[quote=“TaipeiTimes”]Tu is known for serving as the committee convener for compiling the junior-high school textbook series named Knowing Taiwan (認識台灣) in 1996, which focused on teaching young students about the different historic, geographic and social aspects of Taiwan.
However, some pro-unification academics and legislators say the textbooks are an attempt to “sever the nation,” and have vehemently opposed the use of the textbooks, forcing them to be integrated into other courses as supplementary reading matter.
But the controversy over Knowing Taiwan was later considered to be part of the first trend of promoting the Taiwanese identity under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Although he is an authority on Chinese history, Tu has studied Taiwanese history and has proposed a theory called “the Concentric Circle,” which stresses teaching young students about Taiwanese history first, and then learn about Chinese history and modern history.[/quote]http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/04/29/2003138490
These are just kind of positive things started by former President Lee Teng Hui that the DPP will continue doing over the next for years to improve Taiwan. Nice choice for Education Minister.
Time to educate people about the truth and stop spouting One-China pro-unification KMT/PFP lies. I like traveling in the PRC too. I think the place and the people overall are great, BUT, Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China. If those KMT/PFP Blues like China so much they are free to move there.
That should be “concentric circleS.” That is, Taiwanese history as the innermost circle, enclosed in the circle of Chinese history, which is further enclosed in the circle of world history.
Du Zhengsheng (杜正勝,
aka Tu Cheng-sheng
) sounds promising so far… As a buxiban owner, I want to see what else he’s got planned, and I’m also curious to see what his stance on romanization will be. Will he choose Hanyu Pinyin and get fired, as did the DPP’s first Education Minister, Ovid Zeng, or will he toe the party line? :s
Being green and being pro-Tongyong don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I know plenty of DPP movers and shakers who don’t like Tongyong and who would be happy for Taiwan to adopt Hanyu Pinyin. But in the current environment, they’re not about to stick their necks out. So I very much doubt Du would come out for Hanyu – though if he were for it he might be able to get away with that position more than New Party member Ovid Tzeng, who was often criticized within the administration for not pushing more for localization.
Zhanghua County Magistrate Wong Chin-chu, whose name was being mentioned for minister of education, long ago agitated against Hanyu.
In the current environment, I think the interesting romanization question is not so much Tongyong vs. Hanyu as zhuyin fuhao vs. romanization – especially when it comes to the teaching of languages other than Mandarin. The outgoing minister of education was quoted as saying some astonishingly ill-informed things about Chinese characters and romanization; so I expect Du can’t be any worse.
The boost for Tongyong is one of the more regrettable consequences of the election result. Oh well, it’s just about worth putting up with as a tradeoff for all the positive things that we can expect the pan-greens to do, especially after they have secured a legislative majority at the end of the year.
I’m sure Lol must be delighted by the appointment of a Minister of Education who is likely to push as hard as he can for the realization of what he (Lol) advocates so strongly in Shattering the Myths. However, Tu/Du is still going to encounter a huge amount of opposition and obstruction from the predominantly pro-blue teachers, and it’s by no means certain that he’ll be able to achieve his aims of changing the history curriculum that the teachers actually teach.
I was under the impression that the Tu was an authoritarian at the National Palace Museum who was very inflexible. I could be mistaken, though. Don’t anyone sue me.
He seems to be quite a strong character who is prepared to stand up for what he believes in and won’t readily take any nonsense from the likes of idiotically aggressive grandstanding legislators. I saw some shots on TV last night of him responding to interpellation from pan-blue legislators in the Legislative Yuan, and I liked what I saw. Not much could please me more than seeing those boorish pigs being put in their place.
Wolf: Keep in mind that that the Palace Museum is/was a place full of cultural conservatives. I’d bet New Party membership there was as high as it was at Shita!
Du pushed through a very important exhibit on the history of Taiwan that did a great deal to solidify Taiwanese consciousness at least among the cultural elite. Naturally, the staff at the Palace Museum resisted.
Cracky: You’re absolutely correct that many DPP folks couldn’t care less about Tongyong. This is very much a Tailian issue. Zeng lost his job because the Tailian put pressure on the DPP after Zeng advocated Hanyu Pinyin. Huang Rongzun, the ougoing minister, is losing his job because he did not toe the Tailian line on the high shool history guidelines. These guidelines are intended to ensure that Taiwanese high school students read Taiwanese history. Unbelievably, even after 16 years of native Taiwanese rule, it is still possible for students (and indeed likely) to graduate from high school without knowing anything about Taiwanese history.
After the KMT, the TSU is very much aware that national identity is something largely manufactured in the schools. This has been issue very close to LTH’s heart. After having won Taiwan’s political wars, he is not going to die without winning Taiwan’s cultural wars.
Way back in the past when I used to teach English, I would use zhuyin fuhao to ‘spell out’ the English words in order to get the students’ English pronunciation more accurate.
They got the pronunciation close to 100% when I had them read the words ‘spelled out’ in zhuyin, whereas they invariably had the typical accent distortions when they read the same words spelled out in romanization.
Is tongyong that much better than hanyu. I always thought as them as learning tools prior to acquiring character literacy.
What wrong with the pinyin system used in PRC. Most foriegner learn the PRC pinyin system prior to coming to asia. Don’t tell me Taiwan will be only modern asian country tourist will get lost in because the street names change from intersection to intersection.
Why do politics make things that are so simple so complicated?
[quote=“ac_dropout”]Don’t tell me Taiwan will be only modern Asian country tourist will get lost in because the street names change from intersection to intersection.
[/quote]
No. Taiwan will be the only modernized asian country that doesn’t have any tourists at all, unless you count the Japanese sex-tour visitors, and they don’t need the English signs anyway.
Surely this is an unfortunate name - for me, it conjures up images of Dante’s hell, not to mention Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of the Gualg. Of course, back when I lived in Sichuan, I did refer to Chengdu as the first circle of hell, so maybe it is appropriate after all.
A few recent remarks by Du, the new minister of education:
Run through Babel Fish:
What this indicates is that he hasn’t taken a position yet in the factional fighting for the choice of romanization (or other) systems for Taiwanese. But as long as people are arguing about the system for one language, it’s easier to get people to rethink the Hanyu/Tongyong debate about Mandarin.
On a different topic (but still right for this thread), did Du really say that Taiwan’s maps should be repositioned to show the island aligned horizontally? If so, what’s his reasoning? Or does he just want something, anything to prompt people to look at their country differently?
Cranky: Du is definitely pro-Tongyong. He’s just being polite and pretending that the issue is still under discussion. It isn’t. If he came out in favor of Hanyu Pinyin, LTH would have him fired the next day.
Indeed he did. Apparently, he liked the idea of Taiwan appearing on maps ‘above’ China It’s about the first time since the election that the abusive behaviour of the KMT was actually justified.
From the China Post
I’m a bit concerned that cartography is handled by ‘cultural affairs’ - gives me the feeling that they would prefer to replace all maps with artists impressions of Taiwan. As for justifying techniques by saying they were used in the 16th century … that explains why the new map has China completely empty except for the text “Here be dragons”.
Nonsense! By changing the axis of the map horizontally the focal point becomes the face of the mountains from Taipei to Kaohsiung (as opposed to the current map which only shows a tiny profile of the range). Let’s say for example you’re explaining the arrival of settlers to a class of school children. The new map would show the prespective of the people getting off the boat. Whereas, the old one would at best be accurate only if the they disembarked in Pingtung. With the new map students can actually get a clear perspective of the canyons and rivers that form the upper part of the watershed - again this was not possible before.
Links to the new maps here and here.
I’m a bit concerned that cartography is handled by ‘cultural affairs’ - gives me the feeling that they would prefer to replace all maps with artists impressions of Taiwan. As for justifying techniques by saying they were used in the 16th century … that explains why the new map has China completely empty except for the text “Here be dragons”.[/quote]
The new map is very much a Chinese perspective. In fact, this is how Taiwan would appear from coastal cities across the strait. Of course, Ms. Lee’s outburst is not about maps. She’s picking at Tu because he was responsibile for the removal of symbols of KMT political power from the NPM.
It’s about the first time since the election that the abusive behaviour of the KMT was actually justified.
