An Analysis of the Controversy over the Policy of Concurrently Reviewing and Approving Publicly and Privately Compiled Textbooks

Textbooks determine the thinking and direction of education in developing democratic countries. In Taiwan, especially, since the implementation of the grades 1-9 curriculum reforms, the textbook opening-up policy has become a key issue that must be squarely faced as curriculum reforms are carried out. Following implementation, however, the pragmatic advancement of textbook approval policies, including a parallel system which includes both textbooks compiled by government and private organizations, should be allowed to serve as a fine-tuning mechanism employed by the Ministry of Education(MOE) to mitigate the impact of the textbook opening-up policy.Building on earlier studies, this paper collected reports published between 2002 and 2008 reflecting opinions on this subject, including a number of articles with different slants taken from the China Times, the United Daily News, the Liberty Times, Legislative Yuan communiqués, and official MOE documents to understand trends in the development of textbooks for primary and secondary schools in order to evaluate and carefully consider these trends and further to propose suggestions regarding the role the government should play in the nation’s textbook market to guarantee textbook quality, from curriculum planning, textbook editing, trial use, and selection to evaluation and feedback, to facilitate the establishment of a sound mechanism and an agency tasked with the study and development of curriculum to perform long-term, systematic research and development on teaching materials to serve as grounded research to lay a foundation for the successful reformation of curriculum and textbooks.