Academia Sinica researchers underlined students’ ability to resist political manipulation and think independently amid allegations that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is behind the recent high-school student-led protests against the Ministry of Education’s controversial adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines.
The allegation was brought up again on Friday by Shih Hsin University professor and convener of the ministry’s curriculum adjustment task force Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), one day after the death of student activist Dai Lin (林冠華), who allegedly committed suicide on Thursday to protest against the ministry’s adjustments.
Academia Sinica researcher Chang Mao-kuei (張茂桂) said that information is becoming more accessible to students today, which helps to raise a high political awareness among young people.
“It is gratuitous to assume that students are politically naive or purely innocent. Young people are more mature than the public imagines, while they are indeed inexperienced in handling sensitive political issues, which nevertheless makes them bolder than adults and more prone to clashing with the establishment,” he said.
He said that student activists are often hamstrung by their parents and teachers, who tend to snuff out student activism under the pretext that students should not do anything that is out of their duty, which Chang said is an attempt to belittle students’ intelligence and to turn a collective campaign into a single, irregular case.
“Young people have to bear the consequences of what adults are incapable of settling and are forced into conflict with the system. It is a typical example of generational injustice,” Chang said.
Academia Sinica researcher Liang Kuo-kan (梁國淦) said the news of Lin’s death gripped him especially, as he was giving a speech on how participating in social movements can affect a person’s physical and metal health at a forum organized by students at National Taichung First Senior High School the day prior to Lin’s death.
“Student activists might feel alienated from their family, peers and teachers, whose support for student movements does not come easily,” Liang said, adding that he should have been talking with student activists on the streets earlier to ease their tension.
Liang echoed Chang’s words, saying that young people nowadays cannot be easily manipulated and they do not take protests to the streets unless they feel a real need to do so.
“It is a thought-provoking issue for the public to envision how high-school students, who have no right to vote, could express their anger and dissatisfaction,” he said.
Chang said the ministry is acting against the spirit of education by threatening to press charges against students who were arrested for entering the ministry’s Taipei headquarters on July 23 in protest of the curriculum adjustments, and also by using education to consolidate the authority’s governance.
“The ministry is treating student activists as delinquents by promising to withdraw charges against those who ‘show remorse’ for breaking into the ministry headquarters,” Chang said.
“Education does not serve political ends, nor could cramming students with what curriculum dictates solve sensitive political problems,” he said.
“Education should help students acquire knowledge and develop the ability to deal with politics instead,” Chang said, while calling on the ministry to revoke the curriculum adjustments and return education to its true nature.
EVA Airways today confirmed the death of a flight attendant on Saturday upon their return to Taiwan and said an internal investigation has been launched, as criticism mounted over a social media post accusing the airline of failing to offer sufficient employee protections. According to the post, the flight attendant complained of feeling sick on board a flight, but was unable to take sick leave or access medical care. The crew member allegedly did not receive assistance from the chief purser, who failed to heed their requests for medical attention or call an ambulance once the flight landed, the post said. As sick
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
The Taichung District Court yesterday confirmed its final ruling that the marriage between teenage heir Lai (賴) and a man surnamed Hsia (夏) was legally invalid, preventing Hsia from inheriting Lai’s NT$500 million (US$16.37 million) estate. The court confirmed that Hsia chose not to appeal the civil judgement after the court handed down its ruling in June, making the decision final. In the June ruling, the court said that Lai, 18, and Hsia, 26, showed “no mutual admiration before the marriage” and that their interactions were “distant and unfamiliar.” The judge concluded that the couple lacked the “true intention of
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
RSS