Minister of education affirms curriculum guidelines

IN WITH NEW?：Opposition legislators said the presence of a new curriculum does not automatically invalidate an older one — contrary to ministerial statements

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Thu, May 07, 2015 - Page 3

Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) yesterday said that the new curriculum guidelines should be followed in new textbooks set to be printed and would be used to draw up college entrance examination questions, despite widespread criticism.

The legislature’s Education and Culture Committee again invited the minister and other related public officials to report on the curriculum adjustments, which opposition legislators and civic groups have said were made dishonestly, and move students toward a Chinese-centered perspective.

Since the Taipei City Government recently said that its schools would continue using the unadjusted curriculum amid ongoing legal issues pertaining to the new one, five of the six special municipalities — barring the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-governed New Taipei City — have decided to stick to the previous curriculum.

KMT legislators Kung Wen-chi (孔文吉) and Chen Shu-hui (陳淑慧) expressed their worries over the “one country, two systems” problem concerning the textbooks and its possible effect on students, with Chen questioning the legitimacy of Taipei City Government’s calling on the ministry to avoid including contentious parts of the new curriculum in the nationwide exams.

“The new curriculum guidelines would be an executive regulation by which the schools should abide. With their promulgation, the old curriculum would cease to exist, and the exams would be based on the new curriculum,” Wu said.

Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lai Cheng-chang (賴振昌) challenged Wu’s statement, saying that the emergence of a new curriculum does not automatically invalidate an older one.

Democratic Progressive Party legislators Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) and Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) said that as the license issued by the ministry for printing textbooks based on the old curriculum would not expire until 2018, there should be no legal prohibition against using textbooks based on the old curriculum.

Refusing to respond directly to the question of whether the license is legal, Wu repeated that the previous curriculum should be replaced.

Conventions have guided the process of the replacement of the old with the new curriculum, “and since there had been little controversy in the past, the invalidation of the old textbook license was never officially required. However, without it, we have an ambiguous situation now,” KMT Legislator Chen Pi-han (陳碧涵) said.

Challenged by Cheng on the adjustment-making procedures, which she accused of being illegitimate and flawed, the minister appeared piqued and urged the legislator to “point out the controversial parts to allow [all] to face [the contention] in a sensible way.”

However, when Cheng picked up his appeal for opening up and requested a new round of public hearings on the parts met with disputes, Wu said “the writing of the [new] textbooks has been finished” and the ministry will “showcase the new textbooks for public examination.”

The committee, after hours of negotiation, resolved the passage of two extemporaneous motions: that the ministry will respect each school’s right on textbook choosing, and that the College Entrance Examination Center will avoid controversial topics when designing the exams.