Academics and teachers yesterday voiced opposition to the introduction of a new senior-high-school curriculum in 2007, saying an overhaul of the old curriculum was necessary but ought not be applied in haste.
At a national conference on high-school education development at Taipei Municipal Teachers College, participants discussed changes proposed by the Ministry of Education, which integrates the senior-high-school syllabus with its nine-year educational program.
Curriculum reform, the division of final-year students into science and liberal arts streams and bringing forward aptitude tests by one year were among the topics discussed yesterday.
In his opening speech, Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) said he hoped teachers and experts would contribute as many suggestions as possible to assist with curriculum reform, which he said was best done now rather than debating over the new curriculum after it was introduced.
"Hopefully we can hammer out a consensus in a down-to-earth way on the new curriculum and find out how to orientate high-school education in a new direction," Huang said.
Many participants maintained that the new curriculum, due to be introduced in 2006, should be postponed until 2007. They said it would be inappropriate to apply a new curriculum if the ministry had not completed preparations for the transfer.
However, Lin Wen-hu (
"The texts that high-school students are using now are as difficult as climbing sheer cliffs. It's mission impossible for many students who have just changed to senior high from junior high," Lin said.
Lin said that many senior-high-school students never "got in to" the mathematics they learned over three years because there was a huge gap between these texts and the junior-high texts.
Lin likened the high-school curriculum to the nation's Constitution, saying it wasn't enough for it to be revised. It had to be completely rewritten, he said.
Some academics complained that the ministry, which plans to put back the division of senior-high-school students into science and liberal arts streams to the final year of senior high school, was ignorant of circumstances faced by students.
The current system groups senior-high students into two streams in their second year to prepare them for college entrance examinations.
Chang Yen-hui (
Chang suggested more streams be set up so that students could access a wider variety of subjects.
Some teachers also opposed bringing forward an aptitude test to the second year of senior high school.
The teachers said the move would deprive students of their leisure time and push them into an environment of exam pressure one year earlier.
"I think the new measure would make students much unhappier than before," Lin said.
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