Local language classes are not required for junior-high school students in the final revision of the curriculum for the 12-year national education program, Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) said yesterday.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) criticized the decision, saying that it went against previous commitments from former education minister Chiang Wei-ning (蔣偉寧), who pledged to make a local language course mandatory for junior-high school students.
Currently, elementary-school students must take one local language class each week, choosing from among Hakka, Hoklo and Aboriginal languages.
The Taiwan Society and other pro-localization groups had earlier said that the majority of junior-high schools teach six to seven periods of Mandarin, while neglecting local languages. Union of Education in Taiwan chairperson Cheng Cheng-iok (鄭正煜) and others have urged the ministry to make local language courses compulsory in junior-high school.
According to Wu Ching-shan (吳清山), director of the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration, the ministry’s latest decision comes as part of a broader move to reduce mandatory credits within the curriculum.
Under the ministry’s plan, while distributional requirements for five core subject areas are to remain largely unchanged, mandatory course credits are to be reduced to 84 — from 104 — out of 198 credits, he said, adding that the reduction would make room for more elective courses in four of the subject areas.
The ministry said the changes are to go into effect in 2018.
Su Yu-sheng (蘇佑晟), a parental representative from the Association for 12-Year Mandatory Education, welcomed the ministry’s decision, saying that the reduction in required courses would allow more space for students to choose courses in accordance with their interests.
Although students are not to be required to take local language courses, schools are to be required to offer them weekly to interested students, Wu Ching-shan said.
However, Pingtung County Government Bureau of Education Director Yen Ching-hsiang (顏慶祥) said that no junior-high school student would be willing to spend time learning local languages if they were an elective course.
The nation must look abroad and emulate other countries, such as those in Northern Europe where great emphasis is placed on local education and cultivating national recognition and civic consciousness in their rising generations, Yen said.
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