The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled against the Ministry of Education in a case involving the ministry’s controversial “minor adjustments” to high-school curriculum guidelines.
The court said the ministry should make its information more transparent and complete for public perusal.
The “minor adjustments” made to the guidelines for history, civic and social studies, Chinese and geography in January last year sparked controversy, leading to protests by civic groups, high-school teachers and academics — who called the changes “de-Taiwanization and Sinicization” of the education system tailored to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) view of history — and prompted the Taiwan Association of Human Rights to bring the case to court.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Examples of the contentious changes to the history curriculum included revising the term “Japanese-governed period” to “Japanese occupation period,” and naming the period during which Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), ruled Taiwan in the 17th century the “Ming Cheng period,” with “Ming” signifying China’s Ming Dynasty, despite the Ming not, in official terms, claiming sovereignty over the island, the groups said soon after the changes were announced.
The Taiwan Association of Human Rights filed an administrative lawsuit against the ministry in October last year after its administrative appeal, filed in March, was rejected.
The association said that even before the appeal, it had asked the ministry and the National Academy for Educational Research for information related to a resolution to adjust the curriculum, including a complete list of the review members, complete meeting minutes and ballot results.
The two agencies denied the request and simply offered abridged meeting records that “concealed key decisionmaking processes,” the association said.
According to Article 9 of the Freedom of Government Information Act (政府資訊公開法), individuals “may request government agencies to provide government information,” which means people have the right to request information related to the curriculum outline changes because it “is a national policy that concerns people’s rights to education,” it said.
“The Ministry of Education has repeatedly said that information about the changes should not be made public, which is brazenly against rights protected by the law and made us wonder whether its reluctance has something to do with its flawed decisionmaking process,” the association said.
The court’s ruling has safeguarded the public’s right to know and up held democracy, the association said, while calling on the ministry to immediately make public the information it has withheld and not appeal the ruling.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) yesterday said that the information was not entirely transparent due to concerns over the possibility that personal information could be leaked, adding that a new review process would be more thorough once put in place.
He said that the ruling would not affect the rollout of the curriculum adjustments this year, adding that the ministry would discuss with the National Academy for Educational Research about whether to file an appeal.
Additional reporting by Wu Po-hsuan
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