Aboriginal rights campaigners at a Legislative Yuan forum yesterday called for the passage of an Aboriginal schools act, criticizing flaws in the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples (原住民族教育法), saying there is a lack of funding and resources for Aboriginal education.
“In the 20 years since the passage of the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples we have discovered that there are a number of places where it is difficult to implement,” New Power Party Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal said.
“While we had hoped to establish village schools for each of the different tribes and the Council of Indigenous Peoples has done its best, legal restrictions pose all sorts of obstacles, to the point where we have been forced to move in the direction of adding an extra summer semester,” Pacidal said, calling for legal revisions to round out Aboriginal education.
Aboriginal education at regular schools suffers from across-the-board shortages of qualified teachers and suitable curricula, said Salone Ishahavut, a professor of indigenous development at National Chi Nan University and a member of the Bunun people.
“We need at least about 20 different sets of curricula [for different communities], but we do not have any; instead, we are being forced to rely on the efforts of individual schools and teachers to come up with materials in their spare time,” she said, adding that the percentage of Aboriginal teachers at all levels of education is less than half the percentage of Aboriginal students.
Only 52 percent of Aboriginal students attend college, while only 17 percent of those in college are part of Aboriginal education programs, which themselves lack dedicated teachers, staff and offices, she said.
“College education is training indigenous young people to become cogs in wider society and not teaching the skills needed for indigenous self-government,” she said, adding that more than 50 percent of Aboriginal college students major in vocational branches such as tourism and culinary arts.
Any legal revision should clearly mandate the scope and funding for Aboriginal education at regular schools to remedy the dependence on goodwill and funding from local governments, said Saidai Latavelengane, a Pingtung elementary-school principal and member of the Rukai community.
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