Daping Multiple Intelligence Ecological Aesthetics Experimental Elementary School

Daping Elementary was founded in 1943, near the end of Japanese colonial rule, as a modest village school in Beipu's remote Waiping area. Facing the same shrinking enrollment that threatens many rural Taiwanese schools, it took a radically different path around 2017: reorganizing entirely as a public experimental school built on psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Rather than a standard curriculum, students move through eight distinct intelligence-based learning tracks, take mandatory violin lessons in the lower grades that grow into string ensembles by the upper grades, and are guided by an "OWL" character-education honor system. Perhaps most remarkable of all is the campus itself: an ecological showcase said to host the highest diversity of butterfly species recorded on any school campus in Taiwan, with tens of thousands of individual butterflies visiting each year.

大坪國小創立於1943年，正值日治時期末期，原是北埔外坪地區一所樸實的村落小學。與許多台灣偏鄉學校一樣，大坪也曾面臨學生人數銳減的困境，卻在2017年前後走上了一條截然不同的道路：徹底轉型為以美國心理學家迦納「多元智能理論」為根基的公立實驗小學。學校不採用傳統單一課程架構，而是讓學生走過八大智能學習軌道，低年級必修小提琴課程，並在高年級發展成弦樂團，同時以「貓頭鷹（OWL）」品格教育榮譽制度引導學生成長。而最令人驚艷的，莫過於校園本身——這裡是一座生態展示場，據稱擁有全台校園蝴蝶物種多樣性之冠，每年吸引數萬隻蝴蝶造訪。