Through board games, drama, debates and field trips, teachers who yesterday won a human rights curriculum design award want more elementary and high school students to get a firsthand idea of the abstract concept of human rights.
“I was shocked when I first walked into this place, and I think my students will feel the same, too,” said Tsai Ming-huang (蔡銘晃), a civic education teacher at Taipei Municipal Fuxing Senior High School, as he described how he felt when he first visited the well-preserved site where late human rights activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) set himself aflame in 1989 to protest the lack of freedom of speech under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime at the time.
The award ceremony was held there yesterday.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Tsai worked with his colleague Kuo Wen-ying (郭文瑛) to design one curriculum about the site and another on the 228 Memorial Museum — both of the designs won recognition.
“A major problem that we often run into when we teach students about human rights is that it’s a very abstract idea,” Tsai said. “But here, everything is so well preserved that as you walk into this place, you feel you’ve traveled through a time warp and can actually feel the atmosphere.”
While Tsai and Kuo’s curriculum focused mostly on visiting sites where actual historic events took place, four teachers from Anshun Primary School in Tainan worked together to incorporate field trips, drama, debate and even a board game modeled after Monopoly into the curriculum they designed.
“We realized in class that kids today know 228 Day more as a holiday and don’t often have a good idea about what the 228 Incident was,” said Tseng Kui-feng (曾桂鳳), one of the teachers. “So we decided that maybe we should take the kids to places where things actually happened and tell them the stories.”
However, as Tseng and her team started to work, different ideas popped up.
Tseng’s colleague, Chen Ping (陳稟), who had taken part in drama training, wrote a short play featuring fighting between different animals in a park to show the boundary between freedom and abuse of freedom.
Huang Mei-hua (黃美華), another teacher on Tseng’s team, created a board game in which players would be asked a question related to human rights each time they moved to a new block.
To show how the human rights issue was not something “far away,” Tseng asked students to debate on whether parents should be allowed to read their children’s letters without permission.
Tsao Chin-jung (曹欽榮), a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Association, said that it was important to teach about human rights to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past.
“It’s been only 20 years since Deng set himself on fire — is it a long time? No, it’s not, but it’s long enough for our younger generation born after martial law was lifted to not know about it,” he said. “That explains why we need to start [teaching about human rights] now.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
RSS