Even though student activist Dai Lin (林冠華) apparently committed suicide in protest against controversial changes to the high-school curriculum guidelines, the Ministry of Education insisted on implementing the changes according to schedule on Saturday. Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa’s (吳思華) uncompromising stance further riled the students, who returned to the ministry. It was all back to where it started: in a deadlock.
The controversy over the curriculum changes derives from politicians — regardless of political affiliation — seeing textbooks as a tool with which to mold the next generation. Both old and new curriculums represent an ideological view of the ruling and opposition parties respectively. If they fail to control this brainwashing device, which students have to accept and memorize unconditionally, the next generation is likely to go the way of their political rivals. This is why politicians are being so tenacious.
Despite the intense criticism the ministry has come under, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) continues to support Wu and is not willing to make any compromises over the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) bottom line. He has absolutely no intention of suspending the introduction of the changes.
The tensions reflect a controversial political reality. The pan-blue camp, whether it be the KMT or the New Party, consists predominantly of people who came to Taiwan from China, and this informs how they view Taiwan. However, it is a seriously flawed perspective with little basis in reality, because China is now ruled by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and not the Republic of China (ROC).
To say, for example, that Nanjing is the capital of China, or that the ROC’s territory still includes Mongolia, is completely at odds with how the rest of the world views the situation. If these untruths are written into school textbooks and students are asked to accept them, it will not be long before they lose faith in what they are being taught.
Taiwan is a de facto sovereign, independent nation, but this is not written in textbooks due to the threat of armed conflict with China. Taiwanese are in charge of their country, but even after several presidential elections, they still have to assume the pretense of it being the ROC.
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the KMT’s Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) both contend Taiwan should maintain the “status quo.” Taiwanese know that what each of them means differs drastically, just as the cross-strait formula of “one China, different interpretations” entails two completely divergent interpretations.
Politicians like to play around with facts. They think that by printing morsels of information in school textbooks, kids are likely to just absorb their China-centric fantasies, and that the next generation would passively take on the ideas those in power want them to believe. Unfortunately for the politicians, children are smarter than what they give them credit for: They can find out the truth on the Internet and see the lies for what they are.
The responsibility for finding a solution to this mess lies with those who started it. Now the legislature wants to weigh in. The first thing it needs to do is divest itself of party and factional biases and abandon any ideas of brainwashing students. High-school students might still be impressionable, but they do have the capacity for independent thought. Adults should trust them and shelve the disputed curriculum changes. They should deal with the high-school students in a mature and reasonable manner. The specific challenges that the country faces should be explained clearly, and if any contested facts are mentioned, they should be presented in a fair and reasoned way. If this can happen, high-school students can start to think about the current predicament of their country, the people living in it and the future.
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