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A need for Taiwanese
cultural education
By Cheng Cheng-iok 鄭正煜
After 60 years of Chinese colonial education and brainwashing conducted by the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Taiwanese under the age of 40 or 50 know
basically nothing about what I refer to as Taiwan Studies — the study of
Taiwan’s history, literature, languages and culture.
I once gave a talk to 165 elementary-school teachers, during which I asked how
many of them had read Lee Chiao’s (李喬) Wintry Night trilogy (寒夜三部曲), which has
been adapted for TV and aired on Taiwan Public Television Service. Four of them
raised their hands.
Then I asked about novelist Cheng Ching-wen (鄭清文), the only Taiwanese to have
won an international book prize over the past 60 years, winning the Kiriyama
Pacific Rim Book Prize, one year before internationally renowned Japanese author
Haruki Murakami. Three of them raised their hands. And when I asked about one of
Taiwan’s great early novelists, Lu Ho- jo (呂赫若), only one person raised his
hand.
There are too many similar examples of presidents and teachers from Taiwan’s
universities, high schools and elementary schools lacking local knowledge about
Taiwan, and I believe that apart from the 228 Massacre, this is one of Taiwan’s
greatest tragedies.
The Taiwanese history book currently used in junior and senior high schools does
include discussion of the 228 Massacre. However, of the younger generations who
have read this history book and its depiction of the 228 Massacre, I am sure
very few know the heroic history of Ong Thiam-teng (王添燈), who was burnt to death
after being doused with gasoline.
Most of them are probably also unaware that Lin Mosei (林茂生), former dean of arts
at National Taiwan University (NTU) and once the highest-educated Taiwanese
person, told education reformer John Dewey of Columbia University when Dewey
tried to keep Ong at Columbia to teach that he still had a flock awaiting his
leadership in his homeland.
After the massacre, a Japanese professor and colleague of Lin’s at NTU gave Lin
the common-sense advice to cut and run. Lin responded by saying that he had done
nothing wrong and asking why he should escape. He then went missing and, until
this day, the details of his death are unknown. In the end, Lin was sacrificed
in his own homeland.
History must be read like a novel in which one becomes enthralled in the story
through its details. This is also the only way a sense of mission can be gained
from history, which can then be gradually turned into action. Taiwan’s overall
educational system, teachers, students and parents all lack passion for local
Taiwanese knowledge. It is hard to find a developed country anywhere in which
people have such a fuzzy image of their forefathers as in Taiwan.
What is even more alarming is how the political and administrative leaders of
the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have neglected the importance and urgency
of imparting local knowledge to Taiwanese.
When Ma was elected in 2008, he immediately took illegal action to interfere
with history and Chinese language lessons in senior high schools. His government
is well aware of the huge influence the humanities can have on the mind and so
they took forceful action.
The pan-blue and the pan-green camps differ greatly in the way they view the
importance of education. While the KMT understands it, the DPP doesn’t.
If one day Taiwan is lost because politics go the same way as education has
gone, that would be a lesson gained from history.
Cheng Cheng-iok is the president of the Southern Taiwan Society.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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