Taiwan public schools to boost promotion of national identity among students

台灣公立學校促進學生的民族認同提升

Ministry of Education to amend internationalization program to emphasize 'fostering national consciousness'


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwan’s Ministry of Education on Saturday (Aug. 17) announced that it will amend its program of internationalization of public school curriculum. The amendments are reportedly aimed at bolstering national identity among Taiwanese students.

The original plan was introduced in a White Paper introduced by the MOE in 2011, which aimed to internationalize primary and secondary education in Taiwan over the course of a decade and divided into two five-year stages. While most of the plan’s key goals have been met, MOE officials state that “fostering national consciousness” has unfortunately not been made a priority by many educators.

To address this, the MOE’s amended internationalization plan calls for Taiwan’s schools to be regularly evaluated on their performance in cultivating national identity. The MOE will design new evaluation criteria as an indicator for schools to reference in designing their curricula.

Liberty Times reports that the MOE is expected to adopt a budget of NT$100 million (US$3.19 million) in 2020 for teacher training and curricula development in order to promote the amended White Paper’s internationalization program for Taiwan’s public schools. This ministry hopes to offer more resources to assist schools in better cultivating national consciousness among students.

Additionally, the MOE is planning to de-regulate some aspects of the national education requirements in order to allow for greater localization of school programs. The MOE expects the loosening of regulations to help streamline more international exchanges and boost engagement with schools and districts overseas, said the director of the ministry’s internationalization program, Chiu Yu-chan (邱玉蟾).