Cheng-Yu Hung

Tradition meets pluralism: the receding Confucian values in the Taiwanese citizenship curriculum

Confucianism, long regarded as the key philosophy on personal character-building and interpersonal relations in Chinese society, used to be pivotal to citizenship education in Taiwan, but that has changed in the last 20 years. In the wake of democratization in the late 1980s, growing liberalism and pluralism in Taiwanese society prompted the authorities to widen the scope of the school curriculum to include a diversity of cultures and thus the influence of this ancient Chinese philosophy began to fade away. The new citizenship curriculum, introduced in 2010, is no longer structured around Confucian moral guidance, but has instead embraced pluralism. Confucianism, from the perspective of those Taiwanese citizenship curriculum designers who were interviewed, hinders the formation of civil society due to its overly strong emphasis on familial kinship and “sovereign-subject” paternalism. Engulfed by Confucian moral principles, the critical and reflective competence of the individual often fails to develop. The new citizenship programme therefore attempts to counter the emphasis on fostering “obedient citizens” under monolithic Confucian doctrines and envisions a resilient civil society open to pluralistic voices.

Ambiguity as deliberate strategy: the ‘de-politicized’ discourse of national identity in the Taiwanese citizenship curriculum

This article aims to investigate how the discourse on national identity is approached in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum. The differing opinions on Taiwan’s relationship with China and the constant threat from this rising superpower have deterred the explicit promotion of either a Taiwanese or Chinese identity. The new curriculum follows a strategy of ‘intentional ambiguity’, where neither identity is mentioned. In this ‘polysemous’ form, the curriculum has been criticized for staying silent on the question of cultivating a national identity. However, the curriculum developers interviewed for this paper suggested that parents and pupils who examine the new curriculum can find support for whichever national identity they favor since it is designed in such an inclusive manner. They can then simultaneously reflect on the multiple, divergent or competing meanings behind the ‘polysemous texts’ and this ‘hermeneutic’ process of reasoning can then facilitate the choice of national identity with maximum acceptance.

The Use of Weblogs in Citizenship Education: A Theoretical Analysis of the Integration of Weblogs and the English Citizenship Curriculum

New technologies have changed the way people perceive the world as well as access to knowledge. The ubiquitous influence of the Internet has also impacted traditional teaching in schools. According to existing studies, the weblog, or blog, is one of the most commonly applied new technologies in teaching due to its ability to allow a combination of text, photographs, videos and discussion forums on an interactive platform. Its influence is particularly keenly felt in language teaching, distance learning and natural science education. However, its use in the humanities, including history, geography and citizenship education, is relatively unexplored. The author discerns a strong connection between weblogs and citizenship education, and argues that they share the mutual objectives of transmitting knowledge, enhancing deliberative interaction, and cultivating participation and contribution, as well as generating a sense of community. While citizenship education is widely included in school timetables across countries to stave off social apathy and reverse the trend of ever declining participation in public affairs, the nature of blogging can be an effective tool to encourage information-sharing and opinion exchange between pupils as well as teachers, which may further stimulate participation and confidence in schools, the community and the larger society, and transform the acquired civic knowledge in class into real-life experience. This article investigates this issue by means of theoretical analysis and, in order to facilitate understanding, the author uses the English citizenship curriculum as an example to contextualise the theoretical arguments and demonstrate the integrative potential of the subject and this technological device. Not only are the advantages proposed in the research, but also possible disadvantages are illustrated, in order to bring additional attention to the detrimental effects that the new technology may have.

Educators as transformative intellectuals: Taiwanese teacher activism during the national curriculum controversy

ABSTRACT In early 2014, a group of senior high school teachers initiated a series of campaigns to fight against the governments imposition of a revised history and citizenship education curriculum, an unprecedented display of opposition in the history of public schools in Taiwan. They rose above the traditional stereotype of the schoolteacher common across many societies in Asia and challenged the pro-reunification and Chinese ethnocentric setting underlying the new educational proposals. Drawing upon Girouxs writings on teachers as transformative intellectuals, this article looks into the social activism of 12 teachers from the campaign and the impact this movement had on their classroom practices. While “the language of critique” and “the language of possibility” are defined by Giroux as the two crucial components a critical educator should possess, these Taiwanese activist teachers appeared to demonstrate a more nuanced view by separating their activism from their professionalism in front of students and preventing themselves from incorporating the personal social movement experience into their classroom teaching. Moreover, our findings also suggest that elements of Confucianism – deeply rooted in Taiwanese society – have shaped these teachers’ involvement in activism in important ways.

The battle hymn of the activist teacher: Taiwanese school teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes

ABSTRACT This article challenges the simplistic and reductive image of Taiwanese schoolteachers, and reveals their actions of resistance during the turmoil of the recent curriculum reform controversy. Despite the fact that teachers are not usually portrayed as progressive and revolutionary agents, in the face of the disputed curriculum revision in 2014, some Taiwanese teachers came forward to oppose its implementation through demonstrations, hunger strikes, and litigation. The wider publics attention to this issue and ensuing student movement can be attributed to these teachers’ pioneering activism. By means of interviewing 12 teachers, this article explores activist teachers’ political self-efficacy, the creation of their pressure groups, and their apprehension about fighting against the authorities. The recording of this teacher-initiated social movement demonstrates ‘teachers as activists’, and hopefully will inspire educators not to limit their influence solely to the classroom.

The reformulation of national identity in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum through the lens of curriculum reformers

Abstract The national curriculum reformers, regarded as members of the social elites and intellectuals, projected their vision of identity onto the curriculum which they constructed and influenced the next generation’s national consciousness. In the tangled relationship between politics and education, the selection of the reformers in a sense dictates the direction of the new curriculum. This article interviewed 18 reformers, members of the latest citizenship curriculum of 2010, to investigate their individual views on identities and the monolithically-promoted Chinese configuration in the old curriculum. Although the new citizenship curriculum, renamed Curriculum Guidelines for Civics and Society, puts nothing in writing in favour of either a Chinese or Taiwanese national identity, according to the discovery in this research, the Curriculum Committee implicitly embedded a transformed inclusive and hyphenated Taiwanese national identity in the new curriculum in the hope of accentuating Taiwan’s exclusive sovereignty. The inner thinking of the reformers is uncovered to reveal their reasoning that a broadly constructed national identity can concurrently accommodate diverse personal identities and suits the society better than the previously prescribed Chinese identity. This article also records the evolution of the curriculum from the previous China-centred narratives to Taiwan-centred narratives, something that happened in line with the changes in Taiwanese society.

The making of the citizenship curriculum in Taiwan: on the evolving concepts of ‘good citizenship’ and ‘national identity’ after World War II

This research investigates the latest Taiwanese citizenship education (CE) curriculum reform, the preparation of which was launched in 2007 and then officially rolled out to senior high schools in 2010. This curriculum change reflected political, societal or cultural shifts and sought to respond to multiple expectations. The specific focus of this research centres primarily on two key issues in the Taiwanese CE: (a) ‘Good Citizenship’ and (b) ‘National Identity’. Eighteen curriculum designers of the new curriculum were selected for in-depth interviews. The empirical data show that the curriculum integrates liberalism and communitarianism and shuttles back and forth between the two ideologies, seeking equilibrium. Besides, Confucianism has been removed from the new curriculum since Confucian principles applied in education embody ‘sovereign-subject hierarchy’ and ‘self-centred familism’, which are seen as detrimental to the development of a civil society. On the matter of national identity, the curriculum eschews the promotion of either the Taiwanese or the Chinese identity due to long-standing friction among social groups within Taiwan and tension with China. To cope with this complexity, this thesis argues that the new curriculum, siding with constitutionalism and pluralism, adopts a strategy of intentional ambiguity to seek maximum acceptance from a public holding diverse political perspectives. The empirical study also discovers that the curriculum designers’ concept of national identity is consistent with civic nationalism, which defines its membership by equal political and legal status and the freedom to become part of the nation regardless of ethnicity. Therefore, this ‘umbrella-like identity’ can become a communal icon among diverse groups and can be incorporated into the curriculum to strengthen the shared identity and build social cohesion. This study reveals on what grounds the latest citizenship curriculum was configured and how CE has evolved within the particular social and political contexts of the Taiwanese case. PhD awarded November 2014.