Description:
Toward the end of 2006 the Taipei City Government Department of Education announced its stance of “one-guideline-one-version policy for Taipei City, Taipei County, and Keelung” and joint sponsorship of basic skills achievement tests for junior high school students. The issue has become a source of contention between the one-guideline-one-version group in one camp versus the one-guideline-multiple-versions group in the other.By way of analysis of Taiwan’s social and historical developments and the political environments of educational reforms in the last ten-plus years, this paper has attempted to analyze the bone of this textbook policy contention. It was found that the so-called one-version vs. multiple-versions textbook policy is best analyzed from a political perspective. The Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) and the Kuomingtang Party (KMT) have vied intensively for control of constituent votes, especially in regard to education and curriculum policy. Specifically, the rivalry between the two political parties lies in “Chinese-ized education” versus “Taiwan subjectivity-oriented education.” In essence, the contention manifests a fierce struggle for power between the two political parties. This paper has served to analyze the intricate complexities entailed in this textbook version contention. It has also explicated the implications of the contention for curriculum policy making.