A handful of leftist and radical pro-unification types have been directing the Ministry of Education’s plan to revise the national high-school curriculum, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) made the remarks amid the ongoing controversy sparked by the ministry’s plan to revise the nation’s high-school curriculum.
The revisions are scheduled to be implemented in September next year — the beginning of that academic year — when one of the major changes is to be the addition of the word “mainland” in references to China in Chinese language and history textbooks. Also, the 50-year period of Japanese rule in Taiwan is to be referred to as the “Japanese colonial period,” according to the revised curriculum.
Opposition spokespeople have lambasted the so-called revisions as a “de-Taiwanification” of the curriculum.
Huang told a press conference held at the party headquarters in Taipei that revisions to national high-school textbooks should be done within the ministry’s system through normal procedures.
However, the proposed revised history curriculum guidelines, which the central government called “minor adjustments,” were decided by a 10-person task force formed outside the ministry, and includes academics who are considered radical leftists who favor rapid unification with China, he added.
Huang said the head of the task force, Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), a professor at Shih Hsin University, is vice chairman of the Chinese Unification Union, and that another task force member, Hsieh Ta-ning (謝大寧), a professor at Fo Guang University, has previously argued that Taiwanese and Chinese students should use the same textbooks.
Another task force member, Pan Chao-yang (潘朝陽), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, previously made a comment saying that people of Taiwan who advocate Taiwanese alliances with the US and Japan to counter China ought to be considered “traitors to Han Chinese (漢奸),” Huang said.
Huang panned the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for trying to control students’ thought and monopolizing interpretation of Taiwanese history.
He asked the ministry to suspend the plan and have it subjected to customary procedures.
The ministry should suspend the planned revision, Huang said, adding that the ministry should also hold a number of discussions to hear opinions from high-school teachers and the public.
Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒), a professor at National Dong Hwa University, who was also present at the press conference, said that the ministry announced the proposed revision after the legislative session went into recess, saying it was trying to dodge the legislative body’s scrutiny.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
RSS