New Life for Old Campuses Rejuvenating Retired Elementary Schools
Liu Yingfeng / photos Chuang Kung-ju / tr. by Scott Williams
October 2014
Schools in remote rural areas that experience persistent declines in their enrollments are usually shut down. But local governments and non-governmental organizations are now working to rejuvenate some of those derelict campuses.
A new program is renovating shuttered schools across Taiwan, converting former campuses into eco-parks, art studios, and even English language study spaces that once again reverberate with laughter and conversation.
In late July, a dozen-odd students and teachers from a tutoring center in Jingmei, Taipei City, arrive for a stay at the Forest School (formerly Dongshi Elementary School) in Pingxi, a rural district of New Taipei City. The excited chattering of kids fresh from the city blends with the buzzing of insects, the singing of birds, and the burbling of the nearby creek, seemingly turning the clock back 20 years to a time when the voices of happy children filled a still-active school.
Kuolai Elementary School is bustling with unusual activity as well. Located in a small village in New Taipei City’s Pinglin District, the school is hosting 70-some elementary school students. They have come with a handful of American, Australian and Canadian teachers to learn about the natural environment, including the endangered Taiwan blue magpie and Formosan rock macaque. The sound of recitations carries out of classrooms, breaking a silence that has hung over the school since its shuttering.
Taiwanese birthrates have dropped in recent years, much as they have in Japan. The resultant decline in the number of school-age children has caused school enrollments to shrink. The situation has led some to ask: how can we rejuvenate and repurpose our derelict schools? In fact, many have been transformed in recent years. According to the Ministry of Education, some 185 partially or fully shuttered elementary and middle schools around Taiwan have been revitalized for use as art galleries, ecological education centers, special field-trip destinations, and other purposes.
Children are having a great time at formerly shuttered rural elementary schools, exploring local ecosystems at the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp and splashing around in the water at Pingxi’s Forest School.
Dongshi Elementary is a case in point. An old school with a great deal of history, it was successfully transformed through the joint efforts of the Pingxi District Farmers’ Association (PDFA) and Pingxi Elementary School.
Lin Kezhu, a project manager for the Forest School, studied at Dongshi as a girl. Now in her fifties, she notes that Pingxi was quite prosperous during the period of Japanese rule. A mountain town with mineral wealth and an ideal location—it was the transportation hub for Jiufen and Ruifang—its population swelled to more than 10,000 people at one point. But when the mining industry began declining in the 1960s, the town’s young people moved away. Enrollment at Dongshi Elementary fell, leading to the school’s closure and the transfer of its remaining students to Pingxi Elementary in 1993.
The campus was largely deserted for more than a decade and was falling ever further into disrepair until the PDFA intervened in 2007. Chen Chin-li, head of the PDFA’s promotion section and a participant in the school renovation project, says that the PDFA got involved to create a source of revenue for itself.
While farmers’ associations in agrarian parts of central and southern Taiwan often have 1,000 or more members, the PDFA has just 700. Moreover, Pingxi sits along the upper reaches of the Keelung River in a water source protection area that restricts development, limiting the association’s lending income. Seeking to address the problem, in 2006 the PDFA’s then-president, Wu Qinglong, pushed the group to lease the Dongshi campus from Pingxi Elementary for NT$2,000 per month with the idea of renovating the space and using it to generate income.
The old school underwent six months of renovations before being reintroduced to the world as the Forest School in September 2007. The class plaques still hanging outside the six classrooms and the blackboards in the dormitories create a school-like atmosphere in an otherwise natural setting complete with fireflies and a babbling brook. It drew 673 visitors in its first year with no advertising at all.
In an effort to leverage the Forest School’s growing reputation, the PDFA has moved into agricultural tourism, introducing themed local tours aimed at raising the community’s profile and strengthening ties between the area’s small farmers and its local community. Facility managers have worked with residents to launch travel packages that enable visitors to harvest local crops such as Oldham bamboo shoots and shallots, and to enjoy meals made with fresh local produce. “We want visitors to eat and enjoy themselves here in the community,” says Lin.
The development of the school has also spurred local employment. “The PDFA renovated the school in hopes of turning it into a destination, connecting it to the community, and revitalizing the town,” explains Chen.
The Forest School’s revenues grew from something over NT$100,000 in 2006 to more than NT$3 million in 2013, and more than 10,000 people visit every year, making the PDFA the first agricultural organization in Taiwan to successfully repurpose a shuttered school.
Children are having a great time at formerly shuttered rural elementary schools, exploring local ecosystems at the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp and splashing around in the water at Pingxi’s Forest School.
Kuolai Elementary School in Pinglin had been idle for nearly 30 years when the then Taipei County Government and Pinglin Elementary, Kuolai’s parent school, converted it into an outdoor education facility. (Taipei County became New Taipei City in December 2010.)
Opened in 1911, Kuolai was once one of three elementary schools serving the Pinglin area. Located in a water source protection area, Pinglin has long faced severe limits on its development and large numbers of residents have relocated to Taipei for work. By the time the school closed in 1987, it had just five or six students, all of whom were subsequently transferred to Pinglin Elementary.
The nearby Beishi Creek gifted the school with a rich and largely untouched ecosystem that at one time made it a popular camping destination for schoolchildren from Taipei County. When its scouts’ campground was moved to another facility, the campus became silent once more.
That changed in 2008 when the Taipei County Government began using shuttered schools to host English language camps. The county government sited the first of these new camps, which provide rural children with local access to foreign language study, at Qianhua Elementary in the county’s Shimen Township in 2008. It placed the second at Kuolai in 2009.
Liu Fengyi is the principal of Pinglin Elementary and was a participant in the reconstruction of Kuolai. She explains that the camps are intended to provide disadvantaged students from remote areas with a means of learning English. “The idea is to give these kids, who have few resources of their own, the opportunity to experience the atmosphere of overseas language study, and to get them more comfortable with speaking English.”
The school’s renovations included putting glass exterior walls on the classrooms and bringing elements of the surrounding ecosystems inside to create international-style learning spaces that retain a local feel. In its initial phase, camp attendance was limited to students from small schools, providing them with three-day, two-night courses that allowed them to study English in a natural, outdoorsy setting.
Since the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp opened in 2010, the nearly 4,000 students it hosts each year have made it one of the most frequently visited places in Pinglin. Its educational methods have even attracted the attention of Stanley Yen, chairman of the Alliance Cultural Foundation, who has visited the camp specifically to observe those techniques in action.
Kuolai’s rebirth has also made it something of a local attraction. Liu says that the original school was funded with donations and closely connected to the surrounding community. Seeking to revitalize those ties, the organizers of the reconstruction made sure to involve the community in the project, even going so far as to seek its input on the design of the space. Once the renovations were complete, the facility began hosting gatherings for Kuolai Elementary alumni and a variety of folk ceremonies and rituals for local residents.
The successful transformation of Kuolai Elementary over the last four years from an excellent camping site into a popular outdoor education destination points to new possibilities for schools facing closure.
Taiwan’s declining birthrate has led to the shuttering of many schools, both urban and rural. More than 100 primary schools have been idled over the last 30 years, and the question of how to repurpose those campuses is becoming pressing. Let’s hope that the experiences of Kuolai and Dongshi Elementary Schools can inspire new ideas for campus rejuvenation.
Children are having a great time at formerly shuttered rural elementary schools, exploring local ecosystems at the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp and splashing around in the water at Pingxi’s Forest School.
Children are having a great time at formerly shuttered rural elementary schools, exploring local ecosystems at the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp and splashing around in the water at Pingxi’s Forest School.
Once abandoned and overgrown, the Dongshi Campus of Pingxi Elementary has been rejuvenated through the collective efforts of the government, NGOs and art groups.
Children are having a great time at formerly shuttered rural elementary schools, exploring local ecosystems at the Kuolai English Wilderness Camp and splashing around in the water at Pingxi’s Forest School.
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