The nation's first group of alternative-service conscripts to serve as teachers at Taiwanese schools overseas are set to depart tomorrow for their designated countries, a vice minister of education said yesterday.
"The group, consisting of five individuals, will each go to the school of their choice and serve as math or physics teachers for one-and-a-half years," said Political Vice Minister of Education Fan Shiun-liu (
The Taiwanese schools are private schools set up to teach the children of expatriate Taiwanese businessmen. The schools follow the curriculum taught in Taiwan and receive a small subsidy from Taiwan's Ministry of Education.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The purpose of their service will be to help make up for the shortage of teachers faced by the Taiwanese schools," said Fan, who, two years ago, first proposed deploying alternative-service conscripts as teachers in the schools.
Under the Alternative Service Law, which was passed in January 2000, eligible conscripts may serve as policemen, firemen, environmental protection workers or nurses for the elderly and handicapped in lieu of military service.
The law was amended last year to add teaching in overseas Taiwanese schools to the list of professions open to such conscripts, precisely because of the teacher shortage faced by the schools.
A 22-month period of military service is mandatory for men in Taiwan, except those suffering from designated physical ailments.
"Of 195 applicants, 16 met the minimum qualification of having teacher certificates with expertise in math or physics," said Kao Thun-yun (
"Of those 16, these five individuals were selected because they were the top five in our selection process.
"We specifically wanted teachers with expertise in math and physics because these are the subject areas in which the schools have indicated they currently have the greatest need," Kao said.
There are Taiwanese schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Surabaya, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and a Thai-Chinese International School in Thailand.
There are also two private Taiwanese schools in China but they are not eligible for alternative-service conscripts, Kao said, because "the Ministry of Defense and the Chinese authorities do not permit Taiwanese individuals with the status of a soldier to carry out such work in China."
"For obvious reasons," Kao added, "these two schools neither use the complete ROC educational curriculum nor fly the ROC flag like the other six Taipei Schools."
In December, two men serving their alternative military service with an agricultural technical corps in Gambia caught malaria.
The men, part of a group of 35 sent abroad as agricultural and medical recurits, both recovered.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS