Curriculum Protests: Curriculum talks a breakthrough: DPP
DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS:The DPP caucus said the ministry would have to send some of the amendments back to a review mechanism, a claim disputed by the KMT
By Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) yesterday called a cross-caucus negotiation on the high-school curriculum guidelines “a breakthrough.”
After the legislature earlier yesterday approved the conclusions of cross-caucus negotiations on the dispute surrounding the revised high-school curriculum guidelines, Ker said the legislature is a platform for problem resolution and called the negotiations and the resolution a “breakthrough” as “the KMT had at least been willing to talk about the issues.”
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said the resolution demands that the Ministry of Education set up a curriculum council to review the curriculum guidelines in accordance with the Senior High School Education Act (高級中等教育法) “because the minor adjustments the ministry made were all based on the Senior High School Act (高級中學法), a law that has already been referred by the Executive Yuan to the Legislative Yuan for abolition.”
“That is why we’ve called [the adjustments] illegal and against procedures. The breakthrough lies in the fact that the ministry has to send all those minor adjustments that were not made based on the High School Education Act back to a review mechanism,” Chen said. “We will continue monitoring the measures taken by the ministry, which we expect to follow the resolution reached by the legislature and reinitiate the procedure.”
“[The ministry] can no longer ignore students’ protests by citing its ‘administrative power,’” Chen said.
The second part of the resolution says that schools have the right to freely choose which textbooks they use, Ker said.
The wording had initially been that schools could “rechoose” textbooks, but that was changed to “freely choose” after protests by the KMT caucus.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) said during the negotiations that he would step down if his resignation was a solution to the issue, Ker said.
“I told him that we were not there to discuss whether he should stay or not, but to solve the problems,” Ker said.
However, the KMT caucus had a different interpretation of the resolution.
It said in the post-negotiation press conference that the issue of minor adjustments to the curriculum guidelines had been “manipulated by the DPP” and that it was a “pseudo-issue, as adjusting the curriculum guidelines is within the purview of [the Ministry of Education’s] administrative power.”
The caucus claimed that the resolution on the review procedure for the curriculum guidelines was intended for “minor adjustments in the future.”
The KMT caucus warned the DPP against “using children for political purposes,” citing international conventions on the protection of the rights of children under the age of 18.
No comments:
Post a Comment