Opposition lawmakers, academics and others are up in arms about the Ministry of Education’s proposal to give high school students more class time on Chinese history.
Perhaps they remember George Orwell’s warning in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
The ministry’s task force has proposed that high schoolers — over the course of their first two years of school — have one semester of Taiwanese history and one-and-a-half semesters each of Chinese history and world history. The extra half-a-semester for Chinese history would be taken from the two semesters of world history now required.
The idea, officials have said, was to give students a better “understanding of their own cultural roots.”
Amid the complaints that the proposed changes were a step toward the resinification of the curriculum was criticism that the curriculum was just overhauled five years ago. While much of the debate over the revisions, then and now, has been bogged down by the political divide that colors so much of everyday life in Taiwan, it is important to remember that the changes five years ago were an attempt to inject some reality into history textbooks — as opposed to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mythology — as well as give students a Taiwan-centric viewpoint.
As historian and then-minister of education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said, the curriculum was to “have its base in Taiwan, concern China and have a foot in the international arena.”
Those revisions eliminated the fairytale stories of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) and Sun Yat-sen’s (孫中山) childhoods that had more in common with George Washington’s chopping down the cherry tree than real life, provided a realistic map and historical timeline of the Republic of China and its rule over Taiwan and included information about major events such as the 228 Incident.
Problems with the dichotomy that exists between history textbooks and fact are nothing new, nor are they unique to Taiwan. The textbooks used in today’s US high schools are far different than those used in the 1960s, for example, in their treatment of Native American history and racial inequality. And think of the uproar over Japan’s repeated whitewashing of its World War II-era history.
However, the debate in Taiwan over what should be taught in history and civics classes should not be confined to the Taiwan-China divide. Losing half a semester from world history is something students cannot afford, judging from some of the public relations disasters in recent years that have highlighted an appalling ignorance of world history.
Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich have been the greatest beneficiaries of this glossing over of world history, given the regularity with which the fuehrer has popped up in ads in recent years. In 1999, the local trading company promoting German-made DBK space heaters thought a cartoon Hitler would be a good advertising icon, while just two years later the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) raised eyebrows by choosing to feature Hitler, former Cuban president Fidel Castro, former US president John Kennedy and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in what was supposed to be a quirky, humorous TV campaign ad as examples of bold and courageous leaders. And who can — or should — forget The Jail, the Taipei restaurant whose cell-like booths were decorated with pictures from Alcatraz and other US prisons as well as Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz.
The losers in this cyclical power-struggle over history, however, are the students, who end up knowing too little about too many things. The only winners are the textbook publishers who get the contracts to produce the new materials.
For as Dutch historian Pieter Geyl said: “History is an argument without end.”
It is employment pass renewal season in Singapore, and the new regime is dominating the conversation at after-work cocktails on Fridays. From September, overseas employees on a work visa would need to fulfill the city-state’s new points-based system, and earn a minimum salary threshold to stay in their jobs. While this mirrors what happens in other countries, it risks turning foreign companies away, and could tarnish the nation’s image as a global business hub. The program was announced in 2022 in a bid to promote fair hiring practices. Points are awarded for how a candidate’s salary compares with local peers, along
China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence. The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to