindfully, being responsible, and respecting others.

Why do we hope our students learn to appreciate beauty and to live it out in their daily lives? Nowadays, people often do not know how to dress properly, to speak nicely or to live gracefully. In order to cultivate the aesthetic sensibilities of the students, we have classes on tea ceremony, flower arrangement and meditation in wooden classrooms built in the architectural style of the Tang dynasty.

Life need not be complex or luxurious; it can be plain and simple. When we begin to live more seriously within, we will live more simply without. When we live simply, less time is wasted in chasing after more material goods, prestige or wealth. We can use that time and energy to do work which benefits others. Many people's lives are simplified after they join Tzu Chi. For example, volunteers must wear the Tzu Chi uniform when participating in Tzu Chi activities. They need not agonize over which outfit to wear. The time saved on choosing clothes enables them to do more volunteer work. For the same reason, all students at Tzu Chi schools must wear uniforms.

Mindfulness prevents us from making mistakes, so we hope to teach students to always be mindful when working, walking and talking. By doing so, students are less likely to make mistakes, to speak wrongly or to go astray in life.

When students do make mistakes, we hope they will take responsibility for their actions. The sense of responsibility is not limited to shouldering the results of wrong deeds. It lies in bravely accepting the consequences of the tasks, whether right or wrong, that we undertake. Everything in the world is interdependent, so ultimately we should be responsible to the world and to all suffering beings. For the sake of all, we have to shoulder the responsibility of purifying people's minds and bringing harmony to the world.

Last but not least, Tzu Chi hopes to teach people a lifestyle of mutual respect. Nowadays too much emphasis is put on materialism. Worldly materials are meant for us to use properly, but instead too many people are now ensnared in the pursuit of more and more material goods. An ideal society should be one where people treat one another with respect, gratitude, love and care.

Children are the future of our society. May the spirit of humanity be our passport to a brighter world. Tzu Chi will continue to educate students to be loving and caring beings who know how to live with respect and appreciation.