Taiwan Church News

3302 Edition

June 8 - 14, 2015

Headline News

Pro Learning Right, Against Black Box Curriculum Guidelines

Reported by Lin Yi-ying

On June 7, at Taipei, over one hundred high school students attended a seminar, organized by Taiwan Association of University Professors(TAUP) and entitled as "Against Black-Box Curriculum Guidelines, Guard Against Student's Learning Right". In this seminar, TAUP urged the Ministry of Education should not force through the black-box curriculum guidelines, which had been already sentenced as breaching the due process of law by Taipei High Administrative Court. TAUP also pleaded to halt this black-box curriculum guidelines before August.

All these furor, initially raising from academics, teachers of citizen course, spilling over to high school students recently. It was initiated by the so-called "minor adjustment of curricula guidelines to high school social studies". Based on the opaque decisions submitted by the curriculum adjustment task force, the Ministry of Education published in February 2014 a glaring 60% of modification on Taiwan history textbook, in which a "China-centered" narrative and history perspective was sneakingly inserted in the name of being compliant to the constitution or laws.

According to Taiwan Solidarity Union(TSU), the reason why the Ministry of Education did not dare to publish the name-list of board members of the "Committee of History Textbook Curriculum in the 12 Years' National Education" was that three board members were pro-unification scholars: Sun Lo-yi, Vice Principal of TOKO University; Lin Der-cheng, Associate Professor of History Dept. of National Cheng Kung University; Wu Quen-tsai, Professor of Applied History Dept. of National Chiayi University.

All these scholars, who were also the editorial members and contributors of the pro-unification magazine - Strait Commentatory - had a close relationship with Professor Wang Hsiao-po, the convener of the Committee of Curriculum Review, who was the founder of the pro-unification organization "Cross-Strait Peace & Development Union". Therefore, TSU warned that the event of curriculum guidelines was just the Trojan horse, the real danger of this KMT education policy - an unification dream with China - is real stuff that Taiwanese has to worry!

Lawyer Twu yu-yee, the Executive Director of Taiwan Association for Human Rights, pointed out that KMT's hasty policy to proceed the curriculum guidelines was in fact a 911 terror attack toward Taiwan education. The fact of an opaque committee, together with the refusal to disclose any meeting minutes of curriculum adjustment, indicated a bully mindset of Ma Ying-jeou administration to force Taiwan society accepting his pro-unification dream.

Twu criticized the publication of the curriculum guidelines by the Ministry of Education had breached Central Regulation Standard Act, Administrative Procedure Act, Law Governing Legislative Yuan's Power and the amendments of the Constitution, because such announcement of education guidelines was critical for the interests of the people and should be subject to legal review.

Further, Twu also charged that not only such curriculum adjustment went against due process, but also infringed the learning right of the student, the teaching and interpreting right of the teacher and the publishing freedom of the textbook sellers.

Chen Jhing-jin, Associate Professor of History Dept. of Tunghai University, talked in straight that the adjused curriculum of the courses of Chinese Language and History was in fact a "pro-China" curriculum, evidenced by a particular emphasis of the relationship between China and Taiwan and inserting a big China ideology. And this is bluntly raping the education as an object to flatter political powers. Chen said, a better solution would be to suspend this contentious curriculum guidelines and substitute the previous "101 guidelines" instead.

On the cyber space of internet, a petition to stop this so-called micro adjustment of curriculum guidelines has collected 5,400 signatures at least, including professors and experts in Taiwan history and related field(177 persons), professor in other fields and in Academia Sinica(235 persons), teachers from junior to high school(347 persons), graduate students(620 persons), college and high school students(1985 persons), citizens(1978 persons) and the people in petition is still increasing. In addition, over 200 high schools had publicly stood up to express their protest against such black-box curriculum guidelines.

Translated by Peter Wolfe