A plaque from a now-defunct elementary school has sparked a dispute in Penhghu County between residents of Yuanbei Township (員貝) and a junior-high school in Magong City (馬公).
The plaque, originally from Yuanbei Elementary School, is on display at Wenguang Junior High School, but Yuanbei residents want it returned to the township.
Wenguang said the plaque was found in 2006 on a beach on Yuanbei Island by the school’s then-principal Yang Chi-ching (楊啟清), when visiting the island during a beach cleaning event.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
Yang said at the time that the school hoped to pass on the spirit conveyed by the plaque to all of its attending students.
Its inscription reads: “To know etiquette, to be just, to remain principled and incorruptible, and to know right from wrong.”
However, Yuanbei residents dispute that narrative.
“It had been sitting in a school classroom since 1995, we don’t understand how it turned up on the beach in 2006,” Yuanbei Village Warden Chen Tian-jui (陳天瑞) said on Sunday.
Although Yuanbei Elementary School was decommissioned in 1995, it remains a fond memory for many Yuanbei residents and the village hoped to retain the plaque — something hundreds of Yuanbei school students remembered — as a memento of the school, Chen said.
Wenguang dean Yang Chyong-yi (仰瓊宜) said that the plaque has already become a part of Wenguang’s history and the school would not return it.
Founded in 1998, Wenguang is the youngest of the county’s schools and yet, it has two school plaques, etched with different mottos.
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