Minister of education-designate Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) should set a firm timeline for withdrawing controversial high-school curriculum guidelines, students said yesterday.
About 20 students protested in front of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) headquarters in Taipei, demanding that the DPP keep its promise to abolish the guidelines.
The allegedly China-centric focus and opaque approval process of last year’s “adjusted” guidelines sparked a student movement that saw the forecourt of the Ministry of Education compound in Taipei occupied by demonstrators.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“After winning the January elections, the DPP has only stated that it supports the students’ position. It has not promised to absolutely withdraw the guidelines after taking power on May 20,” Taipei Municipal Zhong-lun Senior High School student Lin Chih-yu (林致宇) said, adding that the DPP’s promises were in danger of becoming “feel-good” slogans.
Students said National Taiwan University social work professor Lin Wan-i (林萬億) — a top policy adviser to president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — had promised them in December last year that the DPP would withdraw the guidelines should it win the elections.
Lin said he was concerned the DPP might backtrack after seeing it shift its position on the cross-strait trade in services agreement and related supervisory articles after January’s elections.
Photo: CNA
The DPP has drawn criticism for draft supervisory legislation that would exempt the trade in services agreement from new approval requirements, a key Sunflower movement demand.
Lin said premier-designate Lin Chuan’s (林全) comments that any decision on the guidelines would be up to Pan were another reason for concern, because Pan had been involved in their drafting in his previous role as administrative vice president of the National Academy for Educational Research.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) on Friday said Pan was personally responsible for overseeing the approval of the guidelines, which drew a sharp response from Pan, who said he was forced to relinquish oversight and withdraw from the process after having raised objections regarding procedures and the composition of the drafting committee.
“I was vice president of the National Academy for Educational Research at the time and I was supposed to oversee the development of curricula. However, I was relieved from the role because I was opposed to revisions of high-school curriculum guidelines, as the Ministry of Education did not make the revisions according to legal procedure and those who participated were not qualified to make the changes,” Pan said yesterday. “I was not involved in the process.”
Taiwan Grassroots Education Alliance member Chang Wen-lung (張文隆) said it was critical that Pan make his position clear, because teachers are in the process of choosing textbooks for the upcoming school year, with textbooks based on both the old and new guidelines available.
“If the minister-designate can make a clear statement that the guidelines will be abolished after May 20, it will be easy for teachers to choose,” he said. “As things stand, teachers are vacillating, because the government has not decided.”
In response, the DPP’s Department of Youth Affairs’ Huang Shou-ta (黃守達) said that withdrawing the controversial curriculum guidelines has always been the party’s official stance on the issue, adding that the DPP legislative caucus has proposed amendments to provide a legal framework for future changes to curriculum guidelines.
Last month, 65 DPP legislators proposed a motion demanding that the Executive Yuan and the ministry withdraw the adjustments to curriculum guidelines announced in February 2014.
“The proposal is now being negotiated between parties and could be voted on by Friday next week at the earliest,” he said.
The DPP caucus has also proposed amendments to the Senior High School Education Act (高級中等教育法) and the Primary and Junior High School Act (國民教育法) to make sure that curriculum guidelines will be decided in a professional manner, based on democratic principles and with the participation of the private sector, Huang said.
According to the proposed amendments, the ministry’s curriculum review committee is to be made a permanent organization instead of an ad hoc committee, with government representatives occupying less than one-fourth of seats on the committee, with the remainder filled by non-governmental representatives from educational institutions and groups recommended by the Legislative Yuan, Huang said.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS