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Textbook changes steamroll rights
By Hsueh Hua-yuan 薛化元
The recent “minor adjustments” made by the Ministry of Education to the senior-high school curriculum for Chinese language, history and civics textbooks have not only been questioned in terms of content, the very process used for making these adjustments has also been widely questioned.
The textbooks targeted for adjustment based on the new course outline have still not been completed and the licenses issued to publishers of the current lot of history textbooks — the first to receive approval for content change — still have four years left on them. The changes are said to be minor, but they involve major changes and are therefore unreasonable.
There has been a lot of talk about acting in accordance with the Constitution so let us consider this particular problem from the perspective of the right to receive an education.
According to the basic spirit of modern constitutionalism, people’s right to learn should be protected by the Constitution. How can a country claim to be a constitutional democracy when it does not respect the right to receive an education and while trying to use state power to control the content of that education?
Reasonable (minor) adjustments to the curriculum must at least be based on a certain degree of expertise to guarantee that they are created in a professional way. Attention must also be given to the legitimacy of the process. Even if this is the case, the government cannot write up a curriculum to monopolize the content of education or textbooks.
According to Chapter 11 of the Constitution, which deals with the relative powers of the central and local governments, the central government is responsible for writing the laws regulating the educational system, which it can then enforce or delegate to local government. However, authority over local education is part of local government autonomy and the government cannot deprive local governments of that right with a simple administrative order.
Furthermore, academic freedom and the freedom of teachers to plan their classes are also part of human rights. As the major basis for educational content and entrance examinations, the regulatory character of the curriculum and its supplementary nature need to be respected. The curriculum should be used as a principle and as long as textbooks embody the principles governing the curriculum, additional materials taught by teachers as supplements to meet their students’ particular needs should be respected as long as they do not run counter to academic professionalism.
The recent resolution by the National Academy for Education Research’s Committee of Curriculum Development expressed this idea well when it said that the curriculum should reflect Taiwan’s current status, as well as the different opinions that exist in study and learning. Unfortunately, this line of thinking was later abandoned.
Professionalism and specialization were not respected during the curriculum adjustment process. A look at the debated high-school curriculum shows that 36 percent of the parts dealing with Taiwanese history were “slightly adjusted” and that, shockingly, neither researchers from Academia Sinica nor university history professors took part in the process. The whole thing was overseen by an academic who specializes in economics. On the senior-high school front, panels within the ministry responsible for overseeing subjects like history were not included in the task force for the “minor adjustments” and so their opinions were not taken into account.
There was an even greater problem with the adjustment process. Notifications for public hearings on the adjustments were issued at the very last minute, with some panels responsible for overseeing certain subjects not even receiving official written notification. Teachers did not have enough time to sign up for the hearings and were therefore unable to learn about the changes.
At the hearings, no complete version of the curriculum was offered and administrative work was carried out even more quickly. On Jan. 24, the National Academy for Educational Research held a meeting with its committee. The next day, the ministry held a meeting with its Curriculum Examining Committee and on Jan. 27, a further review meeting was held in which no attention was paid to the resolutions reached at previous meetings. The result was that the “slightly adjusted” curriculum passed as a blank bill.
Even if people agree with National Taiwan University philosophy professor Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), who served on the history curriculum adjustment task force, is it really necessary to change the curriculum immediately? In an edition of the Chinese-language Straits Review Monthly, Wang said he honestly believes the curriculum changes were the result of a compromise and that while he is not completely satisfied with them, he found them acceptable.
His comments suggest that the current history curriculum is the result of a lot of hard work and adjustments. If that is the case, why is it necessary to make such great changes to the first-year high-school textbooks now, when the new textbooks are just beginning to be used? How can these changes be legitimized?
The new curriculum with its “minor adjustments” involves large changes to key content that the government is concerned about. These changes are not only applied to Taiwanese history — even the the civics classes will have information about the White Terror era removed, not to mention the concept of self-determination as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
All this talk about “minor adjustments” is just that, mere talk. The project involves major changes. Not only is the expertise of the adjustments questionable, the entire process lacks legitimacy.
If changes like this are possible, does that not mean that whoever is in power can change curricula as they like? If this really is what is going on, just what does the government think of our right to receive an education, the professional teaching skills of our teachers and the nation’s education system in general?
Hsueh Hua-yuan is head of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Drew Cameron
source: Taipei Times
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