The Ministry of Education (MOE) will review the Taipei County Government’s plan to introduce extra English-related classes in its elementary schools this fall, Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) said yesterday, adding that the plan would be rejected if it fails to conform to ministry principles.
“The ministry’s stance on the issue is very clear: The plan must respect and conform to the elementary curriculum guidelines. [The county] must follow due procedure and respect parents’ opinions before implementing the plan,” Lin said in response to questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) at the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee.
Lin said the county had not submitted the plan for extra English classes until Monday.
Elementary school students nationwide start English classes in the third grade, with two classes per week. Some cities and counties, such as Taipei City and Hsinchu, have students begin the classes as early as first grade.
The ministry does not ban the practice, but it also does not provide subsidies for these classes.
Liu Ho-jen (劉和然), director of the county’s Education Bureau, said on April 14 that students will have two extra English classes and an “advanced reading” class each week.
Liu said the county’s decision came after a survey conducted by the bureau in March showed that around 80 percent of parents in the county supported implementing the new curriculum.
Hung expressed concern over the plan, however, saying the county began a trial at 48 schools in the county’s remote areas in 2008 without first seeking the ministry’s approval.
Hung, a former teacher, said she believed elementary education should focus on character building.
“Are we helping students improve their competitiveness or, rather, giving them extra pressure by introducing extra [English] classes?” Hung said.
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