June 13~19, 2011
General Assembly News
Social and church groups concerned for future of Taiwanese as mother language
Reported by Chiou Kuo-rong
Written by Lydia Ma
Since 2000, UNESCO has stressed the importance of keeping mother languages alive and it has set February 21 as “International Mother Language Day”. The purpose for such a day is to remind the world that some minority languages are at risk and need to be preserved, and to promote cultural diversity and multilingualism.
Sadly, the Taiwanese government is not on the same page when it comes to promoting multilingualism and continues to elevate Mandarin at the expense of Taiwanese and other native languages in its education system.
“Taiwanese language education is my right” Alliance convener Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung said that according to the current Ministry of Education curriculum for elementary schools, students must take at least 17~24 periods of Mandarin, 12~16 periods of English, but only 1 period of Taiwanese per week. To add insult to injury, Taiwanese classes are not even graded.
For these reasons, the alliance protested in the front steps of the Ministry of Education (MOE) on June 13, 2011, and demanded the MOE respect the rights of Taiwanese to be educated in Taiwanese.
PCT Taiwan Ethnic Languages Committee Chairwoman Tan Hong-hui took part in this protest on behalf of PCT. She said that PCT local churches combined use more than 20 languages every Sunday to worship God and the PCT is determined to protect all Taiwanese mother languages and stay rooted in this land with all its inhabitants. She added that Christian doctrine and theology would agree with such a position.
“If we don’t stand up and speak out, will our language still exist 20 or 50 years from now?”, Tan asked, urging the Ma administration to give this right back to the people and normalize Taiwan’s education system.
This is not the first time the alliance has appealed to the government on the matter of increasing the number of hours mother languages are taught in public schools.
