The Ministry of Education yesterday launched a movement to cultivate the nation’s character.
“Taiwanese society is generally considered a society replete with strong soft power, as we are a society characterized by culture and quality,” Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) told a press conference at the Taipei Railway Station.
“However, we still see many bullies, drug problems and physical clashes between teachers and students at schools. It seems that we don’t have character anymore,” Cheng said.
PHOTO: CNA
Cheng said Taiwanese should have the determination to improve themselves and help each other build character.
“As Plato said in his The Republic, education is the only thing that matters in a nation. Education to help students build character may be what the nation needs most at the moment,” Cheng said.
The ministry selected Cardinal Paul Shan (單國璽), Cloud Gate artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民), taekwondo heroine Su Li-wen (蘇麗文), composer Fang Wen-shan (方文山) and singer Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) as model characters during a conference presided over by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Ma said he hoped the movement would lead to a “new lifestyle” in the nation.
The ministry plans to build students’ character by giving them more opportunities to appreciate art, to read and to help them understand the need to care about the environment.
A list of “core values” that principals and school presidents nationwide presented to the ministry last month showed that school administrators hoped students would have more respect for their parents and teachers and learn to take responsibility for their own actions.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching