2020
When A Group of Volunteers With Religious Background Enter Primary School Classrooms Teaching ‘Life Education’
Category: Best data-driven reporting (small and large newsrooms)
Country/area: Taiwan
Organisation: READr
Organisation size: Small
Publication date: 12 Sep 2019
Credit: Producer: Chien Hsin-chan Executive Producer: Lee Yu Ju, Chen Tzy-Tyng Journalist: Huang Yi-Hsun, Lee Yu Ju Design: Chen Yi-Chian Web developing: Tan Hsueh-Yung
Project description:
In August 2019, some people accused that a Christian background of allegations of”RainbowLoving Family Life EducationAssociation” become volunteers of elementary school, spread particular religious idea in the time before the formal curriculum. What they had taught not only suspected of illegal content, but also shows the system of volunteers lack of good practices. Even parents can not understand what these volunteers had taught to the children. We investigated the 2632 elementary schools in Taiwan, found that 40% of the volunteer groups of had religious background.
Impact reached:
These religious volunteers caused huge criticism in Taiwan, many parents found out that if they want to know who is teaching their children, absolutely no one can provide them information.We did something even the government could not do. We expose all elementaryschools which have volunteers stationed, and presented through visualization who these groups are and where these groups. We also offer interrogator so that parents can quickly query.
Techniques/technologies used:
This project uses google sheet to arrange data, and fetch data through google sheets API. And we use CSS and Vue.js to visualize data.
What was the hardest part of this project?
The most difficult part is to get information on more than two thousand elementary schools. We cooperated with a few of city councilors to get a small part of the information, and mostof the information was directly call the school to ask. We havea total of more than two thousand phonecall. When this issue has been criticized in Taiwan, without knowing the whole picture of the situation, the fear is easy to be enlarged. For example, many people will simply just start criticizing those who volunteer to help others, and think they all are people who want to pass specially religious thought. Through our survey the whole picture, so that readers can objectively understanding this issue.
What can others learn from this project?
If only reported certain cases, lack of whole picture, it is easy to cause panic. The report should be responsible to provide the whole picture to the readers, data can be done about it.
