Stick a Fork in American Eagle

       January 19th was the last day this term at American Eagle. While other teachers continue to slug it out with little discipline or pedagogy, I am adorning the stairway landing bulletin board between the fourth and fifth floor with the children’s compositions and isolating children who can’t obey class rules outside my classroom door . In the rest of the landings, and in the classrooms, there is no student work displayed; only copies the liaison put up from years past. Most boards have nothing but shabby construction paper on them. My class is working up to the last day; no party because I want to set the tone for next term; I was asked by management to return again as their teacher.

   

     After the last day of class, management at American Eagle changed its mind about asking me to return  next term. The management liaison told me the news when she came up after my last class; she explained that only three children wanted to continue the class so it was dissolved. She said the parents were fed up with all the teacher changes. The class was out of control. The discipline I gave for some children was unbearable to their parents, but it proved something could be taught and learned in class with it. I was surprised but not upset about the news. Originally I was only going to stay until January 19^th. They’re sorry they asked me back. I didn’t mean to sabotage the class, but so be it.

      Thinking about American Eagle, how I should have quit instead of slugging it out in their chaotic atmosphere; it would have been that way next term, too. The little children, like J, would still be smiling through the discipline. Delicate flowers would wither to know they weren't as perfect as their parents let them believe. Children on the verge of fluency would fail the final exams. Some would stay in their own little worlds. But some children would get the message that they are capable of more, and shine. My favorite kids benefited the most from good pedagogical practices.

     There are a few classroom management techniques I used the last two weeks of class that I had not used before. In leading up the final exam, I still used a point and minus system to modify the behavior of the disruptive kids in class, but it was no longer working for a few who continued to call out, use Chinese, draw pictures, dawdle, lean chairs, and stand without permission. Instead, I used -10 to remove the disruptive student from the room, a point a minute. When a student, Jason in particular, talked back to me, I talked loudly to him and admonished him to show respect when talking with a teacher. 

      I mentioned the regression in school atmosphere in our school meeting on January 9^th. I explained how it had deteriorated over the last four years I was employed there; that it had contributed to my leaving in September 2016. It was not the children’s fault but the fault of the management for not keeping high standards. The school rules were not being followed and so the quality of student behavior dropped dramatically. Without management leading the way, no improvement in class atmosphere and academic progress was possible.

At that meeting, I suggested management encourage parents to monitor their child’s behavior by rewarding them with discounts for each week their child was polite; I flippantly said 100 NT a week discount could be offered, a possible 2000 NT discount over the term. I mentioned how the students should be expected to speak English in the hallways as well as the classroom; that would go far in creating an atmosphere for learning. Certainly, when I started at the bushiban, the children did sit on the steps and floor in the halls and play up and down the stairs, but they were spoken to by staff and told not to not only because it is dangerous, but it sets a poor tone for the school. Finally, the teachers should be monitored, assisted in the classroom, and required to have the students produce quality creative work worthy of being placed on well-adorned bulletin boards.

My shouting back at a student talking back and isolating him outside the room were techniques I had never used before at American Eagle. The management was aware of what I was doing because I asked permission in advance and was not told not to do it. They heard me talk angrily but did not ask me why, tell me not to do it, or send assistance. I explained how I’d put construction paper on the classroom door so isolated students couldn’t distract the class. I was not going to work there under other conditions. I was hoping my measures would be temporary once the class was controlling itself. My plan was working, I got many nice compositions and discussion with Community Curriculum material, but a few parents balked at their child being disciplined. They were rightfully fed up by so many personnel changes; at least three in the three months before I came in.  

I am glad to not have to work with children without good bushiban atmosphere. It would have been bad for my health and aura of calm to have to do that, but that was the prospect I was faced with. I’m glad I won’t have to do that, but no teacher or student should have to suffer chaos and no learning for the sake of the school survival. “Immersion” is a sham when every child uses Chinese in the bushiban.

I had conflicts whether I should continue working at American Eagle or not. I like the rush of riding there and back on the bike, of being in the classroom for ninety minutes, and the regularity of it; it paced my week and separated my day from evening nicely. 

Stick a fork in American Eagle; it's cooked.

     Off the hook now forever from American Eagle, my commitment complete, just a day after, when last evening, I got a call to sign a contract to be a publisher’s English as a Second Language resource person for Central Taiwan with additional contracts for the 7^th grade textbooks I edited last summer, with 8^th and 9^th to follow. I assume with it will be more responsibility that would make being tied to a crappy little bushiban a hindrance. Today is the day I would have started the spring term. It feels good to be home studying Mandarin instead. 

Groups protest use of Hanyu pinyin for new MRT line

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Pro-localization groups opposed to the use of the Hanyu pinyin romanization system for the airport MRT line demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Education in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Sean Lin, Taipei Times

A number of pro-localization groups yesterday rallied in front of the Ministry of Education in Taipei to protest against the government’s adoption of the Hanyu pinyin romanization system for translations of station names along the MRT line between Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei Main Station, calling on the Democratic Progressive Party government to reinstitute its former policy of pushing for nationwide implementation of Tongyong pinyin.

The protesters called on the ministry, the governing body for the nation’s languages, to abandon the Hanyu system adopted by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and reinstate the Tongyong system, which was promulgated in 2002 as the nation’s standard Mandarin romanization system.

Although the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) identifies Taiwan as a province of China, the organization uses the Tongyong system when referring to places in Taiwan, Taiwan Mandarin Romanization Alliance convener Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉) said.

“For example, the ISO 3166 standard does not spell Kaohsiung as ‘Gaoxiong,’ just as it retained the spelling for Hong Kong, rather than ‘Xianggang,’ after the territory was handed over to China in 1997,” Yu said.

In addition, the ISO 7098 standard states that Hanyu pinyin is “the official language of the People’s Republic of China,” of which Taiwan is not a part, so the version of Mandarin used by Taiwanese does not fall within that scope, Yu said, adding that Ma led the nation down a path of “suicide” when he submitted to China and made Hanyu pinyin the national standard.

The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) could have readopted Tongyong pinyin as the nation’s official romanization system after it took office, but it has instead treated the issue with indifference; essentially restricting itself to a framework set by Ma, he said.

As Taiwan’s culture and people have diverse origins, Taiwanese have formed a language that is uniquely Taiwanese, Taiwan Frontier convener Hong Hsien-cheng (洪顯政) said.

“The Mandarin used in Taiwan sounds different from that used in China and should have an independent system, just as British English is different from American English,” he said.

The nation’s use of Hanyu pinyin should not be made a political issue, ministry National Language Education Promotion Office head Wu Chung-yi (吳中益) said.

“The romanization used on road signs and at transportation stations is intended for foreigners... Every foreigner learning Mandarin learns Hanyu pinyin, because it is the international standard,” Wu said. “The decision has nothing to do with the nation’s self-determination or any ideologies, because the key point is to ensure that foreigners can read signs.”

“It is impossible to reason with the groups, as they are bent on politicizing the matter,” he added.

Teachers’ union to protest pensions

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions yesterday announced plans for protests against aspects of the government’s pension reform plans, as it continues to tread a careful line between support and outright opposition.

“In our view, this is an abrupt reform which is just what we feared in the past, and it will influence teacher turnover. Training of new teachers might as well be stopped for 10 years,” union president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said, announcing plans for protests outside local governments around the nation next week.

He cited Executive Yuan Pension Reform Office plans which would immediately increase the seniority required for teachers to retire by five years followed by annual hikes of at least one year which would keep most teachers from retiring until 60.

“As far as we can see, the only teachers who would be able to take advantage of the transition period [to retire before 60] are those who graduated from junior colleges before 1971, because they began teaching at 20 and have extra seniority,” he said, while also criticizing the government for failing to specify why and how it would conduct reconsideration of reforms after five years under official plans.

“They’re cutting pension payments, but they do not specify how they will make pensions sustainable,” he said, adding that the plans also fail to specify how the government is to address the chronic underfunding of pension funds.

Union protests are to occur mainly during school vacations to avoid affecting students, with local union officials stating they would be “soft and firm” without “causing trouble.”

While local protests are intended to influence the national government by putting pressure on Democratic Progressive Party local governments, there are currently no plans for national protests, Chang said, adding that that union measures constituted “action to express controversy” rather than “taking a stand against” pension reform.

“We’re using the term ‘action to express controversy’ because we still support the government’s pension reform, but we also believe that the government is acting as an ‘evil employer’ by refusing to acknowledge its responsibilities and guaranteeing the sustainability of pension funds,” he said.

The union is notable as one of the few which has drafted a pension reform proposal, last year drawing criticism from competing unions for refusing to endorse a massive demonstration against pension reform.

It has since grown increasingly critical of the government’s pension reform reportedly because of pressure from its members.

Academics question NTU probe

CONFLICT OF INTEREST?One of the members of a committee investigating the NTU president is said to be a coauthor; another is a college dean he appointed

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Members of an education reform forum yesterday hold a news conference in Taipei to criticize National Taiwan University’s (NTU) handling of a probe into misconduct involving NTU president Yang Pan-chyr and professor Kuo Min-liang.

Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times

Academics yesterday questioned the integrity of a committee tasked with investigating allegations National Taiwan University (NTU) president Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池) was involved in cowriting forged scientific papers.

Quoting NTU secretary-general Lin Ta-te (林達德), who said the five-member investigation committee includes two faculty members at the university, attorney Hsu Wen-hua (許文華) said that the two members are likely to be College of Life Sciences dean Min Ming-yuan (閔明源) and College of Medicine dean Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳).

“Assuming I am right, these two men are not suited to serve on the committee,” Hsu said, citing an NTU rule governing cases involving suspected breach of academic ethics, which states the selection of investigation committee members should not constitute a conflict of interest.

Chang and Yang cowrote five scientific papers between 2003 and 2006, for which Chang was either listed as the first author or corresponding author, while Yang was listed as the corresponding author on some accounts, he said.

Min was appointed acting dean by Yang when NTU professor Kuo Min-liang (郭明良) — with whom Yang coauthored four problematic articles that are now being investigated by the committee — assumed the post of Kaohsiung Medical University vice president, Hsu said.

Yang later chose Min over another university professor to fill the post of College of Life Sciences dean, Hsu said.

Hsu also raised doubts about why Yang was able to tell the media the constitution of the committee, which included two NTU faculty members and three Academia Sinica members, saying that Yang could have rigged the appointment of committee members.

NTU should have sent the papers in question to the journals that published them for verification, and at least one other established and objective third-party academic for review to ensure the investigation’s credibility, he said.

Saying that Kuo retracted his paper from the Journal of Biological Chemistry last month after the academic fraud scandal erupted, NTU professor of psychology Huang Kwang-kuo (黃光國) accused Kuo of lying when he said he was innocent at a news conference on Dec. 20.

Kuo filed a request to pull the paper, which was found by the journal to contain forged results shown in six duplicated images, on Dec. 7, and on Dec. 30, the journal issued a statement that it had been retracted, Huang said.

Huang asked why Kuo had not repaid Yen Men-luh (嚴孟祿), a physician at National Taiwan University Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, NT$6.73 million (US$208,617) Yen claimed to have lent Kuo between 2002 and 2014 to help Kuo pay a mortgage, referencing another academic scandal that broke last month, in which Kuo allegedly took the money in exchange for Yen to be listed as coauthor on 11 papers by his research team.

He also called into question why Kuo had never mentioned the debt during his tenure as a then-National Science Council (now Ministry of Science and Technology) official, even though he was required by law to declare his personal wealth.

Liu Yuan-chun (劉源俊), president of the Chinese-language Science Monthly, said that the academia puts too much emphasis on the number of citations an academic receives when promoting professors, which has tempted many professors to use their connections for them to be listed as coauthors or forge research findings to boost the number of their publications.

In response, the university reiterated that the committee is run in an objective manner.

The two colleges have met several times to review the papers, and the investigation results are to be submitted to an evaluation committee and an ad hoc committee for review on Friday next week, it said.

The evaluation committee will be headed by NTU vice president Chang Ching-ray (張慶瑞) and will operate independently, it said.

Textbook description of masturbation condemned

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter, with CNA

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei city councilors yesterday decried sex education materials created by the Taipei Department of Education for sixth graders that contain what they said are inappropriate explanations of masturbation.

At a news conference in Taipei, KMT Taipei City Councilor Wang Chih-bin (汪志冰) quoted a passage from a pamphlet used for sixth-grade sex education that said: “Masturbation is the act of touching your genitals in a way that makes you feel good... It is normal to masturbate, as it forms an important part of one’s adolescence.”

The pamphlet was created by the department in 2001 and used by an elementary school in her constituency, Wang said.

Accompanied by 30 parents opposed to the way the pamphlet was compiled, Wang said that some constituency voters expressed concerns about male and female students engaging in conversations about masturbation.

Saying that movies are subject to a rating system, KMT Taipei City Councilor Wu Shih-cheng (吳世正) asked why a similar system has not been put in place for learning materials.

It is inappropriate to teach students things they are not meant to know at their ages; sex education is not meant to help students explore their sexualities, he said.

Department Chief Secretary Liao Wen-ching (廖文靜) said that under the Gender Equality Education Act (性別平等教育法), elementary and junior-high schools are required to allocate four hours of class time to educate students about gender equality, which includes sex education.

Sex education is one of the indices measuring how well fifth and sixth-graders learn, Liao said.

There is not too much emphasis put on masturbation in the pamphlet, as only two out of 120 questions appended to it test whether students understand what masturbation is, she said.

The pamphlet also includes content about how to use a condom, menstrual cycles, nocturnal emissions and how to respond to sexual harassment, Liao said.

She conceded that the passage in question needed to be reviewed and possibly revised, but added that what really matters is whether teachers can give students accurate information and help them develop a healthy mindset on sexual activity.

Thousands of lecturers might face job cuts

‘NIGHTMARE’:Former professors working at two now-defunct universities had to work as waiters after losing their jobs, a Taiwan Higher Education Union official said

By Rachel Lin  /  Staff reporter

About 12,000 out of 48,000 university lecturers might face unemployment in the next eight years amid declining birth rates in the nation, a report by the Ministry of Education said.

The ministry earlier this week released an estimate which showed that 60 universities could face closure by 2024, as well as a list of 151 departments and graduate programs that failed to enroll any students this school year.

As this year marks the end of the “Race to the Top Universities” program, which saw the government issue NT$50 billion (US$1.55 billion) in subsidies to a dozen select universities since 2011, a group of doctors hired for the program could be the first to lose their jobs, Taiwan Higher Education Union secretary-general Chen Cheng-liang (陳政亮) said.

Citing as examples the now-defunct Yung Ta Institute of Technology and Commerce and Kao Fong College of Digital Contents, he said that some former professors from the two schools had to start working as waiters after losing their jobs, which he said is not only a waste of talent, but also a “nightmare” for society.

“The government has a responsibility to introduce measures to deal with the oversupply of higher-education staff — for example by helping professors transfer to other schools, facilitating university mergers or providing severance packages,” he said.

There are three types of lecturers that are at risk of unemployment: those nearing retirement age; those aged between 45 and 55 who transitioned to the education sector from business sectors; and those who are aged between 35 and 45 but have less than 10 years of teaching experience, Chen said.

The last group of lecturers would be the most seriously affected, as they should be in the most productive years in their lives, but instead they have no choice but to cope with school closures amid low enrollment rates, he said.

“To make the situation worse, most of them have parents to take care of, children to feed and mortgages to pay. Having to start all over again in the middle of their careers would put a lot of pressure on them,” Chen said.

Low birth rates also affect elementary and junior-high schools, but since the government put countermeasures in place, few teachers have lost their jobs, he said.

The ministry has plans to lower the teacher-to-student ratio from 1-to-32 to 1-to-27, which would resolve the oversupply of instructors, he said.

However, it also means that schools would shoulder heavier financial burdens from personnel costs due to the shortage from tuition payments, so the ministry must issue more subsidies to tertiary institutions to make the policy work, he said.

Ministry official Nicole Lee (李彥儀) said that starting from Monday, tertiary institutions downsizing teaching staff can apply for loans to pay severance fees.

The ministry is cutting the total number of doctoral students that institutions are allowed to recruit by about 100 per year to respond to the shrinking demand for professors, while improving collaborative programs between industries and universities, thereby motivating professors to team up with doctoral students to start their own businesses, Lee said.

Teachers call for debate on pension reform

BANKRUPT:Proposed reforms would force civil servants to bear the responsibility for the government’s poor utilization of employees’ pension contribution, teachers said

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

National Federation of Teachers’ Unions members gather outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei to call on the government to hold a debate on reforming the civil servant pension system.

Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times

The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions yesterday accused the government of trying to shift the responsibility for preventing civil servants’ pension system from going bankrupt to public employees and challenged President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration to a public debate on pension reform.

The government is the employer of civil servants, but the policies it has proposed to save the pension system from bankruptcy are an attempt to shirk responsibility for its poor investment decisions and utilization of civil servants’ premiums, federation secretary-general Lo Te-shui (羅德水) told a news conference in Taipei.

The policies, which include raising the civil servant insurance premium, cutting the size of their pensions and setting the age public school teachers can start receiving pensions at 60 — are unfair to younger teachers and would force older teachers to stay on their jobs, Lo said.

He added that the sum teachers and public schools are required to pay for civil servant insurance premiums has been insufficient, resulting in impending bankruptcies for the different pension systems.

Citing a survey by the group, which showed that a majority of parents do not want their children to be taught by older teachers, Lo urged the government to ensure that the turnover of teachers is not affected by the pension reform.

Under current rules, a public school teacher may retire after 25 years of service.

He compared Tsai’s pension reform policies with those of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), with both administrations claiming that they would be able to save the pension system from bankruptcy for 30 years.

“What about 30 years from now? What about civil servants that are just starting their careers?” Lo asked.

Quoting Pension Reform Committee deputy convener Lin Wan-i (林萬億), who said the pension system might need another reform in five to 10 years, Luo called on Lin to propose a policy now that would solve the problems of the next 10 years.

Federation president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said Tsai’s reform policies might seem substantial, but they have failed to address two core issues: the sustainability of funds and the government’s responsibility as an employer.

He later led more than 20 representatives from several local teachers’ unions to the Presidential Office Building to submit a request for a public debate with committee members.

In response, the committee said that the sustainability of the pension system cannot be achieved by a single policy, because the system is complex and nuanced in terms of the size and funding of pensions that different types of civil servants receive.

The federation should not accuse the government of negligence just because it did not comply with the union’s demand that active civil servants pay a fee to make up for the insufficiencies in the premiums they had paid, it said.

The committee said it has accepted the group’s suggestion that rules governing the pensions of elementary-school teachers, university teachers and other civil servants’ be revised separately, adding that rules on elementary-school teachers’ pensions would be implemented gradually to avoid affecting the turnover of teaching staff.

The committee said it welcomes all civic groups’ input on pension reform, but that it would be difficult to engage in a one-on-one debate with individual groups.

Adults at fault for Nazi incident: Tsai/ KMT blasts envoy over ‘Nazi’ criticism

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

President Tsai Ing-wen, center, speaks at a meeting of the Human Rights Advisory Committee at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

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.

KMT blasts envoy over ‘Nazi’ criticism

SYMBOLIC GESTUREKMT Legislator Alicia Wang has demanded that Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey return to Taiwan and pledge his allegiance to the ROC flag

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday accused Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) of “inciting hostilities between political parties” by attributing a recent Nazi costume controversy to a lack of transitional justice in Taiwan.

KMT caucus secretary-general Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) told a news conference at the legislature that as a representative of the nation, “Shieh’s duty is to protect the nation’s topmost interests and to let the involved countries understand our stance, rather than causing misunderstanding and other potential controversies.”

“Shieh is no longer a political talk show host [as he once was],” Chiang said, adding that the envoy’s remarks have tainted his diplomatic status.

Chiang called on Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) to rein Shieh in, but added that the minister would probably not be able to do so, because Shieh has President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on his side.

Chiang was referring to a controversial campus event featuring a group of Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School students dressing up as Nazis on Saturday. Government officials, foreign representatives and netizens have expressed outrage over the event. Shieh was one of the critics, attributing students’ ignorance to the nation’s lack of education on transitional justice.

Shieh said the students would have been naturally critical of Germany’s Nazi regime “if the education system had fully incorporated history about the state violence that occurred in Taiwan, but certain political parties still oppose the revelation of historical truth and continue using the Republic of China [ROC] national flag as a special symbol.”

He added that one of the traits of the Nazi regime was “using its party flag as the national flag,” making an implicit reference to the fact that the ROC flag is embellished with the KMT symbol.

He also lamented the nation’s continued “worship” of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said Shieh’s job, paid by taxpayers, is to help Taiwan develop a better relationship with Germany, “but he has failed to do his job.”

She demanded that Shieh return to the nation and report to the legislature during next month’s extraordinary session.

KMT Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) said that if Shieh does not identify with the ROC flag, he should step down as the nation’s representative.

It is Shieh’s job to protect Taiwanese children and explain the incident to Germany, “but he chose to fan the flames and rouse interparty feud, which is not acceptable,” she said.

School event row sparks debate on Taiwanese history

By Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

A cosplay event at a school in Hsinchu City has sparked debate about Taiwan’s past, with politicians saying that the Republic of China (ROC) national flag and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s praise of the Japanese colonial era are manifestations of the “Nazi spirit.”

The legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee yesterday convened a meeting to examine Sao Tome and Principe’s decision to cut its 19-year diplomatic ties with Taipei, but it was briefly overshadowed by the widely criticized campus event featuring a group of Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School students dressed as Nazis on Saturday.

Controversy about the school event has snowballed with Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) attributing the students’ actions to ignorance about history.

“If the education system had fully incorporated history about the state violence that occurred in Taiwan, young students would naturally be critical of Germany’s Nazi regime,” Shieh said on Facebook on Saturday. “Instead, certain political parties still boycott the revelation of historical truth and continue treating the [ROC] national flag as a special symbol.”

Saying that the students were also victims to some extent, Shieh lamented the nation’s continued “worship” of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and retired military officers’ efforts to curry favor with China while waiving the ROC flag in Taiwan.

“I will tell Shieh that he is now the nation’s representative to Germany and is no longer just a college professor or TV anchor. We will let him understand this,” Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) said in response to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun’s (馬文君) criticism of what she said was mockery of the flag.

Separately yesterday, New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) issued a statement urging the Presidential Office to apologize to the students for throwing them under the bus over the cosplay event simply because of opposition from Westerners.

“It was just a student event that school authorities did not have a hand in creating the content for, as it was aimed at facilitating creativity ... not advocating Nazi ideology,” Yok said, adding that the public had blown the issue out of proportion.

Yok said the real “modern Nazis” are the DPP government, which has beautified the Japanese colonial era, as well as members of the 2014 Sunflower movement who cut classes, staged demonstrations and illegally occupied government buildings.

He also called on the Ministry of Education to reinstate Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School principal Cheng Hsiao-ming (程曉銘), who resigned on Sunday amid public outrage over the event.

Osaka poetry enthusiasts visit Taiwanese master

By Cheng Hsu-kai and William Hetherington  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Taiwanese poet Lee Chin-shang, second right, speaks with Kenichi Okada and Shuichi Horiguchi as Taiwan Senryu Association director Tu Ching-chun, right, looks on in Taichung on Tuesday last week.

Photo: Cheng Hsu-kai, Taipei Times

Two retirees from Osaka, Japan, with an interest in songs and poetry from the Japanese colonial era on Tuesday last week visited renowned contemporary poetry master Lee Chin-shang (李錦上) at his home in Taichung.

Kenichi Okada, 69, and 74-year-old Shuichi Horiguchi said that it is exceedingly rare in Japan to find a person like Lee who is proficient in the various forms of haiku, tanka, senryu and free verse, adding that they sought out Lee to ask about his methods.

Okada said he joined the Taiwan Senryu Association two years ago and that he and Horiguchi enlisted the help of association director Tu Ching-chun (杜青春) to arrange a visit with Lee.

Okada said he first learned of Lee’s poetic prowess after joining the association and seeing his works written in various forms, including the limerick-like senryu, the 17-character haiku, the 31-character tanka and the more modern free-verse style.

Okada said Lee’s works have gained him a reputation in Japan, where he has been published in Yomiuri Shimbun’s art periodicals.

Lee completed elementary-school studies at colonial-era Lukang Second Public School, which is today called Wenkai Elementary School, in Changhua County before attending advanced studies at Lukang First Public School, which is at the site of today’s Lukang Elementary School, before sitting examinations at the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Sixth Fleet fuel plant.

After passing the tests Lee was selected for training at the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Second Fleet fuel plant worker training facilities in Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Lee said that during World War II many Japanese navy vessels were sunk in waters between Taiwan and Japan, adding that the training institute thought its trainees would flee in fear.

Lee said that in reality Taiwanese candidates were excited about the prospects of studying in Japan.

He was passionate about Japanese literature and began reading his father’s collection of Japanese books while he was in elementary school.

Lee said he wrote many letters to Japanese servicemen during the war, often incorporating poems into them.

Lee, 90, says he still enjoys writing to Japanese newspapers and poetry associations.

Okada and Horiguchi said they were drawn to Taiwan because of the friendliness shown to Japan by Taiwanese, adding that Japanese are thankful that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) did not seek reparations following the war, allowing Japan to focus on rebuilding its economy.

The two men said they wish to better understand why Taiwanese do not think highly of Chiang.

“Taiwan and Korea were both once under the rule of Japan. Animosity toward Japan is common in [South] Korea, but Taiwanese are friendly toward Japan. It is touching,” the men said.