New curricula to boost local language diversity: MOE
By Sherry Hsiao / Staff reporter
Weekly classes in one of Taiwan’s
bentu (本土, “local” or “native”) languages or Taiwan Sign Language would from 2022 be mandatory for first and second-year junior-high school students, and optional for third-year students, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Saturday.
The announcement came at a meeting of the ministry’s curriculum review committee hosted by the Taipei branch of the National Academy for Educational Research.
Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), the convener of the committee, presided over the meeting.
The curriculum changes passed include that seventh and eighth-grade students would from 2022 have one mandatory weekly session of Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka, an Aboriginal language or Taiwan Sign Language
Competency education more show than reality
By Shiao Fu-song 蕭福松
When I mentioned “civic competence” and “democratic competence” during a lecture on social awareness not long ago, I asked my students jokingly whether I should test their “competence” on the final exam. My question caused a commotion in the classroom as they all shouted: “No.”
Some students wondered how such competence could be tested, and I answered, with a smile, that it was something I also wanted to know, and I would therefore like to give it a try.
I asked if they could explain what literacy was. After a lively discussion, some said “competence” refers to a person’s temperament, sophistication or culture, while others said that it refers to self-respect, self-discipline or being a law-abiding citizen. All the answers were right, but they seemed to be quite different from the Ministry of Education’s emphasis on “competency education” in the new curriculum guidelines implemen