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Academics quarrel over Chinese history lessons

A historian's letter to a local newspaper criticizing the Ministry of Education's draft guidelines for high school history textbooks has reignited an ideological dispute between China-centered historians and Taiwan-oriented academics.

The ministry plans to enact the new history guidelines for senior high school students in early November and has publicized them on its Web site.

Wu Chan-liang (吳展良), a history professor at National Taiwan University, wrote to a Chinese language newspaper, which published his letter on Friday, accusing the ministry of basing its guidelines on the "special state-to-state relations" dictum of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and "one country on either side" of the Taiwan Strait comment by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

Under the new rules, senior high school students would study Taiwanese history, from the prehistoric history age to modern times, in the first semester and ancient Chinese history from the ancient times to the early Ming Dynasty in the second semester.

Second-grade senior high school students will spend the school year studying the history of the modern world from the Age of Discovery to the modern day.

Wu, who specializes in the history of modern Chinese thought, argued that it is untenable for the ministry's ad hoc committee compiling the guidelines to regard history since the latter part of Ming Dynasty, from about 1500, including the Ching Dynasty and the history of the establishment of the Republic of China, as part of modern world history.

Wu said that such a historical angle would only confuse.

"If we do not expound on history from the Ming Dynasty till the present day, and instead include it in modern history, how can Taiwanese people understand their past and the current situation?" Wu asked in his opinion piece.

Wu is now conducting research in the US and could not be reached for comment.

Chang Yuan (張元), the convener of the ad hoc committee and professor of humanities and social science at National Tsing-hua University (清華大學), said the scholars and teachers who participated in compiling the guidelines utilized the idea of the "concentric circle," which aimed to teach students to learn Taiwanese history first as the center of a circle and then Chinese history and the ensuing modern world history around the periphery.

"There was a major defect when we studied history in the past," Chang said. "Students were asked to memorize many historical terms and geographical materials which were remote from students' experiences and which they could not link to real life."

As for the classification of locating Chinese history since 1500 into modern history, committee member Chen Kuo-tung (陳國棟), a researcher at Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, said world history entered a new age in 1500 as a result of the expanded interaction around the world prompted by the Age of Discovery.

"In fact, China underwent significant changes from this period and the impact brought from the western world had a close relationship to China's current situation," he said, using the example of how the importation of Spanish silver altered the currency system used during the Ming Dynasty.

Chen said people kept emphasizing the so-called "international perspective" but did not understand China's history in the context of world history.

"What we [committee members] did is the job of an architect. We do not do the job of a fengshui master, who tries to judge the house," Chen said responding to Wu's comments.

Another committee member, Huang Fu-san (黃富三), a researcher at Academia Sinica's Preparatory Office of Taiwan History, said that Wu's accusation was missing the point, which is to address what the Chinese Nationalist Party did to Taiwan's history education in the past.

"I think what should be examined is whether the historical facts were changed when writing history," Huang said.

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