Sat, Aug 13, 2016 page3

• Curriculum’s Confucian, military courses panned

  ‘CHINESE CULTURAL EDUCATION’: Professors said Chinese cultural materials were inserted in mandatory language requirements, at the expense of the sciences

  • By Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter
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  Mandatory Confucian classics and military training courses should be removed from pending high-school curriculum guidelines, members of the Taiwan Association of University Professors said yesterday, adding that the new guidelines allow language courses to unduly dominate at the expense of social studies and natural sciences.

  “Instead of being above-board and listing ‘basic Chinese cultural education materials’ (中華文化基本教材) as a required course, new guidelines mandate that students have to take at least 24 credits of both elective and mandatory Chinese-language courses, effectively inserting the ‘basic Chinese cultural education materials’ into requirements,” Fu Jen Catholic University philosophy professor Shen Ching-kai (沈清楷) said.

  Ministry of Education guidelines mandate 20 credits of “mandatory” Chinese language courses, with the four credit “materials” courses the only electives mandated, he said.

  

  National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of Taiwan History director Hsueh Hua-yuan, right, speaks about the pending high-school curriculum guidelines yesterday in Taipei.

  Photo: Tu Chu-wen, Taipei Times

  The “materials” consist of selections from the canonical Confucian classics The Analects (論語), Mencius (孟子), Great Learning (大學) and Doctrine of the Mean (中庸), which comprise the “Four Books” chosen by the Sung Dynasty’s Zhu Xi (朱熹) to serve as a basic introduction to Confucian thought.

  While study of the “Four Books” has been a mandatory component of Chinese language education for most of the nation’s history, the “materials” were briefly converted into elective courses before being reinserted into requirements in 2012.

  “These materials aren’t representative of ‘China’ or ‘culture’ because they focus on Confucianism at the expense of Taoism and other traditions,” Shen said. “We also have new immigrants and Aborigines — why don’t the requirements use their cultures’ ‘basic materials’?”

  The inclusion of “basic materials” courses in requirements reflected a broader dominance of language courses in the new requirements, which preserve the 38 credits previously allocated for English and Chinese-language courses, while cutting credits for social studies and natural sciences.

  While schools are to be allowed to individually mandate additional requirements, current ministry guidelines guarantee students a minimum of only 30 credits in natural science and social studies combined, raising the possibility some schools will neglect these areas, he said.

  The new guidelines are part of implementation plans for mandatory 12-year education.

  National Chengchi University history professor Ching Shih-chi (金仕起) criticized the guidelines’ continued inclusion of a mandatory “national defense education” (全民國防教育) course in place of a previous military training course as preserving a “relic of authoritarianism,” which was a “waste of time.”

  “Given that the ministry has promised to remove military instructors from schools within five years, we don’t see why this course is still included,” he said.

  “They’re making this a required course, but they don’t have any measures in place to prepare new instructors — so the likely result will be that the military instructors will continue to teach the course as before,” National Chengchi University history professor Hsueh Hua-yuan (薛化元) said. “If this part isn’t reformed, you won’t be able to just tell military instructors to leave campuses, because there’s no one else who will be able to teach their course.”

  The academics also criticized plans for “hasty implementation” of social studies credit cuts, which are scheduled to go into effect simultaneously with other changes in 2018, even though formal new social studies curriculum standards have yet to be promulgated following an extended battle over allegedly “pro-China” shifts in tone under the previous administration.
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