Teachers should improve their media literacy and turn gender news into teaching materials, and provide better sex education, according to the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association.
In a press conference held last week to announce their survey findings on news stories covering sex education last year, the association said it planned to inspire teachers to find fresh sex-education materials from the daily news.
"Our report shows that every week of last year, at least one news story related to sex education was covered by local media," said Su Chien-ling (
"I think teachers should have no difficulties incorporating related coverage in the sex-education curriculum," Su said.
According to Su, due to the lack of professional training on teaching gender issues, many teachers are anxious about giving appropriate lessons in sex education, which became a required course last year.
The Gender Equality Education Law (兩性平等法), which passed its third reading in the Legislative Yuan last year, requires schools to dedicate at least eight hours per semester to sex-education courses. Teachers need to incorporate gender equality-related issues in their curriculum. On top of this, colleges should provide more gender-related courses, according to the law.
Hu Ming-hua (胡敏華), a board member of the association who is also a teacher from Luotung High School in Ilan County, said that teaching materials are not hard to find. Coverage of cases of violence or death caused by the breakup of lovers, for example, serves as an excellent source of material for sex education.
"Sexual relationships are a very important issue for high-school students, who are more curious about sex and relationships. However, most schools fail to provide enough information on how to communicate with loved ones, or how to deal with breaking up," Hu said.
She also said that news about violence caused by improperly handled breakups gave her the chance to discuss relationships with students. Topics such as interactions between lovers, appropriate attitudes toward breakups, or power structures in gender relationships generated by the news enable students to develop critical thinking on the issue of gender equality.
Wu Cheng-ting (吳政庭), a teacher from Taipei County Wan Hua Junior High School, said that the Nine-Year Educational Program gave teachers more freedom to design the curriculum. He often used news items that students could relate to.
"Sexual harassment cases happen on campus, for example, and lead to intense discussions among students. We talk about how to improve safety on campus and how to deal with sex offenders," Wu said.
He also suggested that teachers find sex-education materials from entertainment stories or sports news, which are areas of news teenagers take most notice of.
"I would ask students to think about how female pop stars always look cute or beautiful, while male stars have to be cool. And why TV hosts always joke about female body parts? Then we can use the examples to talk about issues like gender stereotypes," Wu said.
According to the report, among all news found in Taiwan's online news Web sites last year, a total of 64 stories covered sex-education issues. The implementation of the Gender Equality Education Law made up 34 percent of the 64 news stories. About 22 percent of the reports involved sexual violence to students or on campus.
To improve media literacy, according to Bih Herng-dar (畢恆達), a professor of the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University, teachers should think about the issues behind each news report.
"Gay house parties, for example, become news because of sexual orientation. If it's just a party held by heterosexual people, it would be considered normal," Bih said.
He said that teachers should consider three questions when reading a news story: What issues does the event generate? Why does the event make news? How do the media cover the event?
He also said that reading messages hidden behind the news will help teachers find more teaching materials for sex education.
Lai Yu-mei (
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS