Ten years ago, curriculum standards for elementary and high schools were redrafted and expanded into nine-year guidelines for compulsory education. Under pressure from people active in promoting indigenous culture, the Ministry of Education was compelled to include Hoklo, Hakka and Aboriginal languages alongside Mandarin under the category of national languages.
One day I went to observe meetings of the drafting committee.
To my consternation, I saw that that the three conveners who were native speakers of the non-Mandarin languages were absent.
After further enquiries, I found out that these committee members thought the meetings were a waste of time.
Their reasoning was that Taiwanese mother tongues had been defined as “optional” subjects within the national language category and therefore few would choose to study them.
In response, the Taiwan Southern Society mobilized 12 legislators and 25 academics for a meeting with then minister of education Kirby Yang (楊朝祥), asking for two hours of compulsory native language classes per week to be included in the curriculum for grades one to nine.
Finally, thanks mostly to the efforts of five members of our team, including professor Yang Wei-zhe (楊維哲) and pastor John Tin (鄭兒玉), the native language group chaired by convener Chen Po-chang (陳伯璋) passed a motion requiring one hour of mandatory native language classes to be included in the curriculum for grades one to nine.
But when the proposals were sent to the general program drafting group for discussion, we were surprised to see that our decision had not been placed on the agenda.
I asked the executive secretary of the group what had happened, and the reply was that “politics is politics and education is education.”
It seems that in the minds of bureaucrats, learning languages other than Mandarin in the school system is a matter of political privilege, not a right.
After much wrangling, one hour of native language classes per week was included in the final version of curriculum outlines, mandatory for elementary schools but optional for high schools.
As it turned out, very few high school students chose to take these classes, so they ended up as an extra-curricular social activity — or were dropped altogether.
At this point, Chen stepped in again. Now director of the Preparatory Office for the National Academy for Educational Research, Chen said that education policy on languages was determined by power plays rather than specialist knowledge.
He also said that determining whether a language course would be optional or compulsory was based not on educational considerations but politics.
Chen’s observations back up rumors circulating about how Ministry of Education committees treat native language courses in elementary school, namely that provisions for native language acquisition shall be “flexible” and that students must choose between studying a native language or English. Inevitably, therefore, everyone would choose English.
The outcome of all this would be precisely what Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) once suggested when answering legislators’ questions: that children are perfectly capable of learning their mother tongue at home.
The survival of native language teaching in elementary school is now in question, and there is talk that a final decision will be made on the issue within weeks.
If Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and all others who express concern about the development of Taiwanese culture do not realize that this is the time to stand up and protest, then they had better think about what they are really worth as Taiwanese.
Cheng Cheng-yu is president of the Taiwan Southern Society.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations