Alleging that the Ministry of Education’s recent high-school curriculum revisions go against academic professionalism while also limiting students’ ability to think outside the box, a coalition of 16 groups said it is mulling further demonstrations to protest against the central government’s so-called “minor adjustments.”
The group issued the call after the ministry’s approval last month of the revised curriculum guidelines on Chinese literature and social sciences, which are scheduled to be implemented at the start of the new school year in September next year. Among the changes are calling Japan’s 50-year rule of Taiwan the “Japanese colonial period” and referring to “China” as “Mainland China” in textbooks.
The “minor adjustments” were actually major changes that will result in prohibitions and regulations everywhere, according to the coalition, which included the National Federation of Teachers Union, the Civic and Law-related Education Foundation, the Union of Taiwanese Teachers and the Civic Educator’s Alliance.
The group said the curriculum guidelines concerning the Taiwanese history portion underwent sweeping changes, affecting more than 36.4 percent of it. The subject’s fourth chapter was 56 percent longer, and much of the content was either erroneous or biased because amateurs spearheaded the changes, rather than experts.
The Martial Law era under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime was “prettied up” as the main driver of Taiwan’s democracy, and the White Terror was linked to post-war anti-communist policies, the coalition said.
“The changes were made with no regards to the controversial nature of the cases over the course of four decades of the Martial Law era,” the coalition said, describing it as an effort to establish credibility for an autocratic regime that stifled dissent under the guise of fighting communism.
As for the curriculum guidelines on civic education, the coalition said the revisions removed the necessary space to debate issues of national identity, national power, tyranny of the majority and the White Terror by enforcing the values of traditional “Zhonghua culture” (中華文化).
The coalition added that the revisions completely disregard the emphasis on being accepting to multiculturalism in the fourth Constitutional amendment in 1997, and creates the problem of overlapping courses and the uneven distribution of course weighting.
The increase of three classes of classical Chinese literature in Mandarin Chinese courses was another attempt to exert Zhonghua influence over students, the group added.
It is an underhanded way of increasing the proportion of ancient Chinese taught to students and the revision prevents Taiwanese high-school students from reading works written in the modern style, it said.
National Federation of Teachers Union vice president Wu Chung-tai (吳忠泰) said education was a serious matter as it shaped the next generations.
“The Ministry of Education is misusing its authority to change class curricula, not to mention the allegedly illegal procedures and questionable content changes,” Wu said, adding that the coalition was in the midst of planning protests against the changes.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) said the high-school curricula were — by law — legally binding orders [from the ministry to the schools] and should not be considered “internal rules” that could be decided by the ministry alone.
The Legislative Yuan would seek to abolish the legislation on which the ministry based its powers to change curricula, Cheng said, adding that the legislature would also push for education that did not “brainwash” the students.
The ministry, in its latest response, reiterated its emphasis that all changes have proceeded in accordance with regulations and that changes made put the materials closer to historical fact, adding that questions raised were “mistaken conceptions” of the changes.
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
President William Lai (賴清德) has appointed former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) to attend the late Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican City on Saturday on his behalf, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today. The Holy See announced Francis’ funeral would take place on Saturday at 10am in St Peter’s Square. The ministry expressed condolences over Francis’ passing and said that Chen would represent Taiwan at the funeral and offer condolences in person. Taiwan and the Vatican have a long-standing and close diplomatic relationship, the ministry said. Both sides agreed to have Chen represent Taiwan at the funeral, given his Catholic identity and
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday established a friendship group with their counterparts in Ukraine to promote parliamentary exchanges between the two countries. A ceremony in Taipei for the Taiwan-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Association, initiated by DPP Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), was attended by lawmakers and officials, including Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) and European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan Director Lutz Gullner. The increasingly dire situation in Ukraine is a global concern, and Taiwan cannot turn its back when the latter is in need of help, as the two countries share many common values and interests,