FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Time now up for strife over Taiwan curriculum guidelines

Time now up for strife over Taiwan curriculum guidelines

Lin Kuan-hua's suicide yesterday is a wake-up call for Taiwan's politicians: Mishandling of ideological conflicts can have explosive and harmful consequences.

Drawing from alleged statements that the 20-year-old student made online to fellow activists against high school curriculum guidelines, Lin intended to use the ending of his life to “ignite media and discussion” on the matter, stunning the nation, and exacerbating the debate.
As politicians heap blame on each other, while others cast Lin as a martyr, one thing is clear: Taiwan’s leaders in their intransigence have failed to assume responsibility on resolving the debates – a responsibility that requires the resolve to communicate honestly without preconditions, and to treat the youth as autonomous individuals. Both major political parties have entrenched positions on the curriculum reform debate.
This has stemmed from both sides not being able to tolerate historical accuracy outside their own interpretations.
While students involved in the protests over the past months have accused the government of a “black-box operation”, their failure to broaden support has largely been attributed to framing this as a national identity issue.
Yet conflicts over national identity do not rise out of thin air; they are not viral infections that our children breathe in unconsciously. Indeed, they represent years of failure to confront history responsibly. It is a “winner-takes-all” battle for “truth” that hijacks the very term.
Debate has trumped dialogue
In our daily experiences with other individuals, communication is a cognitive process that involves situating our lives with those with similar but often also differing life experiences. While discussing personal history on an individual basis, our ability to use our own experiences helps us to make sense of the narrative experience of relatives, friends and total strangers alike.
We often take the process for granted because they seem natural. But the communicative process of listening, relating to others and comparing experiences with our own while imbued in our daily activities, is nowhere present in our approach to Taiwan’s past.
Our separate lived experiences, whether they are individual, familial, generational and geographical, cannot be denied. Their denial without even considering possible interpretive biases due to our life experience, indeed our very education, create the current dissonance and impasse.
Blackbox operations, storming ministries and blanket condemnations will do little but aggravate polemic worldviews. 
In a time when our society cannot foster the tolerance of multiple historical viewpoints, lessons from other countries can provide us with possible solutions.
In countries devastated by past ethnic conflict, curriculums on sensitive topics in history are temporarily set aside.
It is an open acknowledgement that an impasse exists and cannot currently be mitigated.
Some countries utilise moments of historical strife to build solidarity and compassion among students, and if approached humbly, Taiwan may one day provide its insights in this regard.
Perhaps Lin’s unfortunate decision to end his life will not be in vain, helping us realise that we must end the futile and senseless moves to impart an arrogant, all-encompassing history on our children.
To do this, a move to better understand our past should take precedence to explaining it.
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