Last night in the center of Taipei, an incident occurred where a group of young people damaged public property and broke into the Ministry of Education. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is full of various bitter arguments today.
Among them, some people (from ordinary passersby to university professors) are holding a report from the Liberty Times in early February this year titled “Curriculum Adjustment: Ministry of Education Ruled Illegal” to tell everyone that the Ministry of Education’s curriculum adjustment is already illegal. They then emphasized that the reason students were arrested by the police and prosecuted by the prosecutor today is that the Ministry of Education “forced its way” first, which “forced” the students to break the law.
I believe this misleading connection generated without brain-thinking is the biggest problem in Taiwanese society. On the one hand, they deliberately create public opinion favorable to themselves, and on the other hand, they use misinformation as an excuse for their own law-breaking.
Regarding the court’s ruling that the Ministry of Education was illegal, the cause of this matter was that the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (everyone knows what kind of organization this is) demanded that the Ministry of Education must provide the “list of members” and “minutes of meetings” of the original adjustment meeting. However, the Ministry of Education insisted on not giving them, believing it was necessary to protect the identity of the reviewers (from another perspective, they feared these members would be put on a cross and burned, like a medieval witch hunt).
Therefore, the TAHR (Taiwan Association for Human Rights) sued the Ministry of Education in the administrative court for violating the ‘Government Information Openness Act’.
When the judgment of the first instance of the administrative court came down, we could see in the judge’s ruling that it “only” required the Ministry of Education to provide the minutes of meetings and the list of members for the TAHR to inspect and transcribe on-site (it couldn’t even be filmed with a camera).
In other words, “illegal” refers to the fact that the Ministry of Education refused to provide the identities of the members to the TAHR.
The judge even emphasized that only the TAHR could inspect and transcribe (meaning those who want to see it must apply separately).
However, since the Liberty Times at that time wrote a short headline “Curriculum Adjustment: Ministry of Education Ruled Illegal”—a rare short headline with a clear “Sima Zhao’s mind” (obvious hidden agenda).
Therefore, a large group of people took a chicken feather as an arrow (claimed false authority), spreading the incorrect conclusion everywhere: ‘the Ministry of Education’s curriculum adjustment is illegal.’
In fact, the Ministry of Education did violate the Government Information Openness Act, but the curriculum adjustment itself was not only not illegal, but even the Control Yuan found no irregularities.
If you just don’t like the adjustments such as “Japanese Rule becoming Japanese Occupation Era” (is it because everyone loves Japanese dramas?) or “Comfort Women becoming forced to be comfort women,” you can protest, but please do not do things that violate the law, and don’t always use misinformation to mislead the general public (even if you mislead yourself first).
See More
- Japanese Occupation or Japanese Rule? The Stance of Wikipedia Editors
- Popular History of Japanese Colonization of Taiwan - Analysis of ‘Japanese Occupation Era’ or ‘Japanese Rule Era’
- Japanese Confidential Files: During the Japanese Occupation of Taiwan, 400,000 Taiwanese were massacred! The Hidden History of Taiwan!
Note 1
After reading the meeting minutes transcript of Legislator Cheng Li-chiun’s interpellation to Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa, I found that Chu Yun-peng and others were trying to adjust some of the content that had been modified by Tu Cheng-sheng (the one who was in the news saying the map of Taiwan should be turned 90 degrees to be included in history textbooks) and Dai Bao-cun during Chen Shui-bian’s administration back to an earlier version. It’s very much like a group of people editing each other on WIKI.
During Chen Shui-bian’s administration, the Ministry of Education appointed Tu Cheng-sheng as the convener for modifying high school textbooks. At that time, Hong Kong groups came to Taiwan to protest, claiming that many revisions—including the deletion of the title “Founding Father” and the deeds of the “72 Martyrs of Huanghuagang,” and changing the “Wuchang Uprising” to “Starting an Affair” (Qi Shi)—were an attempt to cut off the legal tradition and history of the Republic of China. Such crude political manipulation polluting history education is distressing and infuriating. (But what does this have to do with Hong Kong, anyway?)
In fact, from my position, I prefer the earlier version. Even when Tu Cheng-sheng modified it, there were criticisms (but in that year’s major curriculum overhaul, why didn’t the KMT send students to the Ministry of Education to twist around like snails?).
Especially in contrast to Lee Teng-hui’s remarks in Japan these days, I sincerely feel that although I don’t dislike modern Japan, where do these people who call themselves Taiwanese place the Taiwanese (including indigenous people) who were still heroically resisting during the Japanese Occupation Era? And now they hypocritically shout “Love Taiwan.”
If they love Japan so much, they might as well take a Japanese name and move to Japan to live (Oops, I forgot to say that Lee Teng-hui, who said the Diaoyu Islands belong to Japan, indeed has a Japanese name).
Note 2
Among the modifications in this curriculum adjustment, the ones most often used for comparison are likely the 95 and 98 curricula made by Tu Cheng-sheng during Chen Shui-bian’s administration.
In March last year, 139 domestic history scholars also proposed a joint signature demanding the cancellation of the implementation of the new curriculum.
If no one mentioned it, I doubt many would know how many of these 139 (so-called) history scholars were members who originally assisted Tu Cheng-sheng in formulating the new curriculum (the list of members at that time was also not public, it was just the KMT’s stupidity in not learning to sue the Ministry of Education for violating the Government Information Openness Act in court like the TAHR).
And among these 139 (so-called) history scholars, how many of those with the title “history” scholar actually came from “Taiwan Literature Departments” (Tai Wen Suo).
Taiwan Literature Departments are divided into two types: one is called the Institute of Taiwan Culture and Languages, whose main research content is Taiwan culture and languages. Later, to expand their field, they added the word “history” and became the Institute of Taiwan History, Culture, and Languages. The other type is more traditional and seems to specialize in historical research, such as the Institute of Taiwan History.
As for the level of professionalism, heaven knows (if everyone still remembers, a few years ago in Tainan, there was a news story about two old men who were both researching Taiwanese literature scolding each other in the conference hall). 迫