ac, if you go around Taipei you will see how many of these “Educational Mistakes” exist in the city. Taipei tries to be an international city, but just don’t ask directions or street names because most probably you cannot find them - it took me 10 minutes to explain my fiancee I was in Keelung Road, and she was wandering where the hell was I, until I went to Taipei 101 - it seams that for some “intellectual”, Keelung must be read as Jilung (or whatever you guys say, I just try to put as romanized and less english as I can). Other than that, just try to read some billboards in english and you will be amazed with the level of “education” of the Taiwanese. Maybe the problem is not in the quantity of books they read, maybe the problem is in the quantity of practice they have.
But everyone that comes to Taiwan from a more advanced country finds out that most of the problems cannot be related to the government. In fact, we can get so many unbelievable laws in Taiwan that you wonder if one government only can do so bad. IMO, it is impossible. This must be the heritage of the dictatorship times, when people in the governments enacted laws to protect their friends and not to serve the populace. Just take the case of the problem of the foreign brides that get divorced - their kids, according to the Taiwanese law, are liable to break 2 of the lines of the UN Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child - no child should be separated from his mother, and every child has the right to a citizenship.
But this is only the view of a poor foreigner who came to Taiwan to invest in this country.
ac, just because Japanese did something wrong 60 years ago, doesn’t make it a valid excuse. I think that the governments in Taiwan allready had enough time and experience to correct all the wrong policies - why they didn’t is a case that should really get the taiwanese people attention.
Second, use of Wade-Gile system is widelly being scrapped (I don’t really know where they got their ideas), and I suppose that the non use of pinyin system is because that system was supported by Mao (he wanted chinese to write in romanization, but couldn’t do it because that is a huge part of the chinese culture). But anyone who goes around Taiwan (without knowing how to read Chinese) will find most dificult to go somewhere.
Third, I bet that if CSB would promote a serious reform of the political system and of the bureaucratic system, he would contribute more to democracy than anyone else - Taiwan is yet to be ruled by laws. But I also guess that most people in DPP are only interested in having a good salary and hongbaos…
Stop Ma,
You can read my suggestions on Taiwans stumbling towards democracy in several issues of the American Journal of Chinese Studies. In the current edition I talk about the reforms to the criminal justice system and in the issue before that I talk about the changes to the Legislative Yuan election process.
All this Brian wisdom can be yours for a mere $30 USD a year. A real bargain.
See ccny.cuny.edu/aacs/ajcs.htm
Sorry kids, if you want serious Brian words your gotta pay cash money. My free words are just for my (and perhaps the readers) amusement.
Yours in Taiwan scholarship,
Brian
p.s. for the serious weirdo types in the Taiwan Politics forum, do not take Taiwanese politics seriously, the locals do not, why should you. It is great low brow comedy, enjoy it as such.
p.p.s. The reality was the Japanese Period was the high point of Taiwanese history. What Taiwan needs is serious outside adult supervision be it from the Japanese, or Americans or whomever. If they have that, they do okay, if they do not well—you have what you have now.
Well, Chinese where never very good at governing themselves (just look at their history, is there any country in the world with so many mass murdering rulers???).
