The Sun Yat-sen School yesterday said it would initiate a referendum campaign to rebuild morality and Zhonghua culture (中華文化) in schools, marking the third referendum drive by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated organization launched in recent weeks.
The organization wants moral courses to form part of the 12-year compulsory education program in schools and increase Zhonghua culture — the culture of Chinese races — text in textbooks, Sun Yat-sen School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) told a news conference in Taipei.
“Schools have removed the moral and ethical education of the four anchors and eight virtues (四維八德) and focus only on Western-oriented democratic politics and civic knowledge,” said Chang, who is a political science professor at National Chengchi University.
The four anchors refer to a sense of propriety, justice, integrity and honor, while the eight virtues are loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, faithfulness, justice, peace and harmony.
Such lessons could die out if textbooks only teach students about personal rights and obligations and the concepts of civil disobedience and self-determination, Chang said.
Chang also took issue with a growing trend in schools to acknowledge Taiwan’s cultural diversity, but a refusal to accept that its diversity revolves around Zhonghua culture.
Fo Guang University’s Department of Chinese Literature and Application professor Hsieh Ta-ning (謝大寧), who served on the government’s curriculum committee under former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, compared the situation in China with that in Taiwan.
“In China, school students have to study ancient Chinese literary classics through to senior high,” Hsieh said, adding that a Chinese student graduating from senior-high school would have typically memorized up to 200 Chinese poems and 50 classical Chinese articles.
In contrast, moral courses that used to be taught in Taiwan’s junior-high schools alongside civics lessons have been removed, which is essentially desinicization, Hsieh said.
“If this trend continues, what kind of a place will Taiwan become?” Hsieh asked.
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