Taiwan History textbook sparks hullabaloo

History textbook sparks hullabaloo

‘ADULTERATED’ HISTORY:The textbook, published by a pro-unification advocate, says independence movements risk plunging the country into ‘a deranged state’

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling holds up a controversial history textbook in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times

A history textbook to be used in senior-high schools next semester has sparked controversy among teachers and the public, who say its content constitutes “brainwashing,” as it is written with a “China-oriented perspective of history.”

Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) responded that each textbook’s “expression” should be respected.

The history textbook, published by Shi Ji Cultural Co (史記文化), says that movements advocating independence “are a negation of the Republic of China and its Constitution” that would plunge society into a “deranged state about national identity” and that they are thereby “bad for Taiwan’s development.”

The controversial content was first brought to light by a netizen who uploaded photographs taken from the textbook on Monday night and said that a high-school history teacher said that “the school’s top administrative level” had received the textbook sample from “the university end” and told history teachers to start using the textbook starting next semester.

The netizen, who is also a schoolteacher, further revealed on PTT — the nation’s largest online bulletin board — that the person who gave the textbook to school officials “is an evaluation committee member responsible for assessing the school’s performance.”

In the legislature in Taipei yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said during a question-and-answer session that the textbook is written from a “extremely pro-China, Japan-hating, anti-independence, DPP-vilifying and KMT-eulogizing” perspective.

Kuan showed slides of photographs taken from the textbook, which say that problems with Taiwan’s ethnic relations “partially originate from Taiwan’s frequent elections, in which certain political parties constantly incite disharmony among different ethnic groups that were just beginning to meld, causing polarization and breeding antagonism between the groups.”

Kuan also said that in the chapter on cross-strait relations, the textbook praises the government’s policy of a “diplomatic truce” with China, saying that it has greatly improved cross-strait relations, as now the two sides no longer compete for diplomatic allies.

Kuan said that not only does that overlook the fact that China is still trying to impede Taiwan’s activities in the international community by, for example, requiring it to be described as part of China in the WHO, but “the textbook also ends the chapter with statements intimidating readers by branding the idea of a state-to-state relationship as inciting war.”

She added that the publisher reportedly plans to call on teachers to support using the textbook and “if a certain share is reached, it would offer China tour junkets.”

Chiang said before the question-and-answer session yesterday that the textbook “has been evaluated and approved through an appropriate procedure” and that he would respect the textbook’s content if it has been approved.

Chiang said he hopes that teachers “help students develop critical thinking while teaching” and that he would leave it to teachers’ and students’ judgement when they encounter “certain types of speech.”

Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) responded to Kuan’s questions by saying that the Executive Yuan respects schools’ autonomy and does not interfere with their choice of textbooks, which Kuan described as shirking political responsibility.

According to a report in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) in July last year, when the controversy over history textbooks had already arisen, Shi-Ji and two other publishers — Bei-Yi Cultural Co and Ke-Yi Cultural Co — were owned by pro-unification Chinese Integration Association chief executive officer Cheng Chih-shen (鄭旗生). Association chairman Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) served as a consultant to the companies.

Yesterday, the DPP said the controversial textbook was biased and not written in accordance with democratic principles.

While Chiang said it would be up to the schools to choose which textbook to use, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a news conference that the ministry’s response was like “permitting adulterated food to remain on the shelves in the name of consumer choice.”

The DPP demanded that the ministry first rescind its approval of the textbooks — Volume 1 and 2 of the high-school history textbook published by Shi Ji — and second ask the publishers to rewrite the content.

The party added that the ministry should also investigate the review process.

“If the education ministry refuses to do so, DPP legislators will launch counteractions in the legislature,” Lin said.

Lin said that Taiwan’s sovereignty is a matter of consensus among the public and that the textbooks should not praise the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yet smear the opposition.

“These textbooks were written under the guidelines established in 2011. We cannot help but worry about what textbooks written under the curriculum guidelines adjusted this year will be like. The potential for ‘brainwashing’ will be a serious concern,” he said.

Additional reporting by Chris Wang

Video: Bill Gates “Explains” Common Core

April 27, 2014

In the following six-minute video at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in March 2014, Bill Gates demonstrates his privileged view of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Gates has contributed over $4.3 million to AEI, with over $1 million in 2012 for “exploring the challenges of Common Core,” among other issues, so it is only fitting that AEI should promulgate Gates’ CCSS opinions.

Allow me to counter Gates’ billionaire view with my hundredaire reality.

Gates opens with CCSS as “not a curriculum” and that CCSS does not “tell teachers how to teach.” Nevertheless, according to his 2009 speech to legislators, Gates anticipates that CCSS will lead to curriculum and assessments that set teachers at the mercy of “market forces”:

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]

Moving on.

In his selling of CCSS, Gates proposes that “ordering” of standards has been a “problem.” Ordering of standards has nothing to do with the standards themselves. Moreover, at this point in his explanation, Gates assumes that “sameness”– all states’ having the same standards– automatically translates into “better.”

A reminder that Gates views reform as an experiment that “they have to give us”– not the least of which is CCSS, which Gates has spent billions to fund.

Back to Gates’ AEI CCSS “explanation”:

Gates next tries to connect “the size of textbooks” with the US’ “now” having low scores on international tests. In truth, the US has never scored well on international tests, and yet we have remained a world power. Thus, the US’ scoring low “now” is old news. At this point, Gates praises Massachusetts’ international test scores but does not bother to explain why he assumes that Massachusetts’ standards automatically and directly translated into high test scores. Gates also fails to account for pushing CCSS onto Massachusetts if he deems Massachusetts a model for suitable standards.

His earlier statements on the importance of standards “ordering” apparently forgotten, Gates next assumes that “better” standards produce “better” test scores; however, he does not account for the utter lack of alignment between states’ national test scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and the widely-swallowed Fordham Institute ratings of state standards.

And now, for the Gates version of CCSS creation:

In his attempt to explain the creating of CCSS, Gates slips up and says “a bunch of teachers” questioned the size of textbooks and the standards but quickly catches himself and says “governors” (time 2:35). He seems unsure about which group initiated CCSS: “I think it was the National Governors Association said, said, ‘We ought to get together all of this.”

And then he lies: “A bunch of teachers met with a bunch of experts. So in reading and writing and math, these knowledge levels were written down” (time 2:50). Gates makes it sound like “a bunch of teachers” developed CCSS. Furthermore, Gates never explains his distinction between “teachers” and “experts.” I have documented in detail that “teachers” were not the central decision makers for CCSS (see here and here and here).

Gates is having chronology problems. He states, “These knowledge levels were written down. And at some point 46 states had, uh, adopted that…” (time 2:55).

In June 2009, NGA had announced that “46 states” had already “signed on” for CCSS, one month prior to NGA’s announcing the first CCSS work group in July 2009.

At time 4:35, Gates insists that the federal government is not “dictate” CCSS participation: “States can opt in; they can opt out. As they do this, they should look at this ‘status quo,’ which is poor. Uh, they should look and find something that is high, high achievement, that’s got quality, and… if they have two that they are comparing, they ought to probably pick something in common….”

Again with the assumption that “common” is better. This idea connects with the Fordham Institute push to have states with standards that Fordham rated as equal to or better than CCSS still choose CCSS.

It is easier to “unleash” those “powerful market forces” to a standardized US education system.

As for the US Department of Education’s not “dictating” CCSS: Consider the recent plight of Washington state when it refused to “comply” with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dictum of grading teachers using student test scores: US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan withdrew Washington’s NCLB waiver. Washington state responded by saying it would not be intimidated into obeying the federal government on matters of state education policy.

Indiana, the first state to “abandon” CCSS, has curiously decided not to return to its former standards, though the CCSS-promoting Fordham Institute rated Indiana’s former standards as equal or superior to CCSS. (Fordham’s Mike Petrilli tried to talkIndiana into “going common,” just as Gates stated as the way to go.)

Instead, the “new” Indiana standards resemble CCSS.

Is Indiana afraid of what Arne might do?

Yet Bill assures us that states have a choice– and that “choice” should be for the “new status quo”: CCSS.

Why “common”?

Bill tells us why. It has nothing to do with students or teachers:

“You get more free market competition. Scale is good for free market competition. Individual state regulatory capture is not good for competition” (time 5:05).

There it is. Bill wants to experiment with “market forces,” and he wants to do so with your life and mine.

Not with his life. Not with the lives of his children.

At the end of his speech, Gates notes that whatever states decide regarding CCSS “is fine,” though he cautions that “it does affect the quality of your (??) teaching” (time 5:40).

And how, Bill. And how.

Video: Krashen - The Natural Approach

Social Media Could Predict the World's Next Mass Protest

February 18, 2014 // 07:27 PM EST

Image: Ivan Bandura/Flickr

Scientists and data wizards have been trying to predict everything from illness to financial markets to elections and revolutions—and with some success. After social networks’ presumably instrumental role in the Arab Spring came to light, researchers started digging into whether social media platforms could also be used to anticipate major social uprisings. A new study out of MIT and posted on the arXiv preprint server is the latest to give it a whirl. 

Study author Nathan Kallus says he’s found a new approach to predictive analysis that “validates and quantifies the common intuition that data on social media and the web (beyond mainstream news sources) are able to predict major events.”

Image: MIT

Using the 2013 coup d'etat in Egypt as test model, he fed 300,000 web sources in seven languages through a computer, which used natural language processing, keyword search, and sentiment analysis to spot clues that a political upheaval was afoot. He found that by extrapolating the resulting patterns into future, he could forecast upcoming protests with “high accuracy.” 

Image: MIT

Okay. But of course, it’s much easier to spot patterns and clues in retrospect, when you know what you’re looking for. The question of whether the right algorithm can turn Twitter into a cyberspace crystal ball is still unanswered. So is, for that matter, whether we’d even want it to.

If you ask me, that’s the more interesting question. If “massive online-accessible public data,” as Kallus calls it, does eventually enable reliable social forecasts, what would the ramifications be? The MIT study says warning people about major protests could prevent unnecessary violence. Or businesses, governments, and homes could ramp up security if they’re able to anticipate an attack.  

But what if oppressive regimes leveraged the cyberspace crystal ball to evade or thwart public demonstrations? Could too much insight shift the power away from the crowd and back toward the "Man," as we're already seeing online surveillance threatening to do?

It’s not a crazy question. Early last year, before the PRISM scandal hit, news that law enforcement was tracking and analyzing internet users’ info to anticipate crimescaused a major stir in privacy and civil rights circles. A couple years before that, the Pentagon began studying big data and predictive algorithms as part of its intelligence-gathering strategy—specifically focused on political crises, revolutions, and social and economic instability.

But I suppose at this point such theoretical dystopian fears are premature. Future-predicting social media experiments are still riddled with caveats. Despite years of trying, no one's quite figured out how to harness the monster of publicly available online data to predict the future. It’s a formidable task—Twitter alone sees some 58 million tweets every day. 

To take the MIT study for example, there could be a lot of buzz on Twitter leading up to an event that for whatever reason never came to be. Or someone could theoretically decide to game the system with fraudulent tweets to derail a planned protest.

Whether social media will ever be an effective peephole into the future, there’s no way to tell. But the mere idea that it could be possible, that someday it probably will be, is too titillating for data scientists to ignore.