The Taiwanese Cultural Association recently celebrated its centennial anniversary. On Friday and Saturday, the Ministry of Education also held a conference on local cultural education to dig beneath the surface into Taiwanese culture and “indigenous education”; the conference was rich in historical significance.
Since the association’s establishment in 1921, the concept of “Taiwan belongs to Taiwanese” has become a core spirit in Taiwan-focused cultural education. However, indigenous cultural education was interrupted for more than half a century by “imperialization movements” — first under Japanese colonial rule, and then during the Martial Law era under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
After martial law was abolished in 1987, the civil sector in 1990 began to promote indigenous education. Founded upon cultural education, it tried to boost Taiwanese’s self-confidence through soft power, and to construct a normalized nation-state on the native soil of Taiwanese. Despite many obstacles, the movement has generally advanced in a positive direction. Through increased impetus from Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) in the past few years, some concrete results have been achieved, while the concept of “localization is internationalization” has also become a consensus within academia today.
Take the curriculum guidelines for junior and senior-high school education for example. The current guidelines attach importance to human rights and life education for students, with a special emphasis on Taiwanese literature and history. Taiwanese history is now separated from Chinese history, while the total proportion of classical Chinese in teaching materials has also been reduced. With the introduction of the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法) three years ago, the Ministry of Education has provided education in local languages for the 12 years of a child’s “basic education.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture has launched the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank to help rebuild Taiwan’s art history. These efforts serve as blueprints for the localization of the nation’s cultural education.
The education ministry has also set up the Taiwan Study Research Center and the Local Education Resource Center under the National Taiwan Library, hoping to strengthen the integration and development of local education resources and to support Taiwanese studies.
The push for indigenous education has achieved concrete results in different academic disciplines. To review the growth and forecast the future of indigenous education, the education ministry held the above-mentioned conference on 30 years of indigenous education. The conference focused on 10 themes in indigenous education: literature, art, music, science, history, geography, ecology, education, society and folklore. A group of academics, experts and teachers who have promoted Taiwanese cultural education were invited to speak on the characteristics and development of such issues, and how they could bring them into the classroom to build a broader and more complete foundation for the academic discourse of local education.
Moreover, Taiwan’s 16 cities and counties and six special municipalities, the National Taiwan Museum in Taipei, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan and the National Taiwan Library in New Taipei City all ran poster exhibitions in accordance with the 10 themes, displaying the local experience and implementation of localized education.
Hopefully, the Taiwanese cultural education exhibitions, displayed by 22 local governments and venues, would allow the public to better understand, get closer to and take part in indigenous education.
Lee Chuan-hsin is chairman of the Northern Taiwan Society.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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