The first sets of Chinese, history, geography and civics high-school textbooks since changes to high-school curriculum guidelines were introduced on Aug. 1 are on their way to schools nationwide.
However, the changes are still being met with resistance from student protesters, high-school history and civics teachers, historians and an alliance of academics and social activist groups.
Now that schools have been given permission to use a range of textbooks to teach the curriculum — instead of exclusively using only the newly published texts — each new introduction of revisions to the curriculum is met with protests and criticism. However, the protests that have accompanied the most recent changes are quite unprecedented in terms of both scale and sheer tenacity.
This time, the protests are only getting more intense as time passes. They have also received extensive media coverage, both in Taiwan and internationally. Some of these reports are actually attempting to present both sides of the controversy and trying to enter into some kind of debate about the issue, but there are also those coming at it from a specific angle, reflecting political partisan agendas or pan-blue and pan-green affiliation.
However, is it really the case that the core of the controversy resides in the debate over the veracity of a small number of historical facts? With the new school year about to begin, is it possible that there is still no turning back on this issue?
First, it is worth noting that throughout the history of Taiwan — from the Martial Law period to the reforms that transformed the nation into a free, democratic society — there has never been an occasion when such huge questions have hung over the introduction of changes to the high-school history curriculum.
The main reason for this, in addition to the controversial nature of some of the changes, is that none of the members of the curriculum adjustment committee are history professors or Academia Sinica researchers. This is something that has never been seen before in the field of history, and is indeed quite unprecedented in any academic field.
Within a few days of a petition against the curriculum changes starting, it had been signed by more than 140 history academics, including a dozen or so heads of Taiwanese history research institutes and the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology. No previous petition on historical issues has ever been on this scale.
Second, serious reservations have been voiced over the legitimacy and legality of the process in which the revisions were made. The public hearing process following the completion of the draft changes was conducted in a very spurious manner: Not even the teachers who would be responsible for teaching the changes were given enough time to sign up for the meetings.
The subsequent stages — from the initial development to the review sessions for individual subjects and then the main review — were also rushed.
Even if the procedure had been carried out properly, the meeting minutes might still have proved contentious. The High Administrative Court ruling against the Ministry of Education was most likely due to the lack of transparency, but the information subsequently made available, including the meeting minutes and the results of voting, could have been sufficient to halt the march of the process.
The continued student protests have obliged the legislature to get involved, with lawmakers from both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party debating the issue.
Meanwhile, the ministry has said it is reluctant to put the introduction of the new textbooks on hold because the publishers have already printed the first batches, despite both the teachers and publishers having said there would be no problem with continuing to use the old textbooks. Given this, there should be further discussion on whether the ministry should just scrap the changes, or delay the introduction of the new textbooks.
Even though questions remain as to whether or not the changes to guidelines announced by the ministry where part of an administrative order, the ministry still has the option of pulling the plug on the changes. Having “discovered” that there are problems with the nature of the changes, or that there were serious flaws in the administrative process in which they were made, it would be possible for the ministry, in line with the law, to scrap the changes altogether.
It is even more difficult to understand what the ministry means when it says people must tolerate the fact that the old and new guidelines present different historical perspectives. Even if the new changes are abolished, there is likely to be a reversion to the high-school curriculum guidelines implemented in 2012 by a committee formed by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government.
Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), the convener of the task force behind the current guideline adjustments, was on that committee. The 2012 guidelines were decidedly cold on China, Japan-friendly and oriented toward an independent Taiwan.
These adjustments are not the result of a showdown between the pan-blue and pan-green camps, nor do they come down to a tussle between the ruling and opposition parties. They are being orchestrated by Ma’s administration.
The ministry’s strategy in dealing with this controversy, whether it is over the academic or procedural flaws therein, has been questionable.
If it wants to defuse the crisis and put an end to the conflict, it needs to step back from the edge of the precipice and abolish the curricular adjustments. Anything else is only going to be a temporary fix.
Hsueh Hua-yuan is the dean of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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