New education head scraps textbook guideline revisions

New Education Minister Pan Wen-chung unveiled several major policies last weekend, including the scrapping of the controversial adjustment of guidelines for high school history textbooks, reports Focus Taiwan.

"As the procedure in passing the decision was unjust, the participants' voices were not representative enough," Pan said at a press conference, criticising the process that led to the revisions. "The legislature has also adopted a resolution on the matter," the new education minister said, noting that he would scrap the previous measure by executive order.

The ministry voted at a screening meeting in January 2014 that it would make several adjustments to history textbooks, such as changing "the period of Japan's occupation" to "the period of Japan's colonial occupation", or adding anti-communist policy to the background in sections on the ‘White Terror’ period. The adjustments sparked student protests, and civic groups blasted the revisions as China-centric.
Full report on the Focus Taiwan site