游擊文化

Lost Youth: Cooperative Education Students in Beauty Salon
失去青春的孩子：美髮建教生的圓夢與碎夢

Author: Tu Hsiao-Tieh 涂曉蝶
Photograph:  Chang, Kuo-Shun 張國順
ISBN: 978-986-06604-2-5
Date: 9/2021
Pages: 320
Length: 119,364

Winner of the Taiwan Sociological Association Master’s Thesis Award

Cooperative education was once seen as a route out of hardship for disadvantaged youth. Why, then, do dreams so often turn into nightmares?

In Taiwan, when children do not enjoy studying or struggle academically, their futures often depend on the families they are born into.

If they come from wealthy families, they may be sent abroad to study.
If they come from lower- or middle-income households, they are often steered toward vocational cooperative education programs.

These programs promise students the opportunity to gain practical skills, academic credentials, and professional certifications all at once. They offer a path that does not require families to worry about tuition fees and even provides students with an income while they learn.

For many young people facing economic hardship, academic difficulties, or dysfunctional family circumstances, cooperative education once represented hope—a chance to build a better future.

Yet after entering these programs, their lives often take dramatically different paths.For some, the experience genuinely transformed their lives and opened doors to meaningful opportunities.For many others, however, it became a story of shattered dreams.

Teenagers aged fifteen to eighteen work more than ten hours a day. They have no clubs, no summer or winter vacations, and no graduation trips. They sacrifice their youth believing that one day they will become designers. They endure hardship in the hope of mastering a profession. Yet some find themselves doing nothing but washing clients’ hair and performing assistant duties year after year.

Cooperative education was once seen as a route out of hardship for disadvantaged youth. Why, then, do dreams so often turn into nightmares?

Driven by these questions, the author embarked on a study of hairdressing cooperative education students, traveling across Taipei, Yilan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Yunlin, Chiayi, and Kaohsiung to find students willing to share their life stories. Their experiences were carefully documented, one story at a time.

This book explores how a group of young people became cooperative education students and what happened to them afterward. Their stories are shaped by the intersection of family problems, economic hardship, educational inequality, and labor conditions.Their experiences reflect the realities faced by many children from Taiwan’s lower social classes.

Tu Hsiao-Tieh 涂曉蝶

Born in 1987 in Taipei, the author holds a B.A. in Sociology from Tunghai University and an M.A. in Sociology from National Tsing Hua University. Her master’s thesis, Distorted Students, Disguised Workers: Examining Taiwan’s Hairdressing Cooperative Education System, 1953–2013 (2014). The thesis received the Master’s Thesis Award from the Taiwan Sociological Association and was also supported by a Young Creators Grant from the Ministry of Culture.