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I shouldn’t be surprised. So much breaking international news seems to pass Taiwan by.
This afternoon I taught a unit from a textbook that I have taught perhaps 20 times over the last couple of years. It includes a quiz question about Nelson Mandela. In classes of 20-plus, there are frequently no more than a couple who have ever heard of him.
Man De La (曼德拉). It draws nods and vague looks from some of them; occasionally someone knows the answer to the question: “Nelson Mandela didn’t become president of South Africa until he was 76, because he was in jail.”
Clocking out a couple of hours later, I voice my incredulity to the older and, surely wiser, admin staff: “They didn’t know who Man De La was.”
Blank looks and shrugs. “We don’t learn about that at school.”
So I shouldn’t be surprised. But I am disappointed. The news that Ratko Mladić (姆拉迪奇) had finally been arrested deserved more column inches than what it got, which – from what I could ascertain by browsing the major Chinese-language papes over the last couple of days – was roughly zero. I didn’t do a proper survey of the news channels but I doubt it was much better.
Perhaps it was the timing and the proximity – a year after Rwanda, Srebenica delivered Europeans a system-scrambling jolt, disabusing many of the deep-rooted notion that, like polio, savagery on this scale had been eradicated with the close of WWII, and remained the preserve of backwater savages.
Or maybe it was the personal connections that I felt – I worked with Bosniak and, later, Kosovar asylum seekers, some of whom had seen and experienced some horrific things; and I travelled in the region in ’97, meeting Canadian peacekeepers on a train who told me things were looking up, as people were finally starting to replace their windows.
Whatever the case, the crimes of Mladić, Arkan and the rest of these genocidal maniacs should never be forgotten or glossed over. I know several foreigners here who, like me, felt strong emotions on hearing Mladić was finally being brought to book.
Cultural and historical insensitivity are rife in Taiwan. Flippant Hitler references have featured in advertisements, youth politics campaigns, smears on political opponents, and intra-party bickering*. There was even a tasteful death camp-themed restaurant.
An argument I frequently hear trotted out is that most Westerners know nothing about, say, Nanjing or 228. But those espousing this line fall on their own sword: If you don’t know what you’re on about, shut up. True, no one is using Mladic’s grotesque racial distortions for political gain just yet, but you can bet your life if they thought it would make for a good sound bite, they would.
The point is, when politicians with doctorates in political science from American universities demonstrate such a poor grasp of history, what hope is there for a public that is not exposed to this information? If the media and classrooms aren’t doing the job, then maybe it’s up to us all to try and chip away at the willful insularity that pervades this country to its detriment.
* As an aside, Annette Lu – just the latest in a long line of Taiwanese politicans to invoke the Führer’s name for no good reason – was speaking in front of a gathering organised by DPP legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮). As the former chairman of FTV, Chai is often seen in my office building, stripped to the waist following his morning jog.
My colleague recently bumped into Chai in the lift and asked him if he was following the latest political developments. His interest initially piqued, Chai’s face dropped when he realised my colleague was speaking about the U.S. “Oh, I’m not interested in American politics,” sniffed the former Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.
Annette Lu is always the go-to example for grotesque levels of ignorance, isn’t she? I am not surprised that most taiwanese are horribly ignorant of international matter, but you have to keep it mind that can be said in most countries. If you’re dealing with people with no post-secondary education (I would argue from my experience that taiwanese colleges and universities more often than not fail to fulfill the function they have in the west), such ignorance is to be expected.
Yeah, the point is that this was headline news in the major news outlets of most countries around the world. Even PRC rags gave it a bit more prominence, which – considering they were cosyish with the Milosevic regime – says a lot.
While there is ignorance by the bucketful back in the UK, at least the information is there in the papers and on TV. Whether people choose to look is another question. When I searched “Mladic” and “taiwan” I got a SinaTaiwan wire piece on about the third page, I think. They were far too busy with their food scare stories.
Apart from TT, even the English-language papers had sod all – China Post had something buried on their Web site on the 5th page of International News and even that wasn’t the latest update (that Mladic had been deemed fit to stand trial). TT, for all its faults, was ahead of them in print half a day earlier.
In my experience, the secondary education system is designed to turn out test taking robots; not wordly, free thinking individuals with basic problem solving skills. If news does not serve some kind of narrow educational vision, the information is ignored simply by default.
Are we talking the world over here Jon?
I agree with everything you’ve written.
I also find alarming the view sometimes expressed by Taiwanese that “it wasn’t taught at school, so it isn’t worth knowing.” This is not meant in the “I study purely to pass tests” sense, but rather “if it mattered, our teachers would have talked about it.”
‘This is not meant in the “I study purely to pass tests” sense, but rather “if it mattered, our teachers would have talked about it.”’
Spot on Steven. As sad an indictment of the all-too-prevalent learning by rote system as the former position is, at least it is not logically inconsistent; the latter is just begging the question: It’s not important because the qualified authorities don’t deem it important. What makes a qualified authority qualified? One who recognises what is important … et cetera ad infinitum
Your obseravtion points to a wider malaise too. For while teachers are doubtless bound by the system, most of us who paid a little notice can remember the rogue teachers who didn’t just stick with the curriculum, who criticised the material as limited or simply wrong (when I first arrived in Taiwan, I was told by the company that brought me out never to say the book was wrong), and who instilled in their students a willingness to think for themselves.
I’m sure such pedagogues exist in Taiwan but I’ll bet they are marginalised as mavericks, eccentrics or loose cannons.
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It cuts both ways, at least as far as German-Taiwanese relations are concerned. When Tsai Ing-wen visited Germany this week, only very few papers or television stations seemed to bother to mention it at all.
Point taken, but that’s hardly an event of historic importance that should sit side by side in textbooks with the fall of the Berlin Wall, is it JR? I mention the Wall as it it is another monumental event that I have found students hadn’t even heard of here.
“My colleague recently bumped into Chai in the lift and asked him if he was following the latest political developments. His interest initially piqued, Tsai’s face dropped when he realised my colleague was speaking about the U.S. “Oh, I’m not interested in American politics,” sniffed the former Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.”
1. The other people in the elevator recognized Tsai and were laughing. Normally, he’s quite charming. But he didn’t like my harmless little trap at all.
2. In my opinion, the Mladic arrest was a huge news item. At first glance, I want to say: “I don’t get Taiwanese indifference, especially as many people here have deep associations with the massacres that happened on 2-28, Nanking, etc.” But I think I do get the indifference to Mladic’s arrest. He’s not Taiwanese and those were not Taiwanese people he made suffer, so it’s irrelevant to Taiwan. In other words, people here can be tribalistic and, I’m sorry to say, a bit unimaginative in seeing the bigger picture, how being more connected could be a good thing, etc. To make my point, look at perhaps the biggest news item of the year: the Arab Spring. The only time the media here got interested was when a group of Taiwanese tourists got (kind of) trapped in Egypt. Now that was big news.
I mention the Wall as it it is another monumental event that I have found students hadn’t even heard of here.
It probably smells too much like “reunification”. 😉