The government is always talking about how Taiwan is a “scholarly society.” With the now defunct Council for Cultural Affairs and its new incarnation, the Ministry of Culture, the government is also using the word “culture” on a daily basis.
This is interesting because, on average, people living in Taiwan only read — or at least buy — two books a year. That means, compared to the populations of other countries, the nation is being left choking in the dust of those hurtling ahead.
If the people living in a country have yet to formulate any cultural aspirations to speak of, one cannot really talk of that country as being advanced, no matter how economically prosperous it appears on the surface.
Reading is essential, whether speaking epistemologically or pedagogically. Reading opens up the mind — is this not how civilized countries and civilized societies, come to be?
Advanced societies place a great deal of emphasis on cultural aspirations for a good reason.
Taiwan was under the control of the Japanese colonial government for the half-century preceding World War II and then under the control of the foreign Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for more than 60 years.
With the move from Japan’s attempts at culturally assimilating the Taiwanese, to Sinicization under the KMT, there was a change in language and a political paradigm shift, and the impact of this on reading and writing was considerable.
