Despite the controversy over the manner in which high-school history, geography and civic education curriculum guidelines have been “adjusted,” the new textbooks are set to officially come into use today.
The new guidelines have been drawn up in a way that contravenes procedural justice, and their content runs contrary to professionalism and historical facts. They stress a more China-centric historical perspective and give pride of place to Chinese culture. These ideas are set to be instilled in the minds of students who start senior-high school next month.
Furthermore, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has less than a year left in office, is following the same kind of opaque methods by putting the 12-year national education scheme into effect next year in a slipshod manner, even though it was originally set to be implemented in 2018. This is a move that will have an impact on several generations of Taiwanese.
The “adjusted” guidelines have provoked a backlash from civic groups and the public at large. Since last year, academics, civic groups and teachers and students at senior and vocational high schools have protested against the adjustments by writing critiques, speaking on street corners and besieging the Ministry of Education and the K-12 Education Administration.
People from all walks of life have been doing their utmost to get the ministry to withdraw the adjustments, but Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) remains unmoved. He has only arranged explanatory meetings in a few selected senior-high schools, declaring again and again, like a broken record, that the new guidelines are in keeping with the law, the Republic of China Constitution and proper procedure, and that they will officially come into effect on Aug. 1, as scheduled.
Even though senior and vocational high-school students occupied the ministry on July 25, Wu continues to refuse to withdraw the adjustments, and the authorities have even gone so far as to level spurious charges against the students involved in the protest. Consequently, civic groups and individuals are calling for Wu to resign.
Wu insists that the procedure regarding the adjustments has been completed and that he, as minister, has no power to change what has already been approved. He says that the adjusted guidelines have already been officially announced, so the only thing that can be done is to compile supplementary teaching material that deals with controversial points in the curricula. However, Wu seems to have forgotten that it would not be unprecedented for an education minister to withdraw a curriculum.
The starting point for this round of adjustments was the scrapping of the Chinese-
language and history parts of the 2009 curriculum guidelines. It was Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城), the education minister during Ma’s first term as president, who used his executive powers to scrap the 2009 guidelines, which had already been announced, and set about drawing up the 2012 guidelines to replace them.
There is also precedent for the ministry making further adjustments to the contents of curriculum guidelines that have already been announced. The latest “minor” adjustments are replacing the 2012 guidelines, which were not due to expire until 2018. The precedent for doing so was a review of the language used in textbooks, which led to the launch of adjustments that replaced the 2012 guidelines, which had already been proclaimed, but were deemed to pay insufficient respect to the notion of “one China.”
The Chinese-language and history parts of the 2009 guidelines, whose abolition Cheng announced in 2008, were formulated under the preceding Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. The DPP administration carried out curriculum reviews in relation to the nine-year compulsory education system and first implemented the 2006 provisional curricula before proceeding with the 2009 curricula. Deliberations continued from 2006 to January 2008, when the ministry announced that the new curriculum guidelines would be implemented starting with first-year classes in senior-high schools in the 2009 to 2010 academic year, which started in September 2009.
With respect to procedure, the review committee membership and deliberation process were open and transparent. The proposed reforms underwent deliberations by a curriculum review committee, half of whose members were experts and academics and the other half senior-high school teachers. The committee also did a proper job of soliciting opinions from teachers via the Internet and questionnaires. It published drafts and held nationwide public hearings.
The way in which the 2009 guidelines were drawn up was something that had never been seen in post-war Taiwan, in that they showed considerable concern for teachers’ standpoints and emphasized fostering senior-high school students’ contemporary abilities rather than inculcating a party-state ideology. Colloquial content and contemporary issues were added to the Chinese-language syllabus to foster students’ modern language abilities, while the history curriculum was designed to foster historical thinking rather than just historical memories.
However, after Ma was inaugurated as president on May 20, 2008, Cheng announced that implementation of the history and Chinese-language parts of the 2009 guidelines would be postponed. At a meeting in October, Cheng said that the history and Chinese-language parts of the curriculum needed further review. As a result of this single sentence pronounced by Cheng, these two parts of the 2009 guidelines, which had already been announced, were dead in the water.
It was because Cheng used his powers to scrap the history and Chinese-language parts of the 2009 guidelines that the 2012 curriculum revision task force came into existence. Task force member Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), a professor at Shih Hsin University, was in charge of the revision process, which was carried out in an opaque manner behind closed doors. National Taiwan University (NTU) history professor Chou Wan-yao’s (周婉窈) revelations about the extent to which content concerning Taiwan’s history was going to be cut out of the curriculum sparked serious controversy and became a matter of concern for people in various spheres.
In 2010, with legislative by-elections fast approaching, then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), speaking in the legislature, promised that high-school history textbooks would still include one textbook devoted to the history of Taiwan.
However, some people were of the opinion that the 2012 guidelines had not been adjusted enough, and in May 2012 demands were suddenly raised in the history textbook review committee that textbooks “foster the national spirit, in keeping with the Constitution”; refer to “mainland China,” not just “China”; be focused on Chinese culture; that the period of Japanese rule over Taiwan should be called the “Japanese occupation” and so on.
The starting point for all these demands was a letter purporting to express “public opinion” that was brought to the committee by NTU political science professor Chang Ya-chung (張亞中). It was this letter, which runs contrary to the facts and to the proper methods of historical study, that led to a string of “adjustments” to the curriculum guidelines that bypassed the opinions of experts, academics and teachers, and which add up to the “adjusted” curriculum guidelines that Wu Se-hwa is defending today.
One sentence pronounced by the education minister was all it took to scrap the 2009 guidelines, which had been formulated through a thorough procedure that included soliciting the opinions of academics and teachers. In the textbook review committee, a single letter purporting to represent public opinion was taken as sufficient grounds for “adjusting” the 2012 guidelines, which had already been announced, and possibly to eventually replace them with ones that pay even greater homage to Chinese culture and the notion of “one China.”
These are not things that happened long ago — they are precedents that Wu could follow to use his executive powers to withdraw the “minor adjustments.” Has Wu forgotten all about them, or is he bound by orders from his commander that he dares not mention them?
Chou Fu-i is a cofounder of Taiwan March.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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