Minister Pan, You Have Turned Education into a Political Battlefield

 Minister Pan, You Have Turned Education into a Political Battlefield

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

September 26, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Textbook Guidelines Review Conference of the Education Ministry made an about-face, overturning the earlier resolution adopted for senior high school Chinese literature textbook guidelines, i.e., 45 to 55 percent for classical writings and the rest for vernacular writings, and lowered the proportion of classical writings to the range of 35 to 45 percent. This vital twist, in reality, came about because the DPP turned the Textbook Guidelines Review Conference into a political review conference. Education Minister Pan Wen-chung even personally acted as a promoter, turning an education venue into an arena for political gladiators. The whole proceedings were veritably a drama centered on populist domination and procedural bullying.

Reviewing the dispute between classical and vernacular writings in the Chinese literature textbook guidelines, we witnessed scenes of student delegates to the conference bullying professors charged with the revision of the textbook guidelines, and committee members charged with textbook guidelines review who lacked, professionalism pluck writings selected from obscure I-voting, using nativism consciousness to forcibly guide the direction of the textbook guideline review; the rules of procedure were employed as a gimmick to overturn the proposals introduced by the study and review committee. What is even more deplorable is that on the dispute that had eventually ended with much difficulty, Education Minister Pan Wen-chung allowed a point of order to overturn a consensus, on the surface, repeatedly expressing "respect for professionalism," but actually only caving in to the blackmail of the nativist faction.

In this era of globalization, winds of Taiwan's closed-door policies, however, have been quickly spreading from the political and economic areas towards the cultural and educational areas. Here, inside the sack of democracy, we find in reality populist opium; under the slogans of reform is, in reality, a package of self-inflicted de-Sinicization; multiculturalism is being used for packaging cultural Taiwan independence; the so-called professionalism, moreover, is being used as slaves or indentured maid servants for politics. Infantilism prevails and mediocrity is in vogue; as to students’ rights and interests to receive education, as well as their future prospects, these are apparently not their concern.

There is no professionalism in the eyes of the DPP; education ministers have always showered their attentions on politics, thus denigrating a whole generation’s quality and the future competitiveness of Taiwan to pandering to vulgarism and sacrifices before shrines of populism.

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