Chinese Calligraphy-writing to be a must-have skill for Chinese teachers in Taiwan
Taipei, March 9 (CNA) Chinese calligraphy lessons will be integrated into the curricula for people training to be teachers of Chinese in elementary and junior high schools in Taiwan within three years, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said Tuesday.
Beginning this year, Chinese calligraphy writing will become a skill that teachers of Chinese in elementary and junior high schools must learn, to enable them to teach it to students, said Yang Chang-yu, director of the MOE's Department of Elementary Education.
Yang said the MOE decided to require aspiring teachers and already working teachers to learn the skills of writing calligraphy because no higher education institution in Taiwan maintains a department of Chinese calligraphy or calligraphy teaching. This means few teachers know the skill, and therefore they are unable to teach it to students.
Yang said the Ministry of Education encourages local governments or schools to invite calligraphers to assist teachers in calligraphy teaching or to put their works on display in schools to help improve the students' aesthetic appreciation ability.
The education ministry will also study the possibility of making Chinese calligraphy part of the school curricula, so that students will be required to learn it, Yang said. Currently, it is not a mandatory lesson.
Before there were pencils and pens, or computers, using ink and a brush was the most common way to write Chinese characters. Calligraphy later developed into an art form. However, many people in Chinese-speaking societies nowadays do not know how to write calligraphy, although appreciation of the skill is still strong.