After hundreds of high-school students stormed the Ministry of Education to protest adjustments to the high-school curriculum guidelines for the second time within a week, many people began questioning whether such a strong reaction was warranted, arguing that the adjustments might not have a significant impact. However, the adjustments could have a profoundly significant impact.
Many people have said that the high-school students should not react to the ministry’s adjustments because what they learn from textbooks is not that important, and most students do not even remember the content of their high-school textbooks after they graduate.
While some people might not remember the content of their high-school textbooks, the ideology that is hidden behind the curriculum can get under your skin and become a part of what you think.
For instance, most people in Taiwan believe that economic development and the construction of infrastructure are very important; so important that ecology, the environment and the agricultural sector may be sacrificed. The reason behind this belief is education.
Everyone who goes to school in Taiwan is educated under a curriculum that emphasizes the importance of economic development, of how important it is to be hard-working and how critical the Ten Major Construction Projects during the 1970s were. However, they are never taught how many people sacrificed their lives, health, family, as well as the environment, labor rights and food self-sufficiency, to build Taiwan into the nation it is today.
The textbooks never teach people how rapid economic development created pollution, food crises, dysfunctional families and huge gaps between urban and rural areas, or how it destroyed historic sites, twisted urban development and exploited laborers.
Many years later, people might not remember what the Ten Major Construction Projects were, but they would remember the positive descriptions about how the projects contributed to economic development, and therefore, when they learn that the government is launching a construction project that promises to create more employment opportunities and spark economic development, their default reaction is to support it without even having to think.
On the other hand, there are countries where people value historic heritage, labor rights, the environment and disadvantaged groups over economic development. The reason behind the difference in mindsets is likely the education that they received at school.
The ministry’s changes to the history curriculum guidelines, to shift the Taiwan-centric curriculum guidelines to China-centric ones, is the same thing — people who are educated under a China-centric curriculum may not remember all the details about what they learn at school, but the China-centric ideology will be implanted in their minds.
Of course some people would say that they still have a clear mind even after being educated under a China-centric curriculum, but not everyone is capable of thinking independently — otherwise, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would not be in power and would not have occupied the majority of seats in the legislature for such a long time after the Martial Law period ended.
Certainly there are many improvements that could be made in the movement against the changes to the curriculum guidelines; however, if experienced social activists can make mistakes, it is unnecessary to blame the high-school students for the defects in their actions. Instead, what society should ponder are the values and meanings that the movement stands for.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past