Taiwan 'Nazi rally' school principal resigns
- 26 December 2016
- Asia
EPA
The principal of a Taiwanese school whose students held a mock Nazi rally for a Christmas parade has resigned.
Cheng Hsiao-ming, head of the Kuang Fu High School in Hsinchu, said he took "full responsibility" and apologised.
Friday's "rally" featured a parade of swastika banners and a cardboard tank carrying one student performing a Nazi salute.
Israel's representative called the event "deplorable" and Taiwan's presidential office has apologised.
Announcing his resignation, Mr Cheng said: "As educators, we should have taught students to have the right values. We will learn from the mistakes we made and have asked students to do so too."
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He said the school would hold a series of educational programmes, including showing films about the Holocaust such as Schindler's List and Life is Beautiful.
The Israel Economic and Cultural Office would also be invited to address students, he said.
The Taipei Times said that one of the school's teachers, Liu Hsi-cheng, had suggested Arabic culture as the theme for the parade but the students decided to go with Adolf Hitler after two rounds of voting.
The paper said some students opted for the Nazis for the Christmas and Thanksgiving Costume Parade because they could easily convert their school uniforms.
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After the images emerged, Asher Yarden, Israel's representative to Taiwan, wrote on the mission's Facebook page: "It is deplorable and shocking that seven decades only after the world had witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, a high school in Taiwan is supporting such an outrageous action.
"We strongly condemn this tasteless occurrence and call on the Taiwanese authorities, in all levels, to initiate educational programmes which would introduce the meaning of the Holocaust and teach its history and universal meaning."
Taiwan's presidential office promptly apologised for the incident, saying it showed an extreme lack of respect for Jewish people and a profound ignorance of history.
High School Students in Taiwan Staged a Nazi-Themed Parade. It Wasn’t Received Well
A high school principal in Taiwan has resigned after students at his school reportedly dressed up as Nazis for a holiday parade, prompting outrage from local educators and the island’s Israeli representative.
According to the Taipei Times, the school’s principal, Cheng Hsiao-ming, took full responsibility and will step down as the head of Kuang Fu High School in Taiwan’s Hsinchu City.
Photos of students hoisting swastika banners and parading behind a cardboard tank went viral over the weekend. One student was seen emerging from the tank and giving the Nazi salute, a red armband appended to his or her jacket.
The event, which the school originally branded as “cosplay,” immediately caught the attention of Israel’s de facto diplomatic mission in Taiwan, the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei (ISECO), which called the event “deplorable and shocking.”
“Schools should educate for tolerance and understanding among people, and we are deeply disappointed that this took place in Taiwan,” read a statement shared on the ISECO Facebook account.
“We strongly condemn this tasteless occurrence and call on the Taiwanese authorities, in all levels, to initiate educational programs which would introduce the meaning of the Holocaust and teach its history and universal meaning,” the statement continued.
The Taipei Times reports that Cheng, the principal, has pledged to strengthen Holocaust awareness by screening films such as Schindler’s List and Life Is Beautiful, and says that the school would invite speakers from the Israeli office to address students.
Cheng reportedly said that a teacher had recommended Arabic culture as a theme for the event, but that the students twice voted against it in favor of a Nazi parade. The students were advised that the theme would be controversial, according to the Taipei Times, but the teacher decided to respect their decision.
Some students seemed unaware of Hitler’s atrocities, while others said they chose the theme because it would be reportedly easy to convert their school uniforms into Nazi costumes.
Educators say the botched event exposed inherent flaws in Taiwan’s school system; the self-ruled island off the coast of eastern China has its own fraught history of authoritarianism and violence, and history curricula are often closely managed by the government.
“The students’ lack of empathy to the historical trauma suffered by others shows that Taiwanese history and civic education is in crisis,” Hua Yih-fen, a history professor at the National Taiwan University, told the Taipei Times.
She and other educational professionals say authoritarian imagery and practices such as strict uniform codes and militaristic anthems have become institutionalized in schools on the self-ruled island — which was a place of refuge for nationalists exiled from the mainland following Mao Zedong’s communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949.
“Events that took place in the past continue to have reverberations in the present,” Hua told the Taipei Times, “and the incident in Hsinchu proved that Taiwan still has a long way to go on its path toward transitional justice and in dealing with its own historical traumas.”
Adults at fault for Nazi incident: Tsai
FAILURE:Human rights education needs to focus on the past and take in all areas of study so young people understand the importance of universal rights, the president said
By Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter
Adults, not students, are at fault for a Nazi cosplay incident on Friday last week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, adding that it was the result of the nation’s “superficial” human rights education and failure to teach young people about state repression of rights in the past.
Tsai made the remarks at the 25th meeting of the Presidential Office’s Human Rights Advisory Committee yesterday afternoon, urging Taiwanese to make an effort to let the nation’s human rights freedoms set the bar for other nations.
Since the cosplay event, students and school authorities at Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School have received an outpouring of criticism, with the former accused of ignorance and the latter of negligence.
The event also drew ire from the representative offices of Israel and Germany. The school’s principal, Cheng Hsiao-ming (程曉銘), resigned on Sunday.
“Human rights are universal values, but they can only be realized when we constantly put them into practice at the local level,” Tsai said.
Speaking about the criticism of the students who dressed as Nazis at the school cosply event, Tsai said that it is adults who are to blame, not the students.
“This happened because our human rights education has only scratched the surface. We neglect incidents of discrimination and prejudice in our daily lives, and we have failed to teach our young people what they should learn from history and state repression of human rights,” Tsai said.
Self-reflection is required of everyone, Tsai said, adding that the event underscores the imperative need to reinforce human rights education and incorporate issues related to rights in different subjects.
The president said the day when one can call the education system a success is the day when the nation’s students understand the suffering others have endured, respect each other’s rights and stand up for justice.
To fulfill that goal, Tsai said she would invite the Executive Yuan and government agencies to deliver a report to the committee on the nation’s human rights education.
Taiwanese regarded democracy and freedom as the most valuable of human rights during the nation’s authoritarian period, Tsai said.
“Because of the sacrifices made by many of our democratic forebears, we are able to enjoy a mature democratic political system today and see our freedom of speech protected by the Constitution,” Tsai said.
However, there is no end to the pursuit of human rights, Tsai said.
“When it comes to human rights standards, we should always look upward to learn. As a matter of fact, there is still much room for us to make improvement,” she said.
Nazi cosplay event stuns educators
SYTEMIC PROBLEM:Taiwanese educational practices directly contradict modern principles by consolidating authority through unreasonable discipline, a critic said
By Lin Hsiao-yun and Jonathan Chin
Students who dressed as Nazis at a campus cosplay event demonstrated the failure of the nation’s education system and national ignorance about history, Academics and education groups yesterday said.
Over the weekend, images shared on social media of students marching in Nazi costumes at a school function held by the Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School on Friday sparked a public outcry, and a statement from the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei described the incident as “deplorable and shocking.”
“We feel that we have not worked hard enough, and have allowed this absurd, ignorant and indifferent attitude toward the universal value of human rights to spread and become an international joke,” said a joint statement issued by Our Story Alliance of History Teachers and Action Coalition of Civics Teacher.
“The students’ lack of empathy to the historical trauma suffered by others shows that Taiwanese history and civic education is in crisis,” said National Taiwan University history professor Hua Yih-fen (花亦芬), who recently published a book entitled Rebirth from the Wounds of History: Germany’s Path to Transitional Justice.
History is not irrelevant to the present, she said, adding: “Events that took place in the past continue to have reverberations in the present, and the incident in Hsinchu proved that Taiwan still has a long way to go on its path toward transitional justice and in dealing with its own historical traumas.”
History textbook guidelines have not allowed students to gain an understanding of human rights or imparted respect for the value of human life and dignity, as the teaching materials used are a mishmash, Hua said.
Humanist Education Foundation executive director Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭) said that modern educational principles emphasize teaching resistance to authoritarianism and totalitarianism through critical thought, but Taiwanese education had largely failed to adopt those standards.
Taiwanese educational practices directly contradict modern principles by consolidating authority through unreasonable discipline and educators are frequently ignorant of or indifferent to democratic values, Feng said.
“School teachers, deans and principals need more work than the students,” Feng said.
Our Story Alliance of History Teachers spokeswoman Huang Hui-chen (黃惠貞) said political indoctrination, by the school system and historical influences by the “New Life Movement” are to blame for postwar Taiwanese society’s indifference to fascism and infatuation with its aesthetics.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) launched the New Life Movement in the 1920s to imitate fascist movements in the West, which led to the institutionalization on campus of militarized uniforms, mandated morning assemblies, teacher-graded weekly diaries, military song contests and military instructors on campus, Huang said, adding that many of those practices still exist.
In the three decades following the end of the Martial Law era, transitional justice and self-reflection in the education system have failed to materialize, Huang said.
“The display of Nazi paraphernalia at the student event in Hsinchu showed that the participants were completely ignorant of the deaths, suffering and inhumanity that the Nazi regime stood for in its 12 years of rule. Their insensitivity and indifference should be frightening to us because it demonstrated they possessed no critical facility to power,” Huang said.
Meanwhile, Action Coalition of Civics Teacher spokesman Chiang Pai-chuan (江佰川) said schools should re-examine their reasons for requiring students to wear militaristic uniforms and check whether fascist ideology had survived in their student codes, and lawmakers should legislate for mandatory classes on social justice and require transitional justice on campus.
“Taiwanese education could not care less whether students understand history; it is merely concerned with how well they do in history exams, after which the students forget everything. To change students, history education must do away with curriculum guidelines and tests,” said social activist Yu Teng-chieh (游騰傑), a student at Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science.
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