Kangke Aborigines protest exam policy

[Harold F. Schiffman]

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Kangke Aborigines protest exam policy
By Jean Lin

Aborigines from Kangke  Village, who are a branch of northern Taiwan's
Atayal tribe, protested last week against the Council of Indigenous
People's tribal language examination policy, requesting that the Kangke
dialect be included. The Kangke dialect has long been different from other
Atayal languages because it was influenced by the Japanese language during
the period of Japanese occupation. The council plans to begin tribal
language examinations next year, yet the Kangke dialect is not listed as
one of the official dialects of the Atayal tribe, said Fang Hsi-en,
an indigenous rights activist. In the examination policy, the Kangke
dialect is incorporated into the Squliq and the C'uli' dialects.

Fang said that to pass the tribal language exams, students in Kangke
Village must now study either the Squliq or the C'uli' dialects using a
romanized spelling system because the Kangke dialect is nothing like them.
For high school and college entrance exams, an extra 25 percent is added
to the total scores of indigenous students to encourage further education,
according to Ministry of Education regulations. If the tribal language
exam is carried out as planned next year, students who pass will have an
additional 10 percent added to their entrance exam scores, making it a
total of 35 percent extra overall.

Fang said that the system was unfair for Kangke students because the
council did not classify their dialect as an official one. He said the
tribal language examination should not be linked with entrance exams
scores in any way. Lee Su-min, the head of the Parent-Teacher
Association at Kangke Elementary School, said that such a classification
also stunted the preservation of the dialect and the Kangke culture.
Tribal language exams, if indeed necessary, should be conducted by the
tribes or villages themselves instead of by the government, Fang said.

He said that the education ministry was in a hurry to promote native
language education, but many Aboriginal dialects are still neglected. In
response to the protests, Wang Chiui, the director of the Department
of Education and Culture at the council, said that the tribal language
examination policy is still being discussed with the education ministry.
But the goal of the language examination was to promote tribal language
education, Wang said. Wang reminded the protestors that the language exam
was in fact oral and that he would request that the council include the
Kangke dialect in the exam. If included, a representative from the village
will also be invited to be an oral examiner, he said.

Source:Taipei Times(2006/04/25 12:30:29)


URL:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2006/04/25/2003304443

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