SINGAPORE (June 3): For the past 15 years, Li Yajun, also known affectionately as Nana to people around her, has given up the creature comforts of her home in Taiwan to spend nearly all her time in the remote villages in Nepal, working with and for the rural poor. In 2013, she set up a charity organisation, World Without Suffering, that works to develop better education and healthcare infrastructure in the poverty-stricken Himalayan country. Li has also galvanised support from her countrymen, including Taiwanese doctors, to volunteer in the communities. In 2013, Li’s alma mater, the Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Taiwan, gave her a distinguished alumni award in recognition of her dedication to humanitarian work.
(Main image: Wenzao is a firm proponent of the philosophy of servant leadership, which puts people before self)
Another of the school’s graduates, who works as a flight attendant, devotes her spare time and own resources to help people in remote Thai villages — including home repairs.
To Margaret Chen, the university’s president, these two alumnae exemplify the increasingly rarefied virtues that the liberal arts college aims to impart to its students, or the future leaders in society: humanity and servant leadership.
“People today are focused on technology, efficiency and speediness; things that can be done by machines,” Chen says. “We need the human touch, the humanity. Something that machines and artificial intelligence do not have. That is something that has to be emphasised in this competitive world.”
Indeed, as self-made billionaire and Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma has declared, it is LQ, or the “love quotient” — in addition to the standard emotional and intelligence quotients — that sets a person apart as a leader. “If you want to be respected, you need LQ,” Ma told a global audience in New York in September 2017.
Ma also asserted that much of education had been misguided, in the instruction that machines were better than humans. Instead, he suggested that rather than training people to become more like machines, machines should be built in the vein of humans. “Human beings have the souls, the belief, the value; we are creative, we are showing that we can control the machines,” Ma said.
That complements Wenzao’s core competency. The university, in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, specialises in the instruction of languages that, in Chen’s view, helps young people in the largely homogenous society of Taiwan better appreciate other cultures and ethnic groups. “We are teaching a person to be more globalised through language,” she explains.
At the same time, Wenzao is a firm proponent of the philosophy of servant leadership, or the model of management that puts people before self. “To lead is to serve,” Chen says.
Coined by Robert K Greenleaf, who led management development at AT&T from 1941 to 1964, the aim of servant leadership is authority, instead of power. Greenleaf’s proposition — for leaders to prioritise the growth of others, and that true leadership did not mean fame and fortune — was radical for the time, but just as relevant today as people are once more pushing for change in society.
Given such guidance, Wenzao’s graduates’ priorities and approach to life after school would be decidedly different from graduates from other colleges. To be sure, Chen is quick to acknowledge that the university is not advocating that the typical pursuits of wealth and success are not essential. Rather, what would also be important is “how much [of an income] they think is enough for them”, and how that income or wealth, “even if it’s very little, can be shared”.
“They will make money, but also pay attention to [issues such as] labour justice,” Chen adds.
Additionally, as with the efforts of Li, Chen also points out that the needy do not need mere philanthropy. “That’s the idea — that we don’t just help the needy by giving money, but help them to live well... help the local people to do more,” she says.
“[If the students] become more generous and pay attention to the needy, it’s all because of the values in the education they get here.”
In the light of the consequences of material excesses and corporate greed that have plagued society, the humanity that Wenzao teaches and advocates should be a model for learning institutes the world over.
Margaret Chen will be speaking about an inclusive educational model at the Shape The World Summit on June 21
This story appears in The Edge Singapore (Issue 884, week of June 3) which is on sale now. Subscribe here
