Educators as transformative intellectuals: Taiwanese teacher activism during the national curriculum controversy

ABSTRACT

In early 2014, a group of senior high school teachers initiated a series of campaigns to fight against the government's imposition of a revised history and citizenship education curriculum, an unprecedented display of opposition in the history of public schools in Taiwan. They rose above the traditional stereotype of the schoolteacher common across many societies in Asia and challenged the pro-reunification and Chinese ethnocentric setting underlying the new educational proposals. Drawing upon Giroux's writings on teachers as transformative intellectuals, this article looks into the social activism of 12 teachers from the campaign and the impact this movement had on their classroom practices. While “the language of critique” and “the language of possibility” are defined by Giroux as the two crucial components a critical educator should possess, these Taiwanese activist teachers appeared to demonstrate a more nuanced view by separating their activism from their professionalism in front of students and preventing themselves from incorporating the personal social movement experience into their classroom teaching. Moreover, our findings also suggest that elements of Confucianism – deeply rooted in Taiwanese society – have shaped these teachers’ involvement in activism in important ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical pedagogy
• transformative intellectual
• curriculum controversy
• teacher activism
• politics of education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The first teachers’ organisation, named the Teachers’ Human Rights Association, was established in 1987 right after the lifting of martial law. This organisation had only approximately a thousand members (out of 190,000 school teachers from elementary to senior high level nationwide) (Guo, 2007, p. 138).

2. The term “Mainland China” indicates that Taiwan is the outlying island part governed altogether under a single sovereignty. The use of “China”, on the other hand, implies that China is just one other country in the world and indicates Taiwan's independence and autonomy.

3. The Four Books – the Doctrine of the Mean, along with Analects, Mencius, and Great Learning comprise the fundamental core of Confucian thought. Analects is a collection of speeches given by Confucius. Mencius, Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean were allegedly completed by disciples of Confucius or later followers. The Four Books were selected and reinterpreted by the philosopher Zhu Xi in the Song Dynasty in the twelfth century raising their significance above that of other Confucian writings.

Additional information

Funding

Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [grant number MOST 2015-2410-H-002-004].

Notes on contributors

Cheng-Yu Hung

Cheng-Yu Hung is an assistant professor in education at National Taiwan University. He has over five years experience in teaching citizenship education in senior high school. Being interested in the politics of education, his research focuses on the contemporary theories of liberalism, communitarianism, national identity and Confucianism as applied to the curriculum construction.