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.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
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