Control Yuan members, in a recently published report, called for improvements in the care and education of Aboriginal children as they highlighted the inaccessibility and high cost of such services for Aborigines.
There is an urgent need to coordinate efforts among the Ministry of Education, the Council of Indigenous Peoples and local governments to address the difficulties that urban Aborigines face in enrolling their children into public child-care centers that provide affordable and attentive care and quality education, the report concluded.
Data provided by the Ministry of Education showed that most children between two and six years old in Aboriginal families living in urban areas are unable to enter public child-care centers, the report said.
As of March this year, only 23 percent of Aboriginal children in urban areas were enrolled in public child-care centers, while 38 percent were in private institutions, far less than the percentage of pre-school children taken care of by public child-care institutions in the UK and China, the report said.
In view of the increasing migration of Aboriginal families to urban areas that lack tribal networks, nursery education for Aborigines has become a critical issue, it said.
Control Yuan members Chou Yang-shan (周陽山) and Shen Mei-chen (沈美真), who initiated the probe into the issue, urged government agencies to follow the policy stipulated in Article 10 of the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples (原住民族教育法) to ensure Aboriginal children have access to education.
Government agencies are required by the act to provide Aboriginal children with public child-care services, to ensure that they take precedence when enrolling in public child-care centers and to offer tuition subsidies to Aboriginal families, they said.
The Control Yuan members also called for reforms to the education offered to Aboriginal children after they visited Bethel, a care center for Aboriginal children funded by the non-profit Zhi-Shan Foundation that is located in Wugu District (五股), New Taipei City (新北市), the main base of the nation’s urban Aborigines.
Established more than 10 years ago by Malayumu, a Rukai Aborigine from Pingtung County, Bethel takes care of about 100 Aboriginal children per day at no cost or a very low cost of NT$4,000 a month, one-sixth the price of a similar service provided by private institutions.
Bethel, open 24 hours a day, has not been able to get a license as a child-care center because of non-compliance with statutory licensing requirements. However, it respects Aboriginal traditions and customs and teaches several different mother tongues, the report said.
Citing a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in 1972 that gives the Amish people, who teach their children in one-room schools and do not usually educate their children past the eighth grade, as a rare exemption from the US’ compulsory education laws, the Control Yuan members urged the government to respect Aborigines’ cultural values in its education policy.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
RSS