Academia Sinica researchers underlined students’ ability to resist political manipulation and think independently amid allegations that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is behind the recent high-school student-led protests against the Ministry of Education’s controversial adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines.
The allegation was brought up again on Friday by Shih Hsin University professor and convener of the ministry’s curriculum adjustment task force Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), one day after the death of student activist Dai Lin (林冠華), who allegedly committed suicide on Thursday to protest against the ministry’s adjustments.
Academia Sinica researcher Chang Mao-kuei (張茂桂) said that information is becoming more accessible to students today, which helps to raise a high political awareness among young people.
“It is gratuitous to assume that students are politically naive or purely innocent. Young people are more mature than the public imagines, while they are indeed inexperienced in handling sensitive political issues, which nevertheless makes them bolder than adults and more prone to clashing with the establishment,” he said.
He said that student activists are often hamstrung by their parents and teachers, who tend to snuff out student activism under the pretext that students should not do anything that is out of their duty, which Chang said is an attempt to belittle students’ intelligence and to turn a collective campaign into a single, irregular case.
“Young people have to bear the consequences of what adults are incapable of settling and are forced into conflict with the system. It is a typical example of generational injustice,” Chang said.
Academia Sinica researcher Liang Kuo-kan (梁國淦) said the news of Lin’s death gripped him especially, as he was giving a speech on how participating in social movements can affect a person’s physical and metal health at a forum organized by students at National Taichung First Senior High School the day prior to Lin’s death.
“Student activists might feel alienated from their family, peers and teachers, whose support for student movements does not come easily,” Liang said, adding that he should have been talking with student activists on the streets earlier to ease their tension.
Liang echoed Chang’s words, saying that young people nowadays cannot be easily manipulated and they do not take protests to the streets unless they feel a real need to do so.
“It is a thought-provoking issue for the public to envision how high-school students, who have no right to vote, could express their anger and dissatisfaction,” he said.
Chang said the ministry is acting against the spirit of education by threatening to press charges against students who were arrested for entering the ministry’s Taipei headquarters on July 23 in protest of the curriculum adjustments, and also by using education to consolidate the authority’s governance.
“The ministry is treating student activists as delinquents by promising to withdraw charges against those who ‘show remorse’ for breaking into the ministry headquarters,” Chang said.
“Education does not serve political ends, nor could cramming students with what curriculum dictates solve sensitive political problems,” he said.
“Education should help students acquire knowledge and develop the ability to deal with politics instead,” Chang said, while calling on the ministry to revoke the curriculum adjustments and return education to its true nature.
‘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
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
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