Nearly 100 members of Academia Sinica have signed a petition against halving the required number of mathematics credits for senior-high school students as proposed in the draft 12-year national education program guidelines.
They said the reduced course load would weaken the nation’s competitiveness.
Four mathematicians who are also members of Academia Sinica held a press conference at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei yesterday to announce that the petition, which calls on the government to reconsider its plan.
Photo: CNA
The petition has been signed by 93 academicians, including renowned historian Yu Ying-shih (余英時) and former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲).
“Mathematics is widely recognized as a fundamental tool of science and technology” and a “math course is not only about attaining mathematical knowledge, but, more importantly, about training one in logical thinking and deductive ability,” the petition says.
Under the draft guidelines, the number of required math credits would be cut from 24 to 12 hours.
Math courses will only be required up to the first semester of grade 11 and become electives afterward, but “no country only requires senior-high school students to take math courses until the 11th grade,” NTU math professor Lin Chang-shou (林長壽) said.
“Allowing students to have one-and-a-half years where they do not have to take a math course could be seen as the state giving up on them,” he said.
While students from better-off families might be able reinforce their math education, students from disadvantaged families will be deprived of adequate education that could help them enter better universities, Lin said.
Yau Shing-tung (丘成桐), a former Harvard University professor and a Fields Medal winner, said the plan would damage the cultivation of Taiwan’s talented youngsters, because mathematics is the basis for excelling in science, engineering and other disciplines.
Yau showed journalists a letter from a Harvard professor about Taiwan’s plan to reduce the math course requirement, which reads: “that is shocking. In the US, high-tech companies are complaining that math education is too weak … have they considered what downgrading the role of math in high schools will do to Taiwan’s economic health?”
“Mathematic ability usually takes a long time to build up, so it is harder to reinforce the students’ ability after they enter college,” Harvard professor Yau Horng-tzer (姚鴻澤) said.
“But as more aspects of life are being digitalized, mathematic ability is becoming ever more important in various fields, including finance, biostatistics and big data,” Yau said.
National education should at least provide students with the basic ability to understand mathematics, and good mathematic skills also create high value-added industry for the nation, because the global trend is toward more dependence on digitalized technology, Yau said.
The petition’s supporters believe senior-high students should have at least four required credits of math each semester, two sets of math education programs designed for senior-high students of different learning orientations, and at least one math class per day for elementary and junior-high students, Lin said.
A mechanism to enhance the training of mathematics teachers to ensure teaching quality is also key, Lin said.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary