Duty and special citizens
On Dec. 2, the card-carrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) technocrats in the Ministry of Education announced revisions to the Special Education Staffing Standards. One of the revisions provides that each class shall have one teacher's aide for every 20 students.
Because of the low emphasis placed on education by the government, the unwillingness of the wealthy to pay reasonable taxes so that social welfare can be attuned to the very high level of economic development, and the traditional KMT denigration of Taiwanese cultures, languages and values, the institutional culture of the ministry has fostered a dull and inappropriate Confucian cultural emphasis on the would-be "scholar" as the center of social prestige.
Aborigines and other native Taiwanese have shown a great deal of entrepreneurial and cultural vivaciousness through their industriousness and resilience, which has stimulated most of Taiwan's economic development through a combination of thrift and "sweat equity." Memorizing the Analects in a spoken tongue quite foreign to the original text, unlike scoring well in physics and calculus, has had little to do with the Taiwan Miracle.
Education is wholly about the inculcation of human values and culture. Although the Constitution of the Republic of China is a nullity and irrelevant, the principles embodied in Articles 7 and 21, namely equality of all citizens under the law and the right to an appropriate education for each citizen, are universally recognized rights of all citizens and the duties of all civilized societies. Council of Grand Justices Constitutional Interpretation No. 485 holds that certain citizens are entitled to special treatment and social welfare expenditure above and beyond those available to all citizens, and that such expenditure is not only appropriate, but required by the Constitution.
One excellent deconstruction analysis of equality can be found in the teachings of my Rabbi, Manis Friedman, the dean of an all-girls high school. For more than 5,000 years, Jewish law and culture has provided that there must be at least one teacher for every 15 students, that schools must focus on improving character and inculcating civic values through peer-mediated learning known as the chavrusa method, and that certain children needing extra attention merit special resources, such as one-on-one teaching.
As Friedman explains, "We cannot demand anything on the grounds of equality, because equality remains to be seen. People are different, and necessarily so. Some are brighter, more talented and more beautiful than others. Some are better at some things and others are better at other things. And there is no morality in denying our differences. In fact, it is dangerous and immoral to predicate morality on the assumption that we are all equal, because that leaves open the possibility that, should you discover that I am in fact inferior to you, then it's all right for you to abuse me. What really is morality?
"To put it differently, if someone would say to me that I, as a Jew, am therefore inferior to him, my moral obligation would be to teach him that being inferior, he may not take advantage of me. I have no obligation to teach him or prove to him that I am not inferior. Rather, my moral obligation is to tell him, `Yes, you may be stronger than I am, this is your country, I'm just a stranger here, you've got the money, the power and the authority, but you may not take advantage of me.' That is morality. Because it does not allow for abuse or mistreatment in spite of inequality. What we need then, is not to pursue equality, but rather to pursue a universal value -- universal because it includes all people and applies to all humankind at all times.
"Under such a value, individual differences become irrelevant because each individual, all other considerations notwithstanding, is bound in equal measure by the value.
"Equality is the by-product, not the end. A society that strives to live under universal principles of morality will inevitably be one that respects the life of each individual."
Taiwan is fully capable of meeting the individual educational needs of every citizen through the provision of additional resources for disadvantaged students so that they may participate in society on an equal footing to those citizens not facing developmental and life challenges.
A Taiwan that refuses to put its money where its mouth is by refusing to respect the rights of the weak deserves no sympathy from the world community on political issues such as sovereignty, statehood or equality as a nation. A Taiwan that refuses to respect and invest in the equality of its weakest citizens cannot claim equality with other nations of the world as a full-fledged state.
If you want to know where a society's values lie, look at where the people put their money. If they invest in social welfare and meet the needs of the weakest members of society, then that is a nation whose values are right and proper. If instead they only invest in mass transit for the masses and have train stations like Sungshan, which is for all intents and purposes completely inaccessible to the disabled, then criticism stimulating more charitable and welfare spending is proper.
Taiwan deserves its seat at the table of nations but is equally bound to observe the common tenets of civilized life that unite the humane world. Investments in special citizens are a moral obligation for every society. Taiwan must not allow bitter and biased civil servants to shirk the social obligations of this great, moral and caring nation. The people deserve better from their bureaucrats, and the special citizens of Taiwan deserve better from their country than lip service to misguided notions of equality. We must answer the call of their individual voices and needs with respect and urgency as befits a people who would call themselves a state.
Paul Maas Risenhoover
Executive director,
WebHospital Foundation
US
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