In S. Korea Non-Natives Can Become English Teachers

Non-Natives Can Become English Teachers

By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

Non-native English speakers from India and other countries that use English as an official language will be able to teach at public schools from next year.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Justice said Sunday the government is opening the door for English teaching positions wider to secure more foreign English teachers at primary and secondary schools nationwide.

The government has so far allowed English teacher assistant jobs at public schools only to native-English speakers who had completed more than two years of their college courses; and the nationality of the eligible applicants was limited to seven countries ― the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland.

``There are about 50 countries that have adopted English as an official language. However, we will not open the door to all teachers from the countries,'' Oh Seok-hwan, an official of the education ministry, told The Korea Times. ``Only foreigners whose countries have trade agreements with Korea can apply for the positions. These include India, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines,'' he added.

The number of foreigners holding English-teaching E-2 visa has increased to 19,934 this year, up from 17,721 in 2007 and 15,001 in 2006. Among the visa holders, some 4,300 are working at public schools as assistant English teachers. However, many schools in rural areas are still in need of native English speakers. The government sees relaxation of the visa rule as a way to help those schools have foreign teachers for English conversation classes.

Requirements for the non-native teachers, however, will be much stricter than those for native speakers. Non-native speakers have to hold a bachelor's degree or above in English studies and teaching licenses from their countries. According to the education ministry, more than half of current foreign assistant teachers don't even have basic English teaching certificates such as TESOL.

English education experts are positive about the plan. ``This word `native speaker' is an invention there's no reason why we should consider someone lucky enough to hold a passport from a country using English as a first language country to be a better speaker than someone from a land where English is used less prominently. I know many Filipinos and Indians who speak English more comfortably than some people who were born in the U.S.,'' said Rob Dickey, an American English professor.

As for concerns over the ``harsh'' accent of non-native speakers, the professor said, ``Many Americans can't understand Australians and vice versa, so purity of accent is a political consideration. The other fact is more than 50 percent of all visitors to Korea who use English are not native speakers, so it would be good for students to hear many different varieties of English.''

Lee Byung-min, an English education professor at Seoul National University, said that qualified non-native speakers with teaching licenses would be much better for Korean English education than native speakers without teaching licenses. ``We can also choose highly qualified non-native teachers at lower costs as their wages are relatively lower,'' Lee said.

Parents' groups also showed positive reaction to Asian English teachers. ``Korean English education has put too lopsided focus on American English so far and there have been many unqualified teachers at schools. We don't oppose English teachers from India or the Philippines as long as they are proven teachers,'' said Yoon Sook-ja, chairwoman of the National Association of Parents for True Education.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr

Groups criticize Yilan’s plans for teachers

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

National Alliance of Parents Organizations chairman Wu Fu-pin, third left, Secondary and Elementary-School Principals Association of the ROC director-general Hsueh Chun-kuang, second left, and other education group representatives yesterday speak in Taipei against the Yilan City Government’s joint agreement for teachers.

Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times

Education groups opposing a draft collective agreement by the Yilan County Government to improve teachers’ welfare yesterday criticized the county government and the Yilan County Teachers’ Union over proposals they said would waste taxpayers’ money and result in inequality among teachers.

Secondary and Elementary School Principals Association director Hsueh Chun-kuang (薛春光) said that despite the draft, the union, which comprises 42 elementary and junior-high schools, has threatened legal action against the county government if it grants non-union members the same benefits as its members.

He warned the county government not to think the collective agreement would settle the dispute.

National Alliance of Parents Organizations director Wu Fu-pin (吳福濱) said the union wants to cap teachers’ daily work hours at eight hours a day, from 8am to 4pm, which means that teachers may neglect students participating in after-school programs.

He said union members are lobbying for overtime pay for the guidance they provide to students with poor grades, but it is their responsibility as teachers to help these students and monitor their progress.

He said that teachers at public schools are civil servants, and if they want to enjoy the same benefits as other workers, they should forfeit their salaries during summer and winter vacations and accept unpaid leave — as other workers do — when schools are in dire financial situations.

He also took issue with the union’s demand that they be granted subsidies for health checkups, which according to the Ministry of the Education cost NT$3,500 each biennially.

“You cannot expect to have the best of both worlds,” Wu said.

He panned Yilan Department of Education Department Director-General Wen Chao-shun (文超順) for making concessions that paved the way for the draft, which he said would degrade the quality of education and result in an education system that puts teachers ahead of students.

In response, union director Chu Yao-lin (朱堯麟) denied that members demanded overtime pay.

“Our position has always been that the extra time invested by teachers should be compensated by time off in lieu,” Chu said.

He said that the union made the demand that teachers who have not joined a union should not enjoy the same perks as those who have so that the union’s operations conform to the Collective Agreement Act (團體協約法).

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法) also stipulates that teachers’ medical checkups should be covered by the ministry, he said.

Chu said that at present, only high-ranking school administrators at primary schools and junior high schools are granted subsidies for checkups.

Separately, National Federation of Teachers’ Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said that all of the union’s demands were legitimate. He said that he once suggested that the ministry abolish summer and winter vacations, so that teachers must work if they want to be paid, but the ministry rejected his proposal.

He criticized the attacks directed at union members by the principals’ association, saying that the association made the criticism because it could not stand teachers negotiating toe-to-toe with principals.

Both Chu and Chang said that they welcome more teachers to join the union, so that they can enjoy the benefits granted to them by law.

In related news, Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) on Thursday said during a nationwide meeting attended by local government-level education heads: “In principle, teachers’ work hours should be eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, but teachers should always keep one notion in mind: ‘If students are still around, teachers should be too.’”

Approval process still opaque: teachers

BOYCOTT:The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions said its members would reject invitations to participate in public hearings on proposed curriculum guidelines

By Abraham Gerber and Sean Lin  /  Staff reporters

Chang Hsu-cheng, president of the National Federation of Teachers’ Unions, right, speaks at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

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The approval process for a new 12-year education plan continues to use the same opaque procedures behind earlier controversial adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines, a teachers’ union alleged yesterday, calling for the process to be “rebooted.”

“The ‘fine-tuning’ of history curriculum guidelines was already unacceptable, but we care even more about the process under which new guidelines for all subjects are to be produced,” National Federation of Teachers’ Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) told a news conference in Taipei. “While in the past the Ministry of Education has tightly controlled the drafting of guidelines, we feel the process should be opened up to allow for a more diverse range of opinions to be represented.”

Chang said that all appointments to new guideline drafting committees were made by committee conveners directly appointed by Ko Hwa-wei (柯華葳), president of the National Academy for Educational Research, the agency that oversees the creation of curriculum guidelines, adding that a reliance on personal relationships had resulted in “like-minded” committee members making decisions that did not reflect the public’s point of view.

Following the so-called “minor adjustments” of social studies curriculum guidelines last year, the academy is currently in the process of drafting new guidelines as part of plans to implement a compulsory 12-year education plan. The ministry’s plan calls for sweeping changes to curriculum guidelines beginning in 2018, including a sharp reduction to the number of required classes to make room for a range of new electives.

Li Ya-jing (李雅菁), chief of the federation’s professional development center, said the academy rejected the vast majority of teachers nominated by the union, with none of their elementary-school and middle-school teacher nominees appointed.

While the academy invited the union to nominate representatives for “consultative forums,” membership was still subject to approval by the drafting committee conveners and any forum conclusions would merely be sent to the committees for “consideration” rather than having any kind of binding force, Li said.

She called for implementation of new guidelines to be delayed to allow for a “reboot” of the process, including a reshuffling of the drafting committees’ membership to allow for more substantial federation representation.

Guideline drafts proposed by the academy’s committees were rejected earlier this month by the ministry’s curriculum development team for unspecified reasons.

Chang, a member of the team, said he did not know why the guidelines were rejected as he was abroad at the time, adding that the power of the team was limited, because it could only veto guidelines rather than directly call for changes.

Chang said the federation would turn down all invitations sent by the academy requesting their members’ presence at public hearings on the curriculum guidelines, which are scheduled to take place next month and in October, because the academy’s actions are an attempt to mislead the public into believing that the guidelines were introduced after effective communication.

The academy rejected the allegation, saying four teachers recommended by the federation were on the curriculum guideline development and revision teams.

It also dismissed accusations that members of the development teams were chosen by an “old boys’ network,” saying the members were vetted from a pool of academics and experts twice as large as its current staff, in compliance with due legal process.

Regarding the alleged rigging of the guidelines approval process, the academy said the guidelines are the result of collaboration among more than 700 certified teachers who invested considerable amounts of time and energy to gather information, draft, debate and discuss their work, adding that counseling and review committees have been put into place, while online forums and public hearings have also been arranged.

On the allegation that it has not made public the roster of development team members, the academy said that was a “clear misunderstanding,” as the list, as well as session minutes, are readily available on its Web site.

Taiwan Curriculum Protests: Curriculum adjustments ‘undermine Aborigines’

Curriculum Protests: Curriculum adjustments ‘undermine Aborigines’

By Chen Ping-hung and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Ministry of Education’s “China-centric” adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines seek to undermine Aboriginal history and culture, Presbyterian pastor Omi Wilang said.

Omi, an Atayal, said that Aborigines are the most qualified to address Taiwanese history, and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) “government-in-exile” — which retreated to Taiwan from China after it lost the Chinese Civil War — is trying to reconnect with its Chinese roots at a time when Aboriginal peoples are seeking to re-establish their cultural traditions.

Taiwanese Aborigines have nothing to do with the Yangtze River and Yellow River in China, Omi said, questioning the ministry’s objective in educating Aboriginal students about Chinese and unificationist ideology.

The new guidelines are tantamount to Sinicization and aims to eliminate and assimilate Aboriginal students, which is an act of state violence, he said, adding that he was thankful to students participating in an anti-curriculum campaign.

Different Aboriginal peoples — be they Bunun, Atayal or Sediq — have different histories, cultures and customs, he said.

However, the ministry is using the state’s power to infiltrate the history and lives of Aborigines with its unificationist agenda, preventing Aboriginal students from living up to their ancestors’ legacies, he said.

Many Aboriginal peoples have lost their roots because of state violence: They know about the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Amur River in China, but do not know what the different mountains in Taiwan means to different Aboriginal communities — such as Dawu Mountain (大武山), which is sacred to the Paiwan, Yushan (玉山) to the Bunun and Dabajian Mountain (大霸尖山) to the Atayal, he said.

Those sacred mountains are where Aborigines have shaped their cultures and bred numerous generations, which should not be lost to later generations, Omi Wilang said.

Those who are educated in the new curriculum would become unrecognizable to their ancestral spirits and would be unable to cross the rainbow bridge to the hereafter, he said.

The pastor was referring to the Atayal belief that the souls of the deceased have to pass the rainbow bridge to where the spirits of their ancestors dwell, and those who do not have facial tattoos or other distinguishing marks would not be recognized by their ancestors and would fall off the bridge, unable to get into heaven or reunite with their people.

The new curriculum seeks to replace Aboriginal culture with a China-centric ideology, which is against Aborigines’ mission to pass down their history and cultural legacy, Omi said.

All people are created equal in the eyes of God, whether they are Chinese with a population of 1.3 billion or Thao — the nation’s smallest Aboriginal group with only 716 people, he said.

The curriculum should embrace pluralism and describe truthfully the history of different peoples, he said.

The Republic of China designates Oct. 25 as Taiwan’s Retrocession Day, but the date spells ruin for Aborigines, he said, adding that different peoples should respect each other and their points of view.

The Problem With Taiwanese Eyes

Amid stagnating wages and a brain drain, deprivation of daylight is ruining the eyes of Taiwan’s children.

By Jens Kastner

March 12, 2015

When asked why everyone in this neon lamp-lit, windowless classroom wears either thick glasses or contact lenses, the Taipei cram school students are circling in on the usual suspects: the super-fine strokes constituting the Chinese script, TVs, and smartphones are collectively to blame, they say. Not crossing the teenagers’ minds is that the real culprit is their eyes’ dramatic deprivation of daylight; an ad hoc survey reveals that it’s on average less than 30 minutes per day that they spend outdoors in the daylight.

Nearsightedness, or myopia, is a condition in which the eyeball lengthens, so that distant objects become blurry. As Taiwanese children are pushed by state and parents to study inhumanely long hours, 18 percent of first graders, 52 percent of sixth graders and 80 percent of university students on the island were myopic in early 2014, with the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health reporting that the ratio of second-graders with myopia at Taipei’s elementary schools has increased by a whopping 10 percent since. While both disease prevalence and the average degree of the eye’s degeneration are far higher than what is found in the West, the acceleration is also alarming compared to other ethnic Chinese populations in the region. As decades of massive investment flow out of Taiwan, causing domestic wage levels to stagnate and the wealth gap to grow, many Taiwanese families see a white-collar job in mainland China, Hong Kong or Singapore for their children as the ultimate aim of education, and they are effectively prepared to sacrifice good eyesight for it.

“We know that the eyes’ deprivation of daylight is a major factor because of studies comparing the daily routines of ethnic Chinese children in Singapore and Sydney, the latter being a place where myopia is much less of a problem,” says Kung Hsien-lan, deputy director of the Taiwanese government’s Health Promotion Center.

“Taiwanese parents are doing more full-time jobs, and their children spend not only the afternoons and evenings at the cram schools but also the weekends,” she adds.

Ms. Kung furthermore laments that on the rare days when the families do have some time together, “they would often visit indoor playgrounds or stay home because the moms fear getting a suntan, which they perceive as ugly.”

Back in the Taipei cram school classroom, Peter Wang explains that he walks 10 minutes to the public high school in the morning. The 13-year-old suffers from myopia of -5 diopter, which is a grade of severity only 5 percent of populations in non-East Asian advanced countries reach.

In the late afternoon – when all year round it’s already dusk in Taiwan, given its proximity to the equator – Peter would then take a short school bus ride from the high school to the cram school, where he usually stays until 9:30 p.m. Peter does not see much daylight on Saturdays and Sundays, either, as he spends the whole day at two different cram schools.

“Yes, we are supposed to have PE classes outdoors for an hour twice a week, but those are almost always borrowed by the teachers of the more important subjects like Chinese or math,” Peter says.

“I am afraid that the myopia will worsen in the years I still have to go to school, but I must learn more to get into a good university even though I feel the deterioration is speedy.”

Presenting a list of reasons why attending a “good university” to “land a good job overseas” is imperative regardless the frightening repercussions for their eyesight, Peter and his classmates talk of university graduates in Taiwan making only NT$22,000 ($690) per month as starting salaries, while those going to the mainland “get the same amount but in Renminbi,” meaning about five times more. The youngsters also talk of Taipei home prices having become far out of reach for all those who did not make it into a “good university” because they botched their entrance exams.

The notions expressed in the classroom are well supported by economic data.

According local media citing estimations by the Ministry of Labor, Taiwan over the past 10 years has been steadily leaking 27,000 white-collar workers on average a year. According to the Ministry of Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency, an average Taipei income earner would have to work 15.01 years without spending anything to save enough money to buy an average Taipei home, meaning Taiwan has about the highest average housing price-to-income ratio in the world. And behind both figures is another story: Taiwanese investment in mainland China has since the early 1990s accumulated to $144,7 billion, as the once formidable domestic electronics industry, among other sectors, moved most production lines over to the mainland. Despite the current economic slowdown in China, Taiwan’s mainland-bound investments continued to grow by 13.2 percent, to $9.8 billion in 2014, easily outpacing private investment at home, which grew by only half that rate last year. It’s a phenomenon depressing wage levels, which after adjustment for inflation are currently on the same level as in the mid-1990s.

At the same time, the billions of dollars of Taiwanese investments in mainland China have been generating huge returns for Taiwan’s tens of thousands of taishang, the name given to mainland-based expats, so that a lot of undeclared and untraceable money returns to Taiwan, much of it being pumped into the Greater Taipei property market.

“Most parents think their children’s only way for development is to study for a high diploma to get a job and earn enough money to adjust to these times,” says Chiang Chih-cheng, director of the National Taichung University of Education’s Department of Education.

“The greatest pressure is in senior high school, as the parents want their children to pass the exams to enter one of the public universities, which are seen as better than the private ones by prospective employers,” he elaborates.

From Nearsighted Children to Blind Elderly?

Dr. Luke Lin, a retired professor formerly teaching at the National Taiwan University’s College of Ophthalmology, has surveyed myopia in Taiwan since the early 1980s, when he was ordered to do so by the Republic of China military. It was an era when it felt like an invasion attempt by rival communist China could have come at any time, and the poor eyesight of recruits would have had obvious repercussions for their combat readiness.

“The first three island-wide surveys I conducted were not that shocking, but things got bad after the turn of the millennium,” Lin recalls.

“And it is not only the number of sufferers that is alarming but also the increasing prevalence of high myopia, a condition you would seldom find in the West.”

Lin explains that the actual problem is not nearsightedness per se, as the deterioration process slows with adulthood, and poor vision can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, or laser surgery. Instead, he says, it is that in high myopia cases the eyeball is stretched to an extent that the tissue becomes thinner and fragile, in turn inviting the whole spectrum of eye diseases.

“Most countries do not have well registered courses of severe visual impairment cases, and they just say ‘he has retinal detachment, he has glaucoma,’ and so forth even though the initial problem was high myopia,” he says.

“Although an imperfect diagnosis code makes our data scientifically inconclusive, I am convinced myopia is the most important cause of blindness and visual handicap in many parts of the world.”

Asked about the outlook for Taiwan’s society, Dr. Lin is not optimistic, despite the government’s recent efforts to bring the children out of the classrooms by making more daily outdoor time mandatory at schools. He believes that Taiwanese parents are way too busy at their jobs, working to pay off their high mortgages and the children’s education, leaving their children in the care of Southeast Asian nannies, who will always be tempted to keep the children indoors, silenced with the tablet computer.

“Change will be too slow for Taiwan if the pressure at school and the stringent system of university entry exam examinations persists, and parents and babysitters lack the energy to take the kids outside to see the world,” Dr. Lin says.

Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based journalist.

My Opinion: A Review of Taiwan's High School Curriculum Controversy (Pt. 2)

My Opinion: A Review of Taiwan's High School Curriculum Controversy (Pt. 2)

          
With "Debatable Items" of the new curriculum guidelines (reported by Taipei Times):

This is a review of the Taiwan High School Curriculum Controversy. I tried to cull a  list of grievances opponents made to the modifications in textbooks content. In July 2013, three pro-unification publishers changed some content after directives from KMT consultants in the Ministry of Education. 

     In May 2014, a teacher from Taichung showed slides of photos from the textbooks to the DPP with the changes to content.
     In February 2015, the Taipei High Administrative Court on ruled against the Ministry of Education in a case involving the ministry’s controversial “minor adjustments” to high-school curriculum guidelines for history, civic and social studies, Chinese and geography saying its information should be more transparent and complete for public perusal. 
     The DPP claimed the changes “de-Taiwanization and Sinicization” of the education system tailored to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) view of history. The DPP organized more than 50 protesters — joined by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) who rallied in front of the Ministry of Education building.
     In April 2015 an alliance called for a textbook boycott because of the "conservative ideology of committee members."

     In May 2015 The chairman of the pro-unification Chinese Integration Association, has said that younger generations — without the cultivation of Chinese culture — have become empty, “with no identity, confidence, patience, vision, direction or viewpoint.”He also said that more Mandarin Chinese-language learning hours would equate to “more filial piety and sibling love.”

     The Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華)  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. 
     High-school student protested against the Ministry of Education’s controversial adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines with students from at least 16 high schools campaigning in nationwide, coordinated action.
     In June 2015, anti-curriculum groups said they would provide students protesting curriculum adjustments to mobilize their peers in staging a nationwide rally with the resources to arouse and mobilize their peers nationwide in the build-up to the rally, including legal assistance should the young people face prosecution over their actions. 
     Groups gathered outside the ministry to throw their support behind Wu, who they said is a “minister of courage” who dares to “right the wrong.”

     The Ministry of Education scheduled four hearings. The first at National Taichung First Senior High School fell into disarray as the audience drowned out the speakers. Wu apologized to students, teachers and parents who had signed up for the three cancelled hearings, adding that he would answer their questions during the “open mic” session.

     The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU)  were accused  by the KMT of manipulating students and said they were the source of discontent in schools nationwide in ongoing controversy surrounding the Ministry of Education’s planned adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines.

The ministry has taken a step back and not insisted on the exclusive use of new textbooks.

     The textbooks used in the Japanese colonial era put great emphasis on familiarizing students with Taiwan and students even had to climb Yu-Shan as a graduation requirement. However, the textbooks used since the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 have sought to make students memorize a slew of facts about Chinese history and geography, making students learn where the Yangtze River and Yellow River flow in China, without knowing where the Tseng-Wen River traverses Taiwan.
     On July 14, 2015, students forced their way into the K-12 Education Administration building in Taipei. Thirteen forced their way into building. By July 23, 2015,  high-school students camped outside the Ministry of Education gates rallying for the withdrawal of controversial high-school curriculum guidelines. More than 300 people participated in the rally with students piling textbooks outside of the ministry’s entrance to express their dissatisfaction.

The Ministry of Education said that 33 people were arrested, while video showed police dragging people from an office on the second floor. The handcuffing of students was said to be “disproportionate” and a breach of the Police Power Exercise Act.Three journalists arrested while covering the storming of Ministry of Education building late on Thursday night and early yesterday morning were released without bail by prosecutors after they insisted on pleading not guilty
     Wu also ruled out any temporary suspension of the controversial curriculum guidelines, stating that the administrative procedures for them to go into effect next month have already been completed and he could not reverse them. He said the ministry maintains that schools are to be allowed to use textbooks based on either the old or new versions of guidelines, with teachers using “supplementary materials” to lead discussion on both sides of the controversial portions.

     KMT Legislator Lin Te-fu (林德福) displayed a photograph that has been circulating online, showing a receipt for NT$1,495 worth of umbrellas, suggesting that the DPP had made the purchase.

Lin said the DPP likely masterminded the break-in, 

     On Thursday, July 30, 2015, a Taiwan Student protester committed suicide. Dai Lin (林冠華)  had been a prominent activist within the Northern Taiwan Anti-Curriculum Changes Alliance. Lin periodically served as one of the group’s spokespeople. In a final Facebook post, Lin wrote: "I have only one wish: Minister [of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華)] withdraw the curriculum guidelines.” Nearly 100 angry students storm legislature.

Debatable item #1: 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.”

Debatable item #2  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. 

Debatable item #3 - The curriculum stresses the contributions of the Qing Dynasty to Taiwan’s development and downplays the role of Japan. 

Debatable item # 4 - The curriculum also reintroduces an outdated term quan fu (光復) — meaning the recovery of Taiwan by the Republic of China from Japanese rule; the term is allegedly a throwback to former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime.

Debatable item #5 - Changes to the history curriculum included revising the term “Japanese-governed period” to “Japanese occupation period.” 

Debatable item # 6 - Naming the period during which Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功) — who ruled Taiwan in the 17th century — the “Ming-Cheng period,” with “Ming” signifying China’s Ming Dynasty, despite the Ming not, in official terms, claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, a DPP education group alleged.

Debatable item #7 - Use of the phrase “Filipino servants” instead of “migrant workers” and replace “foreign spouses” with “foreign brides,” she said.

Debatable item #8 - It cut out sections on human rights and the White Terror era, while adding sections on the ‘family clan’ and Chinese culture that they felt were more important.

Debatable item #9- Curriculum reincorporates a high percentage of classical Chinese material while neglecting Taiwanese and contemporary literature, "percentage of classical Chinese has been raised from 55 percent to 65 percent." 

Debatable item #10 - The publisher’s history textbook used the controversial term “returning to the embrace of the motherland” twice. 

Debatable item #11 - The textbook suggests that former president Lee Teng-Hui’s (李登輝) formulation of the “two states theory” in 1999 hindered cross-strait negotiations.

Debatable item #12 - The “one side, one country” model proposed by Lee’s successor, Chen Shui-Bian (陳水扁), had destabilized Taiwan-US relations.

Debatable item #13 -  The textbook has two full pages on the so-called “1992 consensus” embraced by President Ma Ying-Jeou (馬英九) 

Debatable item # 14- The textbook also praises the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement for elevating cross-strait exchanges to the next level. 

Debatable item #15 - There is a lack of references in the books to democracy activist Deng Nan-Jung (鄭南榕), the 228 Incident and the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident  which allegedly covers up the former KMT regime’s disregard for human rights by creating the impression that the government had attached great importance to the issue.

Debatable item #16 - Textbooks were changed to identify Mount Everest as the nation’s highest peak rather than Jade Mountain (玉山) because the Constitution says the Republic of China includes all of China as its territory.

to be continued...

College Board Caves To Conservative Pressure, Changes AP U.S. History Curriculum

BY CASEY QUINLAN JUL 30, 2015 11:04AM UPDATED: JUL 30, 2015 9:48PM

CREDIT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbul

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After backlash from conservatives that AP guidelines released last year by the College Board were unpatriotic, the new AP standards, which are effective immediately, will use the phrase “American exceptionalism,” and includes the founding fathers, according to Newsweek. The College Board said it “previously assumed it wasn’t something it needed to spell out as part of what would be taught in an American history course.”

Some of the main criticisms of the guidelines, conservatives voiced, were less emphasis on the founding fathers and more emphasis on slavery. The guidelines also included earlier American history that included violence against Native Americans and mentioned the growing influence of social conservatives. There were also complaints that World War II was not emphasized enough, but military victories will be given more attention in the new standards. Mentions of slavery will be “roughly the same” as previous standards, according to Newsweek.

Conservatives also took issue with the framework’s description of the term “manifest destiny.” The definition, according to The Daily Caller:

The idea of Manifest Destiny, which asserted U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere and supported U.S. expansion westward, was based on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority, and helped to shape the era’s political debates.

AP American history courses in particular became a political battleground when the College Board released new guidelines in October 2012. According to Talking Points Memo, the public controversy started with Larry Krieger, a retired history teacher. Then The Republican National Committee noticed Krieger’s remarks and campaigned against the new framework. The RNC asked Congress to stop funding the College Board, saying it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.”

After the issue picked up momentum, more and more state legislators got involved in decrying the new guidelines. An Oklahoma legislative committee voted to ban AP history class and Oklahoma Rep. Dan Fisher (R) introduced legislation “prohibiting the expenditure of funds on the Advanced Placement United States History course.” In Colorado, the Jefferson County school board intended to create a committee to review the AP history course. Students protested revisions to the new standards and soon after, the Jefferson County school board cancelled a review of the standards.

In September of last year, Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who is now running for president,said “most people” who take the course would be “ready to sign up for ISIS.”

For conservatives, many of whom actively oppose Common Core standards, it may have added insult to injury that the head of the College Board is David Coleman, one of the major leaders behind the Common Core standards, according to the Washington Post.

The AP standards are just one piece of the debate over how to accurately cover American history, especially if you intend to describe the actual experiences of people other than white, landowning men. Texas also recently changed its state academic guidelines, which means its new textbooks won’t mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws. Texas is a very influential textbook market, and publishers tend to look to Texas when deciding content for the textbooks they publish.

My Opinion: Taiwan Curriculum History From Inside Noah's Ark (Pt. 1)

My Opinion: Taiwan Curriculum History From Inside Noah's Ark (Pt. 1)

Wearing a T-shirt with the IWW message: “An injury to one is an injury to all,”
 Chu said the words reflected the attitude of the protesters,
adding that he wore the shirt to express his rage.

     The last few months in Taiwan has seen a roiling controversy about changes the Ministry of Education has made to the high school curriculum, particularly to history, literature, and geography of Taiwan's Republic of China. 
  
      In an editorial of July 25, "Twilight of China-centric Primacy" in the Taipei Times, not once did Noah Buchan mention the influence of the United States in Taiwan. "This place," he says, "that today is called Taiwan has been ruled at various points and at various places by Aborigines, Spanish and Dutch explorers, Chinese settlers, Japanese imperialists and a Chinese military." He forgot to mention the U.S. has been influencing Taiwan history since 1945. 
        I would like to report that high school student activists, added by the media to the "Sunflower" movement of college student activists last year, used  a popular Wobbly "silent agitator" sticker saying: "An Injury to One is an Injury to All," as their slogan; documentary maker Kevin Lee (李惠仁) introduced  a T-shirt which he wore with the anti-curriculum-changes slogan on it.   
     Mr. Buchan says the Taiwanese are " ...members of a nation that does not include China, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Japan, the U.S. or any other place."  Noah Buchan is in a serious flood of denial.
     For the record, the United States handed Taiwan to the KMT Chinese in 1945, ignored the 228 massacre, kept over 60,000 troops here for thirty two years of the thirty-eight year martial law, set up an English radio station and other adult entertainment, put English on street signs and in public schools, exploited Taiwan's proximity to eavesdrop on China, then used Taiwan to outsource sweatshops for American industrialists here and throughout Asia.
      To Noah Buchan, there was no American imperialism happening in Taiwan and there is still no American influence. Noah marches his denials in, two by two, on the Taiwan ark. He is obviously out of touch with the ocean around him so he can criticize the KMT whose Department of Education recently modified  Taiwanese-Chinese history in high school textbooks.
     KMT Political Socialization in Taiwan is nothing new, but it has backfired into the newest "Sunflower" cause celeb, thanks to some dumb conservative advice and a little push from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with nods of approval from U.S. think-tankers. 
     Students around the world have been misled by their governments take on history. Why should Taiwanese students be any different? There are thousands of erroneous facts in American history  that are  kept out of textbooks or glossed over. For example, in American history textbooks, Asian (which is referred to as the "Far East") and Middle World (they still call "Middle East") history gets all of one or two pages to the bulk of Euro-centric Christian history. 
     Also, in American textbooks, in the Asian history section, there is no mention of the US military having prior knowledge of an upcoming bombing of Pearl Harbor; they needed a pretense for declaring war on Japan. There is no mention in American textbooks that the war was won before needlessly dropping two atom bombs on Japanese civilians. In the Chinese history section, the KMT was America's 'friend' during World War II, helping defeat Japan when, in fact, they spent most of the money the U.S. senate gave them fighting the communists or pocketing the change. 

The CCP likes it when the KMT criticizes Japan, while the DPP and America curry Japan’s support in containing China. It all boils down to the United States government wanting to contain Chinese power to continue economic and military dominance of Asia and the world. Taiwanese people cannot deny  that Taiwan culture is influenced by Chinese any less than American culture is English.

...to be continued.