Taiwan Today

In August 2012, Wu Wen-te (吳文德) was named principal of Taipei Municipal Guandu Elementary School in the northern part of Taiwan’s capital city. When Wu took the position, he became a man with a mission. As head of the school that was selected to host the Taipei City Ocean Education Resource Center, he began supervising a major construction project that included facilities for the center’s arts exhibitions, extensive book collections, boating excursions and multimedia displays.

For two days a week during certain parts of each semester, the school’s pool is closed to swimmers to make room for canoes, so that pupils from Guandu and other elementary schools can approximate a day-long river and ocean journey, all in the comfort and safety of the pool. Regular educational trips organized by Wu’s school sometimes include a visit to nearby Guandu Nature Park, a 57-hectare wetland near the point where the Tamsui River meets the sea in northwestern Taiwan; or to Guandu Temple, the folk religious center of the local fishing community.

“In my school, before graduation, students not only have to know how to swim, like all other elementary school students in Taipei, but they also must know how to paddle—or at least not capsize—a canoe,” Wu says. He believes that marine education materials and activities should be offered in connection with aspects of everyday life, such as food culture and environmental awareness. “We’re not living in an isolated island country,” the principal notes. “Instead, we must learn to view our nation as part of globally interconnected ocean territories.”

Such an ocean-oriented way of thinking has long been lacking in Taiwan, with most residents tending to identify more with agrarian traditions and ways of life. “In the past, Taiwanese people were not encouraged to go near the sea,” says Wu Chin-kuo (吳靖國), a professor in the Institute of Education at National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU) in Keelung City at Taiwan’s northeastern tip. “More often than not, the ocean—as an image, or the subject of a culture—was viewed in a negative way; it was dangerous, unknown and to be avoided.”

Under nearly four decades of authoritarian rule, marine activities were severely curtailed by the government, and most of the island’s coastal areas were considered militarily sensitive. After the end of martial-law rule in 1987, relaxed restrictions on access to the sea led to a new generation of people discovering the pleasures of aquatic recreation, and interest in Taiwan’s lengthy coastlines gradually increased. This was accompanied by the country’s more general moves toward a liberal society, of which diverse educational approaches became a major indicator.

Pluralistic Learning

After lobbying efforts by the public demanding a more pluralistic learning model, new educational reform guidelines were approved by the Executive Yuan in 1998. According to these guidelines—which also called for the integration of curricula at all elementary and junior high schools—the curricula for first to ninth-grade students were grouped into seven main subject areas, including languages, math, physical education and social studies. The guidelines were implemented in the 2001–2002 school year and have since been revised several times. Meanwhile, several major electives have been made available for supplementary study in and across different subject areas. In 2008, marine education was added to the electives list, alongside environmental studies, gender equality and human rights, and three others in the grade 1–9 curriculum guidelines. For Wu Chin-kuo, this represented a significant step forward for marine education, which thereby “secured a structural position in the educational system to avoid interference from the government’s shifts in policy,” the professor notes.

Wu Chin-kuo heads the Taiwan Marine Education Center, which was established by NTOU in September 2013 with partial funding by the Ministry of Education (MOE). This center came about as the result of efforts by a ministry taskforce to further institutionalize the management of marine education.

The Republic of China government established the country’s initial marine policy guidelines in 2001. The government’s Oceans Policy White Paper was approved in 2006 and the MOE’s White Paper on Marine Education Policy was released in 2007, the same year as the formation of the taskforce. Wu Chin-kuo points out that relevant education programs have gradually shifted from an emphasis on cultivation of experts and professionals in the marine field to an equal devotion to enhancing the general population’s knowledge and awareness of the ocean.

“It’s about culture, and so it cannot be completed immediately,” the professor says, emphasizing the need for long-term, sustained efforts in the education system.

Chang Tzu-chau (張子超), a professor in the Graduate Institute of Environmental Education at Taipei’s National Taiwan Normal University, points out that the marine-based curriculum, as well as the six other major electives, represent the education system’s response to global trends and the problems that face humanity.

Spirit of Reform

“The increased attention to maritime matters is in line with the spirit of educational reform. The goals are to help students learn more about their living environment and give them an adequate understanding of our country as an island state surrounded by the sea,” Chang says. “That way the potential for national and personal development can be more effectively and tangibly explored,” he adds.

Wu Chin-kuo notes that fostering basic knowledge of the sea helps the nation’s young students broaden their horizons. “In contrast to the relatively stable environment of the land, the instability and changeability of the ocean call for an adventurous spirit that could lead more Taiwanese people to consider a marine-related career on the one hand, and to embrace a greater consciousness of environmental and social change on the other,” he adds.

In terms of teaching and curricular arrangements, marine education has been conducted through a more liberal, bottom-up approach under the grade 1–9 education policy, Chang notes. “That is, instead of abiding by a standard national guideline, schools and teachers across the country can develop their own locally oriented programs of marine education in collaboration with nongovernmental groups and local communities,” the professor explains.

Managing and Assisting

To accomodate regional maritime features and needs, each of Taiwan’s 22 counties, special municipalities and cities, including those on the outlying islands, has established a marine education center like Guandu’s at a local elementary school or high school. Their task is to manage and, together with other local schools, assist in marine curriculum development, activity promotion and resource integration, among other responsibilities.

In addition to indoor and outdoor activities such as the river and ocean day trips organized by the Guandu school, marine topics are presented and taught in regular academic subjects such as languages, science and technology—a subject area that encompasses biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics—as well as social studies.

“We hope the teachers of these subjects will be more open to maritime concepts so that they can lead students to a greater understanding and interest in marine issues,” Wu Chin-kuo says.

In November 2013, the NTOU professor was invited to attend a two-day training program for elementary and secondary school teachers from local marine education centers around the country. Sponsored by the MOE, this event was organized by (and took place at) Keelung’s National Museum of Marine Science and Technology, which officially opened to the public in late 2013 after having launched services at some of its facilities in mid-2012.

Another specialized marine education site is the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, which began operating in 2000 in Taiwan’s southernmost county of Pingtung. Wu Chin-kuo says that the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung City functions like a marine education venue for students and the general public in central Taiwan.

Huang Chia-yu (黃嘉郁), who formerly taught at a private high school in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi City and is now a science teacher at Taipei Municipal Xinxing Junior High School, says “the proportion of marine content in school textbooks is improving.” Among other topics in the field of science and technology, marine issues are taught to ninth grade students as part of their studies of ocean and climate change.

As with most subjects, teachers are the most important factor in marine education. “It’s part of earth sciences, and if the teacher is a chemistry or physics teacher, he or she might not be very familiar with the topic,” Huang says. Junior high school students, he notes, can learn to read tide tables for a location and use that information to choose the safest time for shoreline activities.

The science teacher adds that in the field of social studies—consisting mainly of geography and history—students can learn, for example, why some mainland Chinese settlers heading for Taiwan ended up in Japan instead. “The Kuroshio Current flowing northward from Taiwan’s east coast carried them there,” Huang explains about a piece of Taiwan’s early pioneer history.

Guandu’s Wu calls for marine concepts to be incorporated into all academic fields and major electives at schools. “We encourage students to appreciate marine issues and make them a theme of artistic and literary expression,” the principal says. “Female divers, for example, can be discussed in connection with gender equality issues as a non-traditional choice of profession for Taiwan’s women.”

Chang points out that marine education for young students, in addition to offering leisure activities, can touch upon wide-ranging areas such as resource development, pollution and climate change, as well as national diplomatic and military issues.

Wu Chin-kuo says that in the formative elementary and junior high school years, teachers can help students broaden their horizons beyond the land by teaching them about Taiwan’s marine culture and the different lifestyles associated with it.

Sublime and Heartbreaking

Ultimately, “knowledge is the basis of action,” Huang says, adding that knowledge can be transferred directly or through various indirect channels. Among those indirect means is Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above, a documentary film consisting mostly of aerial photography that was released in local theaters in late 2013. Beyond Beauty presents Taiwan’s land and seascapes as well as the heartbreaking results of environmental exploitation that has taken place in the name of economic development. The film’s unexpected popularity sparked a wave of environmental consciousness among Taiwanese people and gave rise to calls for an immediate response from government authorities. The aerial images, as Huang puts it, provide an alternative way of looking at Taiwan. Likewise, marine education seeks to develop an alternate perspective, one not rigidly anchored to the land. The goal of such education is to encourage students to explore and realize the personal and national potential of the Taiwanese as an ocean people, and of Taiwan as an ocean state.

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw