Hung: If Elected President, I Will Amend History Textbook Guidelines Based on ROC Constitution

 Hung: If Elected President, I Will Amend History Textbook Guidelines Based on ROC Constitution

 Sources: All Taipei newspapers

 July 30, 2015

The controversy surrounding adjustments to the high school history textbook guidelines continues to heat up. Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Deputy Legislative Speaker and the KMT’s 2016 Presidential candidate, yesterday said on a TVBS political talkshow that if she should be elected President, she would definitely amend the textbook guidelines in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of China. 

Hung stressed that when the DPP came to power in 2000, the Chen Shui-bian administration had altered, to a great degree, the history textbook guidelines based on a Taiwan-independence movement perspective, and what the Education Ministry was currently doing was to re-adjust the existing history textbook guidelines to conform to the ROC Constitution. 

Hung went on to remind the opposition parties that they should not incite young people to violate the law by breaking into government buildings just because the opposition had obtained political gains from last year’s student movement, during which student protesters broke into the Legislative Yuan compound to occupy the legislative chamber for nearly a month in a show of opposition to the cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement. 

Hung noted that she actually sympathized with the students (who were recently arrested for breaking into the Education Ministry building), indicating that politicians should not encourage young students who did not truly understand what the textbook guideline readjustments were all about to break the law. She stated that she felt extremely sorry for the recently-arrested students, and hoped that the arrests would not leave a blight on the lives of the youngsters. 

For some background information, students who opposed the adjustments to high school history textbook guidelines broke into the building of the Ministry of Education (MOE) in the wee hours of July 24 in a show of protest. The Education Ministry filed charges against the student protesters who broke into the MOE building, occupied the minister’s office, and vandalized public property. Education Minister Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) stated yesterday that the MOE was willing to give these students an opportunity to make a fresh start if they admitted that they broke the law. Wu Ching-shan (吳清山), director of the K-12 Education Administration, explained, “Withdrawing charges against the students is one of the options.”

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