Is the nation’s highest point Jade Mountain or Mount Everest? This just so happens to be a question prompted by the proposed senior-high school curriculum guidelines President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is trying to enforce upon the nation. The answer, in case you were wondering, is Mount Everest. If you had answered Jade Mountain, you would have been wrong, you would have been deducted points and your hopes of going to college would be diminished.
If people still find it a mystery what so many high-school teachers and students are getting their underwear in a twist over, this question should clear up their doubts in the most direct fashion. Indeed, it perfectly illustrates the problem at the heart of Ma’s curriculum guidelines. Guidelines like these have created problems that far surpass the limited definition of ideological brainwashing or attempts at distorting history; they are a study in the complete denial of the facts — replaced by new ones made up by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration — which is set to be imposed on schools in August. In other words, Ma and his cronies insist that actual facts are irrelevant, and that new facts are true simply because the president says they are.
This is what is meant by the so-called “creative education” championed by Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華). In science, students can of course be encouraged to cultivate the ability to deal with problems, to solve them and to create something that did not previously exist. However, in the social sciences, hardly anything positive can come about as a result of simply making stuff up. Ma and his cronies have tried, God knows. They have said that controversial questions will not be included in future exams, and that both the new and old curriculum guidelines will be applicable.
Former minister of education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧), who was previously in charge of developing the new curriculum guidelines, was removed from his post because of his involvement in a scandal in which a scheme was used by certain academics to create false accounts to subvert the peer review process in academic papers — again, making stuff up. Is this acceptable in the academic world?
Ma’s presidency is reaching its end. It will finish in May next year. Why do not he and his cronies just throw in the towel?
First, it is a generational thing. Ma was born in 1950, Chiang was born in 1957 and Wu 1955. All three men grew up in almost identical backgrounds. They were educated during the period in which Taiwan was still under martial law, the textbooks that they studied were written by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) administration, and their parents and grandparents had just fled to Taiwan from China. Cultivated by education that was dictated by the KMT and influenced by their family education, they absorbed the ideology of a group of Chinese nationalists in exile. After they entered the job market, if they experienced inadequate socialization and enlightenment, they could easily end up living in an illusory world where things can appear out of thin air. To them, the border between reality and fantasy is obscure.
Meanwhile, the current crop of senior-high school students were born in about 1995, when former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was in office, Taiwan was having direct presidential elections and politics had officially embarked upon the path to democratization. As children, they witnessed the first transition of political power in Taiwan. When they were in the sixth grade, former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) second term had just ended, and Ma was sworn in. Their journey to adulthood is linked with the international world, loaded with information and their mindset is open for debate and different opinions.
This generation is not accustomed to the autocratic education system dictated by the previous generations of the KMT. They acquire their knowledge of facts and develop their value systems based on what they see and experience in real life. That is why generations born in the 1990s accuse adults born in the 1940s or 1950s and responsible for their education of making stuff up, and also why they feel so infuriated by curriculum guidelines that would require schools to teach that the nation’s highest peak is in the Himalayas.
Second, it is a matter of how the government goes about its decisionmaking. Society consists of members from different generations.
This should not, in itself, present a problem. If those in power want to make policies for everyone to adhere to, a consultation process that is both democratic and transparent should be conducted, whereby a consensus can be reached. This is the fundamental principle of public governance.
However, the irrational adjustments of the curriculum guidelines exemplify how the Ma administration has set about the decisionmaking process over the past years. They did not follow the transparency principle of public policymaking, but the doctrine of gangsters — deals made in secrecy and brutally implemented.
This tendency owes much to the KMT’s historical affiliation with gangsters. Even to this day, the KMT has not disposed of this model. The wicked members of the party have indulged themselves in the exaltation of high-handedness. Sound familiar? From a generational perspective, the administration has become just like the ancient Chinese in their reluctance to adapt to the times.
From a decisionmaking perspective, the KMT regards the government as an organized gang and the ministers as gangsters. As a result, the absurdity that Taiwanese have to go abroad to visit their nation’s highest point is about to be on display in school textbooks. How can a farce like this be allowed to continue
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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