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EDITORIAL : Ulterior motive behind ‘Four Books’
A Facebook campaign launched by teachers concerned about a
Ministry of Education decision to make study of the Confucian classics mandatory
in high schools asks an interesting question — is there an ulterior political
motive to forcing students to study the “Four Books”? The ministry’s stated goal
in making the ancient textbooks required reading is to combat widespread
bullying, drug use and gang problems among high school students. However,
academics and teachers question whether studying the books would solve these
problems, and point out that it would take time away from the study of elective
courses.
What is the real reason for railroading through mandatory study of four books
that were chosen as the most important Confucian texts by a Song Dynasty scholar
about 900 years ago? Written more than 2,000 years ago, the books are unlikely
to touch on modern themes such as peer pressure, gang dynamics, drug use,
teenage pregnancies, broken families, pollution, the declining birthrate and
other issues facing young people today.
The ministry summed up its stance on the issue when it described The Doctrine of
the Mean (中庸), The Great Learning (大學), The Analects of Confucius (論語) and
Mencius (孟子) as the “basic materials of Chinese culture.” But as Democratic
Progressive Party Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) has pointed out, classical
Chinese texts have come to comprise 65 percent of the books read by high school
students since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office, compared with making up
45 percent of required reading before his administration. If the Four Books were
to graduate from being the topic of elective courses to mandatory subjects, that
percentage would increase even further.
The Ma administration has apparently packed the ministry’s Curriculum Committee
with loyal members whose goal is to push through an emphasis on reading Chinese
classics. Curriculum Committee member Lin Lih-yun (林麗雲) said the committee
submitted a curriculum that heavily emphasized Chinese classics in September
last year shortly after several committee members were replaced, culminating
five years of study on what high school students should be reading. The
committee then overruled its own curriculum early this year to make the Four
Books mandatory, starting next year. These sudden revisions seem overly hasty
considering how much time had been put into planning the curriculum.
The Ma administration’s decision to emphasize Chinese classics did not start
overnight, and it certainly is not a response to bullying in schools, which was
only really elevated to the national agenda when Taoyuan’s former Bade Junior
High School principal Wu Chia-ku (於家穀) was fired in late December for turning a
blind eye to brutal bullying and gangsterism on campus. After that, the issue of
bullying in schools polarized the media, but Ma’s campaign to force students to
study ancient Chinese texts has been going on for at least the past three years.
In what looked like a kneejerk reaction at the time, but is more than likely a
well thought out plan to capitalize on public indignation, education officials
revised the required reading list at the beginning of this year, saying the Four
Books would build character, instill morals and stop high school students from
bullying each other, taking drugs and joining gangs. However, the ministry’s
actions and its words don’t match up, which begs the question: Is requiring
study of the Fours Books really meant to combat bullying, or is it meant to make
Taiwan’s high school students more Chinese?
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