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Teaching Morality in Taiwan Schools: The Message of the Textbooks*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Jeffrey E. Meyer
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Extract

Chinese culture has always been considered unique in its enduring concern with morality. There is a commonly used phrase which well expresses this: guyou daode wenhua, which may be translated as “a culture which is traditionally moral.” This phrase is often used to describe the Chinese as opposed to other cultures which lay their emphasis on knowledge, religion, law, and so forth. A Chinese educator has recently made this point in contrasting Chinese and western philosophies of education. Whereas western cultures have traditionally stressed science (knowledge), religion and law, he says, Chinese culture has always stressed morality and art.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 114 , June 1988 , pp. 267 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1988

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References

1. Sen, Wu, Bijiao zhexue yu wenhua (Comparative Philosophy and Culture) (Taibei: Dong da tushu youxian gongsi, 1979), p. 14.Google Scholar

2. For an assessment of the success of moral education by the teachers of morality in Taiwan, I refer the reader to my article to be published in Comparative Education Review early in 1988Google Scholar, “Moral education in Taiwan: attitudes of teachers.”

3. Following is a list of the textbooks examined, together with abbreviations which will be used hereafter to refer to them.

SHLL Shenghuo yu lunli (Life and Human Relationships), 6 vols.Google Scholar

GY Guoyu (Language), 12 vols.Google Scholar

SH Shehui (Social Studies), 12 vols.Google Scholar

GMDD Gongmin yu daode (Citizenship and Morality), 6 vols.Google Scholar

GW Guowen (Literature), 6 vols.Google Scholar

DL Dili (Geography), 6 vols.Google Scholar

LS Lishi (History), 6 vols.Google Scholar

The editions used are those for the 1983–84 school year. All are published by the Office of Compilation and Translation under the authority of the government Bureau of Education. They are available only through the Taiwan Book Store on Chong Ching South Road in Taibei, and are standardized for all schools in Taiwan. Even private schools must use them.

4. See GMDD, Vol. 1, pp. 69–71Google Scholar, for an eloquent expression of this idea.

5. GY, Vol. 11, p. 13Google Scholar, and KW, Vol. 4, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

6. Two clear statements of this position may be found in GMDD, Vol. 6, p. 77Google Scholar, and the final chapter of GY, Vol. 7.Google Scholar

7. The stress on patriotism and political indoctrination in Taiwan education has been widely documented. See Wilson, Richard, Learning to Be Chinese: The Political Socialization of Children in Taiwan (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970)Google Scholar, and the same author's The Moral State: A Study of the Political Socialization of Chinese and American Children (New York: Free Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Appleton, Sheldon, “The social and political impact of education in Taiwan,” Asian Survey, Vol. 16, No. 8 (08 1976), pp. 703–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin, Roberta, “The socialization of children in China and on Taiwan,” The China Quarterly, No. 62 (06 1975), pp. 42–62.Google Scholar

8. Compare GY, Vol. 12, p. 35Google Scholar, and SH, Vol. 10, p. 32.Google Scholar

9. GMDD, Vol. 4, p. 1.Google Scholar

10. GW, Vol. 4, p. 51.Google Scholar

11. This is done by presenting accounts of model farming and fishing villages, and a neighbourhood in a large city. They clean up their environment, build a community center, a park, etc. See SH, Vols. 5 and 6.Google Scholar

12. SH, Vol. 8, pp. 34ffGoogle Scholar. By way of explanation, it goes on to say that the old practice of frugality is not necessary today, which is certainly not the view of the SHLL textbooks, which have a chapter devoted to that virtue in the second semester in each of grades 4, 5 and 6.

13. GY, Vol. 12, p. 85ff.Google Scholar

14. GY, Vol. 3, p. 16Google Scholar. Westerhoff, John H. III in, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth Century America (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), p. 94Google Scholar, summarizes the virtues found in the McGuffey Readers.

15. Westerhoff, , McGuffey and His Readers, p. 105.Google Scholar

16. The famous San zi jing (Three Character Classic) used in China for centuries as the standard reading primer begins with the line: “Humans at their birth are by nature good.”

17. Westerhoff, , McGuffey and His Readers, p. 87.Google Scholar

18. Marie, Anna and Murphy, Cullen, “Onward, upward with McGuffey and those readers,” Smithsonian, Vol. 15, No. 8 (11 1984), p. 196.Google Scholar

19. GY, Vol. 11, pp. 66–70Google Scholar; GMDD, Vol. 4, p. 81.Google Scholar

20. Westerhoff, , McGuffey and His Readers, p. 115.Google Scholar

21. GW, Vol. 2, p. 48.Google Scholar

22. Westerhoff, , McGuffey and His Readers, p. 105.Google Scholar

23. I have in mind a distinction such as Smith, Jonathan Z. suggests in Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979), p. 101Google ScholarPubMed, where he describes a centrifugal view of the world which emphasizes the importance of the “centre” as opposed those cultures which express a more “open” view in which the categories of rebellion and freedom are to the fore. He also contrasts the two as a locative vision of the world which emphasizes place and a utopian vision–literally and etymologically, “no place.”

24. SH, Vol. 7, p. 54ffGoogle Scholar. Tuan, I-fu, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1974).Google Scholar

25. Valery, Paul, “The Yalu,” in History and Politics, Vol. 10 of The Collected Works of Paul Valery (N. Y.: Bollingen Pantheon Books, 1962), p. 374Google Scholar. See the use of the same metaphor of a wall in SH, Vol. 10, p. 27Google Scholar, where it says that the strong moral feeling towards family “is like the Great Wall without physical form, but built in the heart of every Chinese person.”

26. LS, Vol. 1, p. 1.Google Scholar