As a solution to the issue raised by Lin, the Ministry of Examination has proposed two plans to the Examination Yuan for its consideration. One is to abolish the history and geography tests in the entry-level examination altogether.
The other is to change the name of the test from "national history and geography" to "history and geography" and increase the percentage of questions that deal with Taiwan, as opposed to China.
The Examination Yuan is scheduled to discuss the issue on Thursday during its weekly meeting.
Despite his threat to remove Lin, Hung eventually decided against filing the motion after Lin pledged last Thursday to handle the matter in accordance with the law, skillfully avoiding a possible confrontation with Hung and his colleagues opposed to his idea of scrapping the test altogether.
Instead of making the decision himself, Lin said that he would let the basic-level civil servant recruitment examination committee decide whether the history and geography of the Republic of China should cover just Taiwan or both Taiwan and China.
Lin, however, reiterated after the press conference that he still favored testing students with "100 percent of the questions on Taiwan's history and geography."
"It's common sense that national history and geography is about the nation's history and geography, isn't it?" he asked.
Born in 1939 in Tainan County, the National Taiwan Normal University-educated Lin obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Iowa. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1992 and served as the director of the Department of Education at the National Taiwan Normal University between 1996 and 1998. He was promoted to dean of the university's School of Education in 1998 and left the post in 2002 when he was appointed an Examination Yuan member.
RSS