Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday that the history of Taiwan, China and the rest of the world will share equal weight in the new edition of high-school history textbooks to be released in 2006.
"The ongoing revision of high-school history textbooks is expected to be completed by this month. The reason for the change is to strengthen Taiwanese students' understanding of the history of Taiwan as well as other parts of the world," Tu said at a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
Tu also said that the amount of attention devoted to the three categories will be the same in the new edition.
Furthermore, world history will contain more information on Southeast Asia.
"In the past, world history consisted of mainly European history. In the new textbooks, Asian history will be added to the material," secondary school department director Lee Jan-yao (李然堯) said yesterday.
Tu said the new edition was needed because social studies in secondary schools was a disorganized patchwork of geography, history and civic studies.
"The revisions to the materials aim to make lessons more relevant and incorporate history, geography and civic studies in a coherent way," Tu said. Tu added that renewing secondary school texts is an important project that the Ministry of Education takes very seriously.
The ministry has also proposed that indigenous languages be integrated into the secondary-school curriculum. During the Ethnic Groups and Culture Development Conference held by the Executive Yuan yesterday, the Ministry of Education, the Council of Hakka Affairs and the Council of Indigenous Peoples suggested that the learning of native languages should not be limited to the home.
"Teaching the native languages of Taiwan will help students strengthen their understanding of the country. Learning native languages only at home will not be solid enough," the education ministry said in a statement yesterday.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun said at the conference that the point of the National Language Development Law (國家語言發展法) -- which has been drafted and approved by the Executive Yuan -- aims to make Mandarin the nation's official language.
The Executive Yuan suggested that learning native languages begin as early as kindergarten, and that this curriculum commence before exposure to English.
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