In both the nine-year curriculum guidelines and the 12-year national curriculum, the decisionmakers have been trying to diminish the study burden for students. To that end, they have combined subjects into fields and reduced the number of hours taught in each field. They have done so in the belief that reducing the burden in this way would allow schools to provide their own curricula with diversified content and unique activities.
Taking this approach seemed to be a good way to reform the curriculum and it seemed to be good for students. However, the reality is that art, society, the humanities and other fields are being taught as individual subjects. In addition, the excessive number of teachers means that many have to teach subjects outside their field of expertise.
Furthermore, the scope of each field has not decreased in step with the number of hours taught, so teachers are often hard-pressed to keep up with the curriculum, average and weak students fall behind, and students that require a slower pace of instruction instead require remedial instruction. This means that most students receive extra-curricular instruction — in the case of junior-high students, often at weekends and national holidays.
The reasons that local language classes have been made an elective on weekday evenings are probably the same as those listed in the previous paragraph. An additional reason is that it is often said that local languages are better taught in the home environment, as this results in a more natural approach. For students that are interested in learning a local language, the curriculum offers the option of choosing it as an elective — an option that is also a response to strong demands by some organizations.
Making decisions on a curriculum is no easy task and doing so requires a lot of caution. Nevertheless, the reasons listed here are worthy of further discussion and that could in turn help solve existing problems.
The 12-year national curriculum offers an opportunity to review the appropriateness of subject content and the number of hours taught.
Furthermore, decisionmakers’ vision and open-mindedness will make them understand that the impact of globalization means that the psychological boundaries between countries are becoming increasingly blurred.
This is also why the US and European countries — northern European countries in particular — are making use of their national history, culture and language, to teach their students to understand and appreciate the beauty of local cultures and literature, and to foster both a national identity and civic awareness.
The transmission of language and culture, together with innovation, are the most fundamental goals of education. Taiwan not only has to face international competition, it also has to deal with the issue of cross-strait relations.
The greater the local focus, the greater the ability to move toward becoming more a part of the international community — local characteristics are precisely what other countries want to learn about.
Yen Ching-hsiang is director of the Pingtung County Government Bureau of Education.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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