Students forced their way into the K-12 Education Administration building in Taipei yesterday, promising further action by the end of the week if controversial high-school curriculum guidelines are not withdrawn.
About 50 students gathered at the agency’s building — part of the Ministry of Education — at about 3pm, seeking to present their demands to agency officials.
Thirteen forced their way into building before employees pulled a metal gate in front of the entrance.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
A standoff followed, as students outside the building forced the gate up, but were unable to break through an interior police cordon.
The ministry lacked sincerity when responding to student requests that the guidelines be withdrawn and instead just repeated prior statements, Northern Taiwan Anti-Curriculum Changes Alliance convener Chu Chen (朱震) said.
Chu demanded that the ministry guarantee the safety of students inside the building and select an official to accept their petition.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Students yelled slogans such as: “Oppose brainwashing guidelines, open up black box procedures.” They also demanded that ministry officials “open up the iron gates and let our comrades go.”
Students inside the building made their way to the fifth-floor office of K-12 Administrator Director Wu Ching-shan (吳清山), looking for someone to receive their concerns after failing to find Wu.
Adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines have generated controversy for what critics describe as a “China-centric” focus.
The protest yesterday came on a deadline students had imposed for the guidelines to be withdrawn.
The K-12 Education Administration is responsible for implementing the guidelines and represented a softer target than the ministry building, which has been barricaded with barbed wire and cast-iron doors in recent weeks.
The police force at the ministry took more than 10 minutes to reach the K-12 Education Administration building, which is several blocks from the ministry.
After police reinforcements arrived, a 10-minute standoff occurred before students let go of the gate and sat silently in front of the building, urging that students who made it inside be allowed to exit and that officials emerge to face their concerns.
Later, Han Chun-shu (韓春樹), deputy head of the agency’s secondary and vocational education division, led out the 13 students inside the building and issued a response to the protesters’ concerns, saying that the ministry would draft additional curriculum materials on the controversial portions of the guidelines by next month, allowing teachers to supplement textbooks with class discussion.
The students opted to withdraw, but repeated their dissatisfaction with the what they described as the “skipping needle” of the ministry’s responses.
They would return with more intense measures, they said, with their next moves to be posted online within a week.
BLUE WAVE: The KMT’s Chiang Wan-an defeated the DPP’s Chen Shih-chung and is to become Taipei mayor, while President Tsai Ing-wen stepped down as DPP chairperson after many of the party’s candidates, handpicked by the leadership, performed poorly The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday flipped key mayoral seats in Taipei, Taoyuan and Keelung, and won control of 13 out of 22 cities and counties in the nine-in-one local elections. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) last night resigned as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson over a poor showing by the party’s candidates, who were handpicked by the DPP leadership rather than chosen through primaries. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) won its first high-profile race with Hsinchu mayoral candidate Ann Kao (高虹安) defeating Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹) of the DPP with 45.02 percent of the vote to Shen’s 35.68 percent. Voters were choosing more than
CAUTION: Wearing a mask in crowded places and for people with chronic illnesses or allergies can help prevent COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, the CECC said The mask mandate for outdoor settings is to lifted on Thursday, and the weekly cap on international inbound travelers is to be removed on Dec. 10, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said at its regular news conference yesterday. The center also announced that starting from Friday, children aged five to 11 can receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster, and that rules for visiting hospital patients are to be partially eased from Dec. 10. While wearing a mask will no longer be mandatory outdoors, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) reminded the public that it would still be required
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: China might impose a blockade, conduct limited force operations, use an air and missile campaign, or resort to an invasion, the report said The US Department of Defense has identified four possible military courses of action that China could take against Taiwan, but did not offer any guess on when Beijing might be ready to act. In an annual report to the US Congress released on Tuesday titled Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2022, the department gave a broad overview of China’s military capabilities, strategy, ambitions and intentions. The report devoted significant space to developments related to Taiwan, against which it said China had intensified diplomatic, economic, political and military pressure last year. For example, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
ANALYSIS: The local elections showed that the KMT is a competitive player, but needs to work at changing its image regarding China, experts said The nine-in-one local election results would bolster the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), but are unlikely to have a major effect on the 2024 presidential election, when cross-strait issues are back in focus, political commentators said. In Saturday’s elections, the KMT won 13 of the 21 cities and counties up for grabs, including four of the country’s six biggest metropolitan areas, where nearly 70 percent of the population lives. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost three of the seven cities and counties it held, although it gained Penghu County. Its poor results prompted President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to announce her resignation as party
RSS