The recent debate over a proposed ten percent reduction of classical Chinese material in senior high school is actually a very good thing. It creates an opportunity to discuss a key issue: should a curriculum focus more on serving a pragmatic purpose, such as shaping students' ability to write and express their views in a coherent, easy-to-understand, logical manner? Or should a curriculum be designed to spark students' interest in classical literature? The answer is the former, so under the circumstances the proposed curriculum change is a step in the right direction.
The value of any language study is first and foremost in helping people communicate and get their point across. It is only after people have a good command of the basics that they can do so in an elegant and artistic manner. A widespread problem today is the lack of basic language and writing skills to accomplish even the most elementary objectives. Those who teach in senior high schools and at universities recognize this as a serious problem.
One reason for the deficiency has been the way Chinese literature is taught in schools. Students memorize by rote ancient poems and essays written in classical literary Chinese, and then have to write compositions imitating an ancient literary style. As a result, few students in Taiwan can write a well-structured essay, with a consistent central idea running through it, with supporting facts and arguments and a conclusion. No amount of flowery phrases cited from ancient classical essays can help cover up these fundamental flaws in composition.
This would be unthinkable in Western countries. In the US, although reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is part of the high school English curriculum, students aren't required to memorize particular paragraphs, let alone imitate ancient language used in their own writing. There are good reasons for this. In real life, no one in their right mind writes like that anymore; doing so would simply kill interest and appreciation for the masterpiece.
Granted, mastering traditional Chinese writing is a very good thing. For those with a keen appreciation there is always the option of specializing in Chinese literature at university. But high school level training should be communication-oriented. In most professions, writing serves the practical purpose of conveying ideas and thoughts -- something more efficiently done by using modern-day language. For example, the legal profession in the US was once notorious for using language filled with complex legal jargon -- "legalese." After decades of reform, lawyers are now trained to write in plain English.
Unfortunately, almost nothing can escape politics in Taiwan, and the proposed change to high school curriculum is no exception. Opponents call it an attempt by education minister Tu Cheng-sheng (
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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