Problematising multicultural art education in the context of Taiwan

Abstract

In this paper I reflect on the experience of working with Taiwanese art educators. The data I revisit comes from participation in four art education conferences between 1995 and 2001, a three‐month period of residence at Changhua University of Education teaching a master's programme, three intensive summer programmes organised for Taiwanese art teachers in London and doctoral supervision. In these reflections I consider what these experiences have taught me about multicultural art education and pedagogy in Taiwan, their key characteristic and some East–West differences. I conclude that multicultural art education reform in Taiwan is distinctive in the way it engages both with homeland studies and global visual culture. The absence of national sovereignty means that Taiwanese art teachers are ideally placed to experiment with post‐modern developments in art curriculum practice.

Keywords:

• Taiwan
• art
• education
• culture
• identity
• diversity

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr Ann Cheng Shiang Kuo for her long‐term support and interest in my inquiry into Taiwanese art education. My thanks to Wan‐chen Liu in particular for her collaboration with the survey questionnaire and for analysing this data and to Drs Mei‐lan Lo and Shu‐ying Liu for their helpful comments on this paper. Thanks also to all the Taiwanese student teachers and teachers I have worked with in Changhua and London.

Notes

1. Chiang Ching‐cho put the final touches on political modernisation by abolishing marshal law in July 1987 (Copper 1996, 43).

2. Chen Cheng‐po was a well‐known Taiwanese painter who lived from 1895 to 1947. In 1946 he was elected member of the city council in his home town Chiayi. Chen was killed during an incident between Chiayi citizens and the Chinese Nationalist party, or Kuomintang, when he and five other council members approached the military as representatives of peace. They were captured and three of them, including Chen, were executed in public (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Chen_Cheng‐po, accessed 5 April 2008).

3. The literature I consulted is inconsistent. According to Law (2002) Taiwan has 23 million people. Over 98% of the population are Han Chinese and the rest consist of nine major indigenous peoples. Of the former about 85% are native Taiwanese who moved to Taiwan before 1945 and less than 15% are Mainlanders whose parents or grandparents moved to Taiwan after 1945. The information the students gave me about numbers of Aboriginal groups conflicts with a travel website stating there are 13 officially recognised indigenous tribes (http://eng.tw/lan/Cht/news_event/news_content.asp?id=6767, accessed 4 July 2008).

4. Ren‐Lai Huang (2006) argues that Taiwanese art educators should ingrate Buddhist doctrines into art education and Su‐Ying Temple published a book called Buddhist Art Appreciation for Children (2001). My colleagues explained Taiwanese opera as a distinctive vernacular art form. It portrays comical and special events from everyday life and makes use of traditional Taiwanese folk rhymes, songs and traditional musical instruments. Since the 1970s when it underwent regeneration it has incorporated Western musical instruments also and modern popular songs.

5. The works in the collection are Chinese national treasures. Some have been passed on from dynasty to dynasty since the Northern Sing period (960–1127). The imperial collection was housed in the Palace Museum Peking from 1925 after the expulsion of the last emperor. During the Japanese invasion and civil war it was stored in wooden crates for safety reasons. In 1949 Chang Kai‐shek shipped a selection containing more than 600,000 pieces to Taiwan. The National Palace Musuem opened in Taipei 1965 (http://www.asianart.com/splendors/index/html, accessed 7 April 2008). Li Keran (1907–89) is widely acknowledged to have achieved a unique innovation in Chinese painting. Starting with traditional ink painting he went on to paint from nature and integrate Western and Chinese painting methods and techniques. According to the press release for an exhibition at Hong Kong Musuem of Art (2001) he is renowned for paintings of landscapes, figures and buffalos (www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200110/11/10/101176/htm, accessed 1 April 2008).

6. According to the company website, Hwai‐min Ling founded the company in 1973 in defiance of the ruling nationalist party's classical Chinese cultural mores. The title of the performance I attended at the National Theatre in December 2001 was Portrait of the Families. The programme contained a lengthy explication of the dance forms and choreography together with their political meanings and a statement about Taiwanese cultural identity by a contemporary writer called Ying‐tai’ Lung. According to this programme, Lin's choreography was inspired by the traumatic experience of seeing pictures of his parents and ancestors for the first time after martial law was lifted: taped voices speaking in Yamis, Taiwanese, Mandarin and Hakka dialects recounted previously suppressed family stories throughout the performance while collages of vintage photographs were projected on to the stage.

7. Edward Yang (1947–2007) was born in Shanghai and grew up in Taipei. After studying electrical engineering and architecture in the USA he returned to make a career in films in Taiwan (wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Yang, accessed 7 April 2008).

8. See www.eslisland.com/intro/TaiwanBetelNutGirl.htm, accessed 19 April 2007.

9. This course, entitled Arts Education in a Community Perspective, was held at Gan‐Hwa Normal University on 20 December 2001.

10. A subject called ‘Introduction to Taiwan’ was introduced into lower secondary school in 1997. It encourages students to develop ‘the spirit of Taiwan which is inherited from the attitudes and lifestyles of the Taiwan people’ (Law 2002, 75).

11. According to Law (2002), homeland signifies place of origin or growing up and homeland studies means learning local history or cultural and contemporary developments of Taiwan. He argues that homeland studies and learning for ethnic groups are the central constructs informing Taiwanese multicultural education reform.

12. Lo (2003) studied PGCE Art & Design programmes in England. She contrasted the way university lecturers in Taiwan teach theories of art and education and test student learning of them with the expectation in England that student teachers will learn through observation and experience in classrooms and by seeking out theory in literature by themselves.

13. Garber (1995) understands border studies as the proper focus of multicultural teaching. Writing about American art education she explains that developing border consciousness implies knowledge of two sets of reference codes operating simultaneously. Borders are not limits – rather they imply a meeting of two cultures. It necessitates studying the critical intersections of many realities.