Education is a slow, steady process of guiding children—one child at a time. A big hand holding a little hand, linking each other's life journeys from that very first touch.

Let me give you an example: Right now, the infant care center industry is booming in Taiwan. This immediately makes me think of "bottle-feeding"—a major task that has to be done multiple times a day. It absolutely requires a customized service, matching the baby’s biological clock with the teacher’s caring hands. (In fact, teaching a baby how to eat solid foods, changing diapers, and giving baths all have to be fully customized, don't they?)

The hands of a preschool teacher are certainly no exception! Young children must explore through hands-on life experiences to build new visual connections in their brains. In other words, early childhood teaching relies heavily on the teacher's hands to prepare materials. On top of that, the time and methods required vary for each child. It is much like sculpting clay: every single piece of artwork must be adjusted based on thousands of variables like the current temperature, humidity, color saturation, season, and the specific texture of the soil. Preschool teachers are undoubtedly the ultimate representatives of a craft industry.

As children grow a little older, the ways they understand the world become increasingly personalized and unique. For instance, some children absolutely love drawing but completely despise math. Others can sit quietly reading history books for hours but struggle immensely to memorize vocabulary words. There are even kids deeply fascinated by astronomy who find it nearly impossible to master sentence formulation... I believe children like this are all around us; in fact, we were once those children ourselves.

I am sure everyone knows and understands these simple truths, and we all secretly hope that we are considered precious and "one of a kind." Yet, the paradox is that our society evaluates children using only one metric: grades! To ensure that grading remains "fair," every child is forced to read the exact same books and follow the exact same schedule. It doesn't matter if your child has a science brain, an engineering brain, a humanities brain, or an artistic brain—at the end of the day, everyone is expected to be an all-around expert in every discipline. (Just look at the standard of the General Scholastic Ability Test: you are expected to be equally excellent in Math, Chinese, English, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences).

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to tour a beverage factory. I watched the mechanical movements at each station and rows of beverages moving along a conveyor belt (production line) with absolutely no turning back. At the final checkpoint, any beverage that failed to meet the exact standard was ruthlessly discarded into the scrap bin, no questions asked. That scene reminded me so much of our current education system. Children sit in a classroom reading the same book. Regardless of whether they understand it, have mastered it, or even like it, the moment a lesson ends, the teacher moves straight to the next one. Our children are just like products on a conveyor belt, stripped of any choice to turn back.

Watching that, I felt a deep ache in my heart...

Perhaps you feel that since we grew up the exact same way, there is absolutely no need to redesign the manufacturing process? Perhaps you are terrified that your child will fall behind, so you insist on molding them to look exactly like everyone else? Perhaps you expect your child to stand at the front of the line, and therefore fail to appreciate that a bottle without a factory stamp can actually be much more beautiful?

Which is more precious: a handbag from an assembly line, or a handcrafted one?

Furthermore, whether a child is a handful of sand, a stretch of the sea, a block of wood, or a rough stone—if we do not act like master artisans, carefully sculpting and polishing them according to their unique traits, how will we ever discover the gemstone within? How will they ever have the chance to become a uniquely priceless masterpiece?

History tells us that when a craft industry turns into a mass-production factory, everything unique, precious, and valuable vanishes. When you force a child onto the wrong production line—stubbornly trying to shove a mismatched triangle into a circular mold—severe, agonizing bruising becomes inevitable. And it hurts!

Cradle their hands gently in yours and feel the unique patterns of their palms. How truly extraordinary!

Education is a craft industry; it requires us to guide them slowly, one child at a time. I believe this with all my heart, and I hope you will choose to believe it with me.