Native languages enhance humanity

Starting the 2001 academic year elementary school students in the first to fourth grades will have to take two hours of classes a week on their mother tongue. Even though this justice is late in coming and the policy is imperfect, since the classes will be required for only four years, I am pleased to see that our educational system is beginning to touch upon the very essence of education and the natural human need to have pride in one's native language and the basics of one's culture.

One's language best represents the family's ethics and sentiments, as well as mutual trust and care. It also acts as a person's spiritual parents and best represents the history and culture of a people. It is a priceless cultural treasure surpassing any political and economic benefits.

Based this, the Hoklo and Hakka languages and the various Aboriginal languages should not be regarded solely as regional dialects. They should also be respected as common languages of Taiwan.

First education should not be distorted and downplayed simply to satisfy one's native feelings. It should be a natural expression of humanity.

Many people in Taiwan are taught to despise their mother languages, because these languages are seriously denigrated in their schools. However, outside the campuses, these languages are used widely in local communities. As a consequence, younger generations are taught to be disdainful toward their mother languages and their own communities.

Parents feel dejected when their children cannot communicate with family members in their mother tongue. Several years ago, I heard a story that some elders of the Ami tribe (阿美族) had been reduced to tears listening to the younger generation giving lectures in broken Ami at a public speech competition.

The destruction of valuable cultural traits because of the failure of language education happens everywhere in our country. I don't know when this sort of absurd educational system -- which is totally against human needs -- will stop? Or where will it lead?

When taking mass transportation lately, what warms my heart is hearing announcements broadcast in different native languages -- in trains, airplanes or on Taipei's Mass Rapid Transit system. The feeling of belonging and respect are indescribable.

It goes beyond discussions about practical value or language as a tool of communication. In the train station or at the airport, announcements in one's mother tongues warms a traveler's heart. It is like the care and love received from one's parents or relatives.

What would love to see in the future is teachers and students discussing schoolwork in their native languages on campus, in offices or in laboratories.

I look forward to the day when most people will be fluent in more than three languages spoken in Taiwan and I will be able to teach my course -- Microwave Engineering -- in Hakka, my mother tongue.

We expect first language classes to become compulsory not only in elementary and high schools, but for other courses such as social science and mathematics to be taught in mother languages as well, just like in other countries. (Some technical problems can be anticipated, but humanistic education is by no means a simple affair.)

At that point, schools and communities will be perfectly combined; all the mother languages and cultures will be well mixed. Then Taiwan will be really entitled to the name as "Formosa" -- a beautiful island.

Vong Juin-taht is a professor and chairman of the electronic engineering department at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.