Teachers from all levels of education will wear black T-shirts emblazoned with a leaking oil drum in “silent protest” at what they say are the government’s repeated failures to follow through with its promised educational policies on Teachers’ Day, the National Federation of Teachers Unions said.
Teachers’ Day is a day honoring teachers for their efforts to educate the younger generation. In Taiwan, it is marked on Sept. 28, the Gregorian calendar equivalent to the date of Confucius’ birth on Aug. 27 of the Lunar calendar.
The union said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has promised that the average number of students per class in elementary schools would be cut to 25, but after four years in power, many classes still have 30 students.
Photo courtesy of the National Federation of Teachers Union
“We intend to stay in the classrooms this time to criticize the government. It has been the government all along that has taken the lead in breaking the trust the people should have in it,” the union said.
So far, 20,000 teachers have bought the T-shirts and more are bought every day, it added.
Union secretary-general Wu Chung-tai (吳忠泰) said the Ma administration’s repeated failures to implement its promises was wrong and that people had the right and obligation to remind the government of its pledges.
Wu said the situation would only worsen if people did not take action, adding that teachers need to tell the government that its credibility is no longer what it was and that it was, like the logo on the shirts, “leaking away.”
Wu said that if the government refused to listen to teachers, the union would consider stronger methods.
Teachers’ Association in Greater Taichung manager Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭正) said about 6,000 teachers would wear the T-shirts, adding that the teachers would also explain why they were wearing the T-shirts, should students ask.
Chang said that despite the city government reducing class sizes due to there being less children and reallocating resources to hire on average 1.55 more teachers per class in elementary schools, the teachers are complaining because the Ministry of Education refused to subsidize funding for the employment of full-time teachers for consultation.
National Principals’ Association director Hsueh Chun-kuang (薛春光) questioned the action, saying that while governmental policies needed oversight, such protests add to the sense of confrontation within society.
If the National Federation of Teachers Unions led students to civic events or courses by example, it would make Teachers’ Day much more meaningful, Hsueh said.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
RSS