Where Did Taiwan's Moral Education Go: A Course That Was Cancelled, and a Responsibility No One Has Picked Up in Twenty Years

30-second overview: In 1993 and 1994, Taiwan's Ministry of Education eliminated the dedicated subjects "Morality and Health" (elementary school) and "Civics and Morality" (junior high school), merging moral education into the seven learning domains of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum. This cancellation occurred without any prior discussion about whether moral education should continue, and without any empirical investigation of the existing curriculum's effectiveness. A 2001 survey by the King Car Education Foundation found that 78% of elementary school teachers considered moral education the area most in need of strengthening. More than twenty years on, moral education in Taiwan's curriculum has become a no-man's-land — everyone considers it important, but no one considers it their responsibility.

The Era of One Central Virtue Per Week

Taiwanese over the age of forty will likely remember one thing: in elementary school, every week had a "central virtue" (中心德目).

It might have been honesty. It might have been punctuality. It might have been responsibility. The teacher would announce the week's virtue at Monday assembly, and every aspect of moral life education that week would orbit around it. This system derived from the Ministry of Education's mandated "Eighteen Central Virtues," paired with dedicated courses — "Morality and Health" in elementary school and "Civics and Morality" in junior high — with fixed class hours, textbooks, and exams¹.

Whether a virtue-a-week can actually raise morally sound children is, of course, worth questioning. But at least in that era, "morality" had a clear place in school: someone was responsible for teaching it, time was set aside to teach it, and teaching materials existed.

Then it was cancelled.

How the Cancellation Happened: No Discussion, No Investigation

Starting in the 2001 school year (beginning of the 2001–2002 academic year), Taiwan began implementing the "Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum for Elementary and Junior High Schools" from Grade 1. The new curriculum consolidated what had been individual subjects into seven learning domains: Language Arts, Health and Physical Education, Social Studies, Arts and Humanities, Mathematics, Natural Science and Life Technology, and Integrated Activities¹.

Missing from these seven domains: the former elementary school subject "Morality and Health" and the former junior high subject "Civics and Morality." Moral education was declared "integrated" into all learning domains.

Educational philosophy scholar Li Feng-ju noted in 2004 research the absurdity of this cancellation: the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum had never engaged in any discussion about whether elementary and junior high students ought to receive moral education, had never conducted any empirical investigation of the effectiveness of moral education, and yet abruptly cancelled the new "Morality and Health" (elementary) and "Civics and Morality" (junior high) curricula that had only been published in 1993 and 1994 respectively¹.

In other words, a course was cancelled not because "surveys proved it was ineffective" or "discussions produced consensus that it was unnecessary" — it was quietly removed during a structural restructuring of the curriculum. No one was held accountable for this decision; no one explained why.

The Result of "Integration": Nearly 60 Pages of Curriculum Guidelines That Barely Mention "Morality"

The new curriculum claimed to integrate moral instruction into all subject domains, but this claim immediately ran into two problems¹.

The first was theoretical. The Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum was influenced by postmodern thought, emphasizing anti-foundationalism, anti-authoritarianism, and pluralism. Within this framework, people grew increasingly skeptical and distrustful of "the foundations of morality." Chang Hsiu-hsiung noted that the curriculum goals of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum's Social Studies domain appeared to convey messages of "value neutrality" and "ethical freedom," with almost no reference to the inheritance of traditional and excellent cultural values¹.

More concretely: the six major themes of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum (information technology, environment, gender, human rights, career development, home economics, etc.) also did not treat "morality" as a major theme. Even within the Social Studies domain most closely related to moral education, the nearly 60 pages of curriculum guidelines almost entirely avoided the word "morality"¹.

Education scholar Chang Hsiu-hsiung called this a "moral education crisis": such a curriculum "lacking morality" (缺德 — a pun in Chinese meaning both "lacking moral education" and "morally bankrupt") could easily mislead teachers and students into believing, since none of the learning domains, core competencies, or major themes touched on morality at all, that moral education was unnecessary¹.

The second problem was practical. The "integration model" resembles the Western approach of "values across the curriculum," which assumes that moral education is comprehensive and that all teachers participate. A Chinese language class can discuss the ethics of abortion; a social studies class can discuss law and human rights².

This sounds ideal. But British educational philosopher R. Straughan had long pointed out two fundamental problems with this model: first, how can we ensure that all teachers, beyond teaching their main subjects, adequately attend to the moral dimensions of their domain? And second, even when teachers do attend to these dimensions, moral education inherently involves relevant theories from moral philosophy, and teaching and learning it requires specialized knowledge and methods — how can we ensure that teachers handle diverse moral issues appropriately in classroom instruction²?

Without the attention and professional engagement of teachers, moral education will effectively become a no-man's-land within the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum, lacking any genuine moral teaching activity¹.

78% of Teachers Said: Moral Education Is What Most Needs Strengthening

The response in the field after the cancellation was direct.

On September 28, 2001 (Teacher's Day), the King Car Education Foundation conducted a sampling survey of teachers at elementary schools with more than 300 students in Taipei City and County, achieving effective returns of 722 questionnaires from 24 schools. Results showed: approximately 78% of surveyed teachers considered moral education to be the area most in need of strengthening. Character education came second at approximately 75%, followed by life education and living education in that order¹.

78% of teachers believed moral education most needed strengthening — yet the curriculum guidelines had removed the "morality" course entirely. The calls from teachers and the direction of policy were running in exactly opposite directions.

"Respect and Care": A Three-Year Experiment by a Group of Scholars

Faced with this vacuum, some tried to fill it.

Beginning in 2001, Professor Huang Guang-xiong — former Dean of the College of Education at National Chung Cheng University — led a three-year "Integrated School Moral Teaching Improvement Program," funded through the Ministry of Education's Office of Academic Affairs Humanities and Social Sciences Education Improvement Plan. The research team included Professor Ke Hua-wei from the Psychology Department, Professor Zhang Zhen-dong from the Social Welfare Department, Assistant Professor Xu Han from the Philosophy Department, and educational philosophy scholars from the Graduate Institute of Education³.

The first year's goal was to "re-evaluate and critically inherit traditional ethical and moral values." The research team — ethicists, sociologists, psychologists, and education scholars each analyzing the elements and content of morality from their disciplinary expertise — met every three weeks. After a year of research, reflection, and discussion, they concluded that "respect" and "care" are the two moral elements currently best suited to achieving students' needs in moral cognition and emotional development¹.

Why "respect" and "care"?

"Respect" derives from the Kantian tradition of moral philosophy. Kant argued that moral action must arise from duty, and his categorical imperative demands treating persons as ends in themselves and never merely as means. Educational philosopher R. S. Peters identified "respecting others" as a moral procedural principle: respecting others as independent beings with desires, choices, and goals¹.

"Care" comes from the ethics of care developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings. Noddings pointed to the natural caring sentiment within human nature as the motivating force behind moral practice. She believed that the aim of education should be to encourage the growth of competence, care, love, and lovability in people¹.

In the second year, the team worked with curriculum and pedagogy scholars to construct moral teaching curricula, methods, materials, and assessment programs incorporating "respect" and "care" across all learning domains of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum. At the "Moral Teaching Workshop" held in November 2002, 56 participants divided into six groups according to the seven learning domains, and over three days of mutual exchange, discussion, and hands-on design, developed six teaching programs incorporating "respect" and "care" into different learning domains¹.

The third year entered elementary school classrooms to conduct action research on moral teaching experiments. For example, researchers designed an environment-caring curriculum to accompany the fifth-grade Chinese language lesson "Ayu," and guided students to respect and care for nature and life by connecting the Chinese language lesson "The Last Leaf" with the SARS outbreak then occurring¹.

This research proved one thing: within the Nine-Year Integrated framework, moral education can work. But it requires interdisciplinary expert teams, three years of research time, dedicated project funding from the Ministry of Education, and willing teachers. These conditions are almost never simultaneously available in the day-to-day operations of ordinary schools.

Character Education: An Import from America, or Old Wine in New Bottles?

In February 2004, the Ministry of Education convened a "Character and Moral Education Working Group" meeting, attempting to use "character education" to fill the moral education vacuum left by the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum².

Character education's roots trace back to Aristotle's virtue ethics. The Greek arete (Latin virtus) originally meant "excellence," and only later became linked to the moral dimension of "virtue." Character education in the United States went through multiple turns: traditional virtue inculcation before the 1920s; the experimental refutation by Hartshorne and May (1928–1930 — approximately 100 experiments on "honesty and deception," with one conclusion being that "school moral education has no influence on an individual's character development"); the rise of values clarification in the 1960s; the dominance of Kohlberg's cognitive moral development theory; and then the resurgence of new character education from the late 1980s onward².

Some scholars also raised questions about Taiwan's direct importation of American character education. First, Taiwan's history, culture, and social context differ from America's — directly transplanting curricula and educational programs promoted by various American character education organizations seems inappropriate. Second, Taiwan already has a long tradition of moral education, cultivating well-rounded character through ritual and musical cultivation — a central concern of traditional education. Is it really necessary to learn from America? Or is this perhaps a side effect of a decade of educational reforms that looked to America for guidance, leaving Taiwan lacking confidence in its own cultural traditions²?

More pointedly, American critical pedagogy scholar Alfie Kohn observed: "Most of what goes by the name of character education today is a collection of exhortations and extrinsic inducements designed to make children work harder and do what they're told." Even where other values such as care and fairness are promoted simultaneously, inculcatory methods of instruction remain favored².

Kohn also exposed a phenomenon that is simultaneously absurd and recognizable: "If today is Tuesday, then it must be honesty." In American schools implementing new character education, one value after another is designated, each with its own corresponding day, week, and month — a spectacle almost identical to Taiwan's former practice of one central virtue per week².

Twenty Years Later: Is Moral Education Still in a No-Man's-Land?

The Ministry of Education's response was to launch the "Character Education Promotion Program." According to the records of the Seventh Republic of China Education Yearbook, the Ministry of Education — following the conclusions of the 2003 National Education Development Conference — established the "Character Education Working Group" and promulgated the first-phase program (2004–2008) on December 16, 2004. A revised second phase was promulgated in 2009 (2009–2013); the third phase (2014–2018) focused on the practice and deepening of "core character values" and "behavioral standards"⁴¹². The Yearbook also recorded a key 2006 resolution: to incorporate central virtues and behavioral standards into relevant school learning domains and flexible learning periods¹². A 2009 survey summarized the top ten core character values prioritized by schools at all levels: respect for life, filial piety and respect for elders, responsibility and conscientiousness, honesty and trustworthiness, teamwork, autonomy and self-discipline, proactive engagement, humility and courtesy, care and doing good, and environmental protection¹².

However, the 108 Curriculum Guidelines (2019) still contain no independent subject for "Life and Ethics" or "Civics and Morality," and the controversy over curriculum "lacking morality" continues to the present⁸. Commentator Duan Hsin-yi observed that during the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum period, a gap appeared in moral education that affected the values formation of an entire generation⁹.

The structural problem has never changed: in Taiwan's curriculum, moral education has no independent class hours, no dedicated teacher, no systematic teaching materials. It is expected to "naturally integrate" into every class — which in practice means no one is specifically responsible. The Yearbook recorded that during the program's implementation, 103 schools were designated as character education model schools in the 2010 school year, growing to 238 by 2011¹² — but against a backdrop of more than 3,000 elementary and junior high schools across Taiwan, those numbers reveal the limits of coverage.

Taiwan is not short of moral education theory. From Kant's deontology to Noddings' ethics of care, from Kohlberg's cognitive development to Aristotle's virtue ethics, academic discussion has never stopped. Chen Guang-hui's 2001 research noted that numerous scholars agreed Taiwan's moral education needed strengthening, not ignoring or even eliminating¹⁰. Taiwan is also not short of researchers who have run experiments: the three-year action research by Huang Guang-xiong, Ke Hua-wei, and others proved that integrating moral instruction around "respect and care" within the Nine-Year Integrated framework is achievable³.

What is missing is a policy-level decision: who will teach it, when, with what materials, and how it will be assessed. The answers to these questions were already contained in the overall framework of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum Guidelines — they simply were never concretely implemented as classroom-level supporting measures¹¹.

These questions have remained suspended since the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum launched in 2001 — for nearly a quarter of a century. And during that time, an entire generation of Taiwanese students grew up without a dedicated moral education class. They learned Chinese, mathematics, English, and science; they learned to assemble learning portfolios and prepare for the General Scholastic Ability Test; but not once did any class systematically discuss with them "what is the right thing to do" and "why do the right thing."

Confucius said more than two thousand years ago: "Lead them with government policies and regulate them with punishments, and the people will avoid wrongdoing but feel no shame. Lead them with virtue and regulate them with ritual, and the people will have a sense of shame and will also do what is right." If moral education relies only on law and punishment to maintain minimum standards, it cultivates people who know "what must not be done." But what a society truly needs are people who know "what is worth doing"¹.

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