Weekly classes in one of Taiwan’s bentu (本土, “local” or “native”) languages or Taiwan Sign Language would from 2022 be mandatory for first and second-year junior-high school students, and optional for third-year students, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Saturday.
The announcement came at a meeting of the ministry’s curriculum review committee hosted by the Taipei branch of the National Academy for Educational Research.
Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), the convener of the committee, presided over the meeting.
The curriculum changes passed include that seventh and eighth-grade students would from 2022 have one mandatory weekly session of Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka, an Aboriginal language or Taiwan Sign Language
For ninth-grade students, these subjects would be optional, it said, adding that schools would conduct surveys to find out whether their students are interested.
To protect the rights and interests of Aboriginal students, schools would offer at least one session of an Aboriginal language per week to ninth-graders, the ministry said.
For high-school students, at least two credits in one of the languages would be mandatory, it said.
In addition, as part of their own curriculum, high schools could offer elective credits in the languages, the ministry said.
The changes were made to comply with the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), which went into effect on Jan. 9, 2019, stipulating requirements for mandatory classes in Taiwan’s “national languages … at all stages of compulsory education.”
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