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Kangke Aborigines protest exam policy

Aborigines from Kangke (寒溪) Village, who are a branch of northern Taiwan's Atayal tribe, protested last week against the Council of Indigenous People's tribal language examination policy, requesting that the Kangke dialect be included.

The Kangke dialect has long been different from other Atayal languages because it was influenced by the Japanese language during the period of Japanese occupation.

The council plans to begin tribal language examinations next year, yet the Kangke dialect is not listed as one of the official dialects of the Atayal tribe, said Fang Hsi-en (方喜恩), an indigenous rights activist. In the examination policy, the Kangke dialect is incorporated into the Squliq and the C'uli' dialects.

Fang said that to pass the tribal language exams, students in Kangke Village must now study either the Squliq or the C'uli' dialects using a romanized spelling system because the Kangke dialect is nothing like them.

For high school and college entrance exams, an extra 25 percent is added to the total scores of indigenous students to encourage further education, according to Ministry of Education regulations.

If the tribal language exam is carried out as planned next year, students who pass will have an additional 10 percent added to their entrance exam scores, making it a total of 35 percent extra overall.

Fang said that the system was unfair for Kangke students because the council did not classify their dialect as an official one. He said the tribal language examination should not be linked with entrance exams scores in any way.

Lee Su-min (李淑敏), the head of the Parent-Teacher Association at Kangke Elementary School, said that such a classification also stunted the preservation of the dialect and the Kangke culture.

Tribal language exams, if indeed necessary, should be conducted by the tribes or villages themselves instead of by the government, Fang said.

He said that the education ministry was in a hurry to promote native language education, but many Aboriginal dialects are still neglected.

In response to the protests, Wang Chiui (汪秋一), the director of the Department of Education and Culture at the council, said that the tribal language examination policy is still being discussed with the education ministry.

But the goal of the language examination was to promote tribal language education, Wang said.

Wang reminded the protestors that the language exam was in fact oral and that he would request that the council include the Kangke dialect in the exam.

If included, a representative from the village will also be invited to be an oral examiner, he said.
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