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Lee Yuan-tseh Has Nothing To Do with Nation’s Educational Reform Fiasco?”

icon2016/11/24
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 A Commentary

 

Lee Yuan-tseh Has Nothing To Do with Nation’s Educational Reform Fiasco?”

 

Source: Taipei-based China Times November 24, 2016

 

Prudence Chou (周祝瑛),

Professor at National Chengchi University

 

Prudence Chou (周祝瑛), a professor of education at National Chengchi University, contributed an article titled  “Lee Yuan-tseh Has Nothing To Do with the Nation’s Educational Reform Fiasco?” to the Taipei-based China Times on November 24. The following is an excerpt of the article:

In his newly-published autobiography, Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), a former president of the Academia Sinica, rebutted former President Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) recent claims that he was responsible for the failure of the nation’s educational reforms starting in the 1990s.

Lee Yuan-tseh, who chaired the nation’s Educational Reform Committee (1994-1996), wrote that the educational reforms failed because then President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) chose to support then Education Minister Wu Jin’s (吳京) proposals, not those of the Educational Reform Committee. However, many have questioned why Lee Yuan-tseh shifted responsibility to Wu Jin, who passed away in 2008.

Lee Yuan-tseh wrote that the Educational Reform Committee had proposed to “increase the number of high schools and universities.” But in his newly-published autobiography, he argues that “high schools and universities” were meant to be “public high schools and national universities.” However, this could not be further from the truth.    

In December 1996, the government published an education reform report, saying that Taiwan would move towards establishing more “comprehensive high schools” while reducing the number of vocational schools and five-year colleges. Later on, Lee Yuan-tseh echoed that proposal on various occasions, saying that it was necessary to streamline the nation’s high school education system and phase out vocational high schools. At the time, the Education Ministry dared not to voice opposition and declared that “comprehensive high schools” would be the pillar of the nation’s high school education system.      

Lee Yuan-tseh’s proposals on educational reforms gained ground as numerous education groups took to the streets to urge the government to increase the number of “high schools and universities” on April 10, 1994 in order to allow more young people to attend universities. Wu Jin, who served as Education Minister from 1996 to 1998 under then President Lee Teng-hui, paved the way for the cause as he proposed “opening a second freeway for the nation’s vocational education system.” In 1999, the government began to lift the ban on the number of vocational colleges allowed to be elevated to universities each year. From that time, a large number of universities were newly established in Taiwan. 

If one closely scrutinizes the contents of Taiwan’s educational reforms over the past 20 years, one will find that they adhere closely to Lee Yuan-tseh’s policy recommendations. Therefore, Lee Yuan-tseh should not shirk his responsibility for today’s excessive number of universities.     

Of course, then Presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) deserve the most blame. The former hired Lee Yuan-tseh to chair the nation’s Educational Reform Committee at the time, in spite of the fact that he had lived overseas for decades and was consequently unfamiliar with the nation’s education problems. Furthermore, Chen Shui-bian made use of educational reforms as an election tool to cater to the popular call for more universities. 

Lee Yuan-tseh, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, overestimated his ability to wisely promote educational reforms. He was not open-minded when faced with the complicated reality in the education reforms. In front of the members of the Educational Reform Committee, he once proudly said, “We have seen the world. As long as we can collect enough data, we will make the right judgment.” Looking back, it is very easy to determine who is mainly to blame for the failure of Taiwan’s decades-long educational reforms.   

 

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