The Ministry of Education decided late last night to stick to its original decision to resume the essay test in the Chinese- and English-language subjects of this year's Joint University Entrance Examination.
The rest of the test, the ministry said, will proceed in the form of multiple choices.
Lawmakers yesterday attacked the ministry over its indecision on the format of this year's exams.
"We haven't seen any professionalism in these changes," KMT Legislator Huang Min-hui (
Last Thursday, the ministry and the Joint College Enrollment Committee announced that all written parts of the test, including Chinese and English essays and other non-multiple-choice questions such as mathematic proof questions, had been dropped to reduce the risk that those grading the tests would catch the SARS virus from the papers.
The test, which will be held between July 1 and July 3, would comprise only multiple-choice questions, which are processed in machines, according to the announcement.
The decision, coming a little more than a month before the exam was to be held, caused an outcry among school associations and parents, many of whom had been sending their students to cram schools to prepare for the essay sections of the test.
The following day, the ministry reinstated the Chinese and English essay sections of the test, but left out other sections that did comprise multiple-choice questions.
To avoid further criticism, Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (
"It is not that I like to change, it is the lawmakers who forced me to do so," he said.
DPP Legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (
Shen said that the president seemed more concerned about the issue than the premier, who appeared reluctant to take a stand on the problem.
Even pan-green lawmakers expressed their dismay over the equivocation.
He said the ministry's indecision had dented the public's support for the DPP ahead of next year's presidential election.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching