Just as the second wave of reform is starting to sweep through Taiwan’s educational system, a third one is already visible. The first wave came in the early 1950s, when the central government moved to Taiwan after the mainland fell to the Chinese Communists. The second began mounting during the rapid democratization of the late 1980s. The third can be dated to the January 1994 revision of the University Law, but its potential impact has yet to be fully appreciated.
The government initiated educational reform in the 1950s to achieve a number of high-priority goals. First, it was done to help root out fifty years of Japanese colonial influence on the island’s populace—”resinicizing” them, one might say—and thereby guarantee their loyalty to the Chinese motherland. Second, the million mainlanders or so who had fled to Taiwan themselves had the age-old tendency of being more loyal to city, county, or province than to China as a nation. They identified themselves as Hunanese, Cantonese, or Sichuanese first, and as Chinese second. A centrally controlled curriculum would help forge a unified nationalistic sentiment for these people and their children. Finally, there was the immediate threat of an invasion from the mainland. Education would help build a martial spirit, inculcate the idea of Taiwan as an “island bastion,” and stimulate enough military, economic, political, and cultural strength not only to survive, but also to recover the mainland.
This system, which remained essentially constant from the 1950s until the late 1980s, was based on Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary ideology and ideas of nationalism, formulated in the early years of the 20th century. Education was slated to play an essential role in bringing about national development. Sun also wanted to bind China’s five major ethnic groups into a national unity, called “the Chinese people” (Hantsu), as a way to downplay ethnic distinctions. His idea of a unified Chinese state wasn’t new, but his emphasis on cultural and national unity was— and it became a crucial component of Chinese nationalism.
Although the form and content of this educational policy may seem propagandist today, the vocabulary of nation-building through education is still a part of current discourse. For example, Ministry of Education reports and policy statements make repeated reference to the value of education in assuring political stability, creating a peaceful and orderly society, cultivating the best talent to engage in national development, and ensuring the continuity of a national culture—all goals rooted in Sun’s Three Principles of the People.
But principles are guidelines, not rules and regulations forever set in cement. Over the decades, many people have disagreed with the government’s tightly controlled educational policy and the way it has been implemented. For example, many Taiwan residents resented the required use of Mandarin in the classroom, especially since Taiwanese, Hakka, and tribal languages were essentially shut out as fields of study and, even worse, as accepted modes of communication. Many people also disagreed with the overwhelming emphasis on mainland China in school curricula compared with the minimal inclusion of Taiwan’s history, geography, and literature. And many were disturbed by the narrow definition given to “national culture”—which was actually Chinese elite or gentry culture—not only because it ignored the vitality and diversity that has always characterized Chinese history and society, but because it also ignored what was most distinctive about Taiwan.
Over the years, many people risked voicing such discontents, sometimes indirectly. For instance, the hsiang-tu or “local soil” movements in poetry and prose during the 1970s emphasized the legitimacy of Taiwan-focused experience and sensitivities. But dissatisfaction with the educational system and its mandated K-12 to university level curricula became a wave by the late 1980s. The island’s democratization, including the lifting of martial law in July 1987, put pressure on the government to give educational institutions greater autonomy over all their operations.
The second wave has not yet crested. The past eight years have witnessed an explosion of interest in Taiwan and things Taiwanese expressed in everything from books and magazines to television and movies. This has urged a new balance in the educational system, one in which “culture” is being redefined, as well as Taiwan’s place in the curriculum. It is a healthy process, and some additions have already been made in school coursework, but thus far heated debate has outstripped substantial change.
Before the second wave has passed, a third is rising to reinforce it. The new University Law has given educationists the power to change undergraduate and graduate curricula, alterations that should have trickle-down effects on K-12 classes. Some initial efforts will place more emphasis on Taiwan-related subjects, but that is but a small part of the picture. Educators, including the influential president of Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s highest research institution, advocate a complete revamping of educational priorities. This means updating and adding courses, everything from cutting-edge sciences to broader offerings in the humanities. Their concerns are bedrock realistic: they say the future of the ROC on Taiwan lies in becoming an ever more powerful international economic player.
The government’s Six-Year Plan for infrastructure development, the Go South investment and trade policy, the Asia-Pacific regional operations center plan, and the World Trade Organization bid all have one extraordinary need in common: a world-class work force. But success in such fields as high-tech and services, international law and finance, telecommunications and trade requires a more sophisticated educational system than is now in place. The coming third wave of reform should adjust curricula to the needs of the 21st century.