A group of National Hsinchu Senior High School students on Tuesday conducted a forum to protest against the Ministry of Education’s planned adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines.
The forum organizers said that they collected nearly 700 signatures — representing about one-third of the student body — in a petition against the curriculum changes set for August.
Opposition to the changes stems from perceived procedural flaws by the ministry, as well as changes to history textbooks that critics say reflect a “China-centric” view.
The students held a panel discussion on the campus to debate the changes to the high-school syllabus and textbooks, with students saying that there were procedural flaws in the ministry’s actions.
“We care about college entrance exams, but we cannot swallow [the adjusted curriculum] simply because we have to study [for the exams],” one student said.
“It is wrong if the procedure was wrong, and there is no need to adopt the new textbooks [based on the adjusted curriculum],” another student said.
Another student said that though the ministry said it followed proper procedures to modify the curriculum, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled against the decision to implement the adjusted curriculum, adding that the ministry’s “black-box” operations in altering the curriculum and holding public hearings have sparked controversies.
The ministry ignored the court’s ruling and is set to implement the curriculum anyway, while issuing “highest priority” documents to high schools to pressure them to conform to the ministry, the students said.
The student panel said that high-school teachers should be allowed to choose textbooks without being pressured politically, the students said.
If the teachers adopt new textbooks based on the adjusted curriculum, the students will stage larger protests to petition the school, they said.
National Hsinchu Senior High School secretary Chang Hua-hsing (張花興) said that students are given free rein to express themselves and organize activities.
The forum is the second anti-curriculum campaign that has been initiated by high-school students, following a sit-in organized by National Taichung First Senior High School students earlier this month.
Taichung protest organizer Liao Chung-lun (廖崇倫) said that the Hsinchu students had advanced the campaign by organizing a public forum and inviting discussions to further understanding of the modifications to the curriculum.
He said he would try to mobilize more high-school students to escalate the campaign to force the ministry to revoke what he described as a “brain-washing” curriculum.
K-12 Education Administration Director Wu Ching-shan (吳清山) said the students might have misconstrued the ministry’s initiative, as the court’s ruling was over the ministry’s disclosure of information rather than the contents of adjustments to the curriculum.
The Control Yuan has affirmed the legality of the ministry’s proceedings, Wu added.
Additional reporting by Tsai Shu-yuan
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