Title: The Politics of Implementing Local Cultures in Music Education in Taiwan
Abstract: Context of National Development in Culture and Education Taiwan has been a disputed region at least since the seventeenth century, with China, Holland, Spain and France contesting its occupation over several centuries. These various cultures have had an impact on present-day Taiwanese society in terms of government, social issues, and cultural identity including the subject of the present study, music education. A brief synopsis of Taiwanese history and culture follows here as an aid to understanding these processes. In 1895, the Japanese defeated the Manchus in the Sino-Japanese War, and China ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Between 1895 and 1945, during Japanese colonial rule, the people of Taiwan were cut off from the mainstream of Chinese culture and compelled to learn the Japanese and culture (for details, see Chen, 2001; Clough, 1996). strong tie to traditional Chinese culture was re-established when mainlanders reached Taiwan after 1945. Among them, a considerable number were intellectuals, including historians, writers, painters, Chinese opera performers and other supporters of traditional Chinese culture. After being defeated by the communists in China, Chiang Kai-shek (18871975), who had served as the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) and more than two million of his followers retreated to the island of Taiwan. There he set up the government of the Republic of China (ROC), which claimed to be the legitimate government of China. KMT media in Taiwan used a Confucian discourse of family, hierarchy, and education, in order to promote development (Chun, 1994). Under the KMT's administrative control, the central government attempted to force the aboriginal peoples to be subsumed within the larger, predominantly Han culture. Within this attempt, there was official disapproval of any manifestations of indigenous culture, the abolition of communal activities and traditional festivals which featured indigenous customs, as well as the obligatory use of Chinese names, etc. Students were thoroughly immersed in Chinese culture, history and geography courses, which were arranged chronologically and used to teach the characteristics and causes of events in Chinese history, whilst geography courses were a description of mountains, rivers, and resources in the Chinese political territory (Tsai, 2002, p. 235). School songs were used as a vehicle to cultivate patriotic support for the KMT regime, and to inculcate The Three Principles of the People (i.e. nationalism, livelihood, and civil rights) in children (Lee, 2003). Students who defied authority and spoke Taiwanese (a dialect of southern Fujian, also known as Minnan), Hakka, or other aboriginal languages could be fined or subjected to other disciplinary punishment in favor of Mandarin, the language (Yang, 2004, p.219; also see To, 1972). Taiwan remained a military dictatorship until the lifting of martial law in 1987. Since then, disputes between the Taiwanese (i.e. early immigrants who had long been settled on the island, and their descendents), the Chinese mainlanders (i.e. immigrants who came to the island with the KMT government after 1949, and their descendants), and the various Taiwanese ethnic groups such as Fukien, Hakka and other aboriginal groups have become features of Taiwan's political culture. Taiwanese politicians have constructed and defined Taiwan's identity in a variety of ways in order to demonstrate that Taiwan either is or is not Chinese (Brown, 2004; also see Chao, 2003; Wang, 2004). Taiwan's Chineseness was expected to establish the dominance of Han culture, and the historical relationship between Taiwan and China. On the other hand, there were those who argued that Taiwan must be identified by the influence of aboriginal and Japanese cultures, and the fact that Taiwan has been politically separate from China for most of the twentieth century (Brown, 2004). A cultural trend known as localization (sometimes also called indigenization or Taiwanization) has swept the island, as a move to detach national identity from the KMT Party (Yang, 2004), which has emphasized cohesion with the great mainland Chinese civilization. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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