Two elementary-school teachers yesterday defended their decision to take students on a field trip to the Deng Nan-jung Liberty Museum (鄭南榕自由紀念館) last month after a New Taipei City councilor last week reported them to the city’s Department of Education for “engaging in political activity.”
Lujian Elementary School teachers Weng Li-shu (翁麗淑) and Liu Fang-chun (劉芳君) on June 28 took their two classes to the museum to see a photography exhibition on the 228 Massacre.
While the field trip had been approved by the school and agreed by parents, the two were on Thursday last week informed by the school that New Taipei City Councilor Chen Ming-yi (陳明義) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had reported them to the department on behalf of a parent for taking children to what appeared to be a political event.
At a news conference on Friday last week, Chen described the field trip as inappropriate for children aged 10 and 11, because the subject of the museum and exhibition was “political” and Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) had “set himself on fire.”
Deng is a nationally celebrated democracy activist and the first Taiwanese to openly express support for Taiwanese independence. He died of self-immolation in 1989 when police tried to break into his publishing house after he published a proposed constitution for a “Taiwan Republic.”
The field trip controversy suggests that Taiwan has not entirely moved on from the White Terror era, Weng told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
“For decades, Taiwanese have been taught to worship and serve authorities. While we do not hesitate to sing a national anthem that used to be a political party’s anthem, salute political figures who have been deified and walk on streets named after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), we fear talking about the future of our nation and look down on our native dialects,” Weng said.
To provide a better environment for children, the department should ensure that authoritarianism is completely eliminated from campuses and that transitional justice is realized in education, she said.
“Education should be about showing children the diversity of the world and allowing them to decide on their own what they want to learn more about,” Liu said, adding that children need to be offered a wide range of ideas to have a rich life experience and to develop an open mind.
Politics is anything that belongs to the public sphere and should not be simply understood as related to political parties or elections, Taiwan Association for Human Rights deputy chairman Weng Kuo-yan (翁國彥) said.
“If visiting the museum is political, should visiting Liberty Square, the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall or Chiang’s mausoleum in Cihhu (慈湖) and Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) mausoleum in Taoyuan’s Touliao (頭寮) — which used to be common destinations for school field trips — be considered that too?” he asked.
The museum was founded in 1999 with the aim of educating the public about the history of Taiwan’s democratization by telling the story of Deng, museum CEO Huang Chi-hao (黃啟豪) said, adding that “it is an important part of history that schools do not teach.”
It is the nation’s shared responsibility to teach younger generations about history, and children have every right to learn about it, he said.
In Germany, young students are taught about the Holocaust and shown pictures of dead bodies and skeletons, but it is not considered a problem, he added.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Republic of China Army Command yesterday relieved Kinmen Defense Battalion commander after authorities indicted the officer on charges connected to using methamphetamine. The Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday detained Colonel He (何) after the Coast Guard linked him to drug shipments and proceeded to charge him yesterday for using and possessing crystal meth. The man was released on a NT$50,000 bail and banned from leaving Kinmen, the office said. Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Chen Chien-yi (陳建義) told a news conference yesterday that He has been removed and another officer is taking over the unit as the acting commander. The military
RSS