A handful of leftist and radical pro-unification types have been directing the Ministry of Education’s plan to revise the national high-school curriculum, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) made the remarks amid the ongoing controversy sparked by the ministry’s plan to revise the nation’s high-school curriculum.
The revisions are scheduled to be implemented in September next year — the beginning of that academic year — when one of the major changes is to be the addition of the word “mainland” in references to China in Chinese language and history textbooks. Also, the 50-year period of Japanese rule in Taiwan is to be referred to as the “Japanese colonial period,” according to the revised curriculum.
Opposition spokespeople have lambasted the so-called revisions as a “de-Taiwanification” of the curriculum.
Huang told a press conference held at the party headquarters in Taipei that revisions to national high-school textbooks should be done within the ministry’s system through normal procedures.
However, the proposed revised history curriculum guidelines, which the central government called “minor adjustments,” were decided by a 10-person task force formed outside the ministry, and includes academics who are considered radical leftists who favor rapid unification with China, he added.
Huang said the head of the task force, Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), a professor at Shih Hsin University, is vice chairman of the Chinese Unification Union, and that another task force member, Hsieh Ta-ning (謝大寧), a professor at Fo Guang University, has previously argued that Taiwanese and Chinese students should use the same textbooks.
Another task force member, Pan Chao-yang (潘朝陽), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, previously made a comment saying that people of Taiwan who advocate Taiwanese alliances with the US and Japan to counter China ought to be considered “traitors to Han Chinese (漢奸),” Huang said.
Huang panned the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for trying to control students’ thought and monopolizing interpretation of Taiwanese history.
He asked the ministry to suspend the plan and have it subjected to customary procedures.
The ministry should suspend the planned revision, Huang said, adding that the ministry should also hold a number of discussions to hear opinions from high-school teachers and the public.
Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒), a professor at National Dong Hwa University, who was also present at the press conference, said that the ministry announced the proposed revision after the legislative session went into recess, saying it was trying to dodge the legislative body’s scrutiny.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS