Award Name
Open Access Sophomore Award Winner
Award Date
2025
Faculty Sponsor
Cristina Bejarano
Description/Abstract
This project began with a personal question: what was the story behind the Chinese textbooks my mother used to teach me as a child? Unlike my peers, I learned Mandarin using Taiwanese textbooks that were passed down from my grandparents. These books—written under martial law and Kuomintang (KMT) rule—contained passages glorifying Chiang Kai-shek and vilifying Communists. As I entered Pomona College, my past questions sparked a deeper investigation into the educational policy of Taiwan. With mentorship from Pomona faculty and librarians, I began archival research using historical Taiwanese teaching guidelines owned by the Claremont Colleges’ Special Collections. I then pursued my research by traveling to Taiwan over the summer, accessing archives at the National Academy for Educational Research and Academia Sinica. There, I examined the evolution of state-sponsored history across decades and uncovered public debates around textbook reforms during Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1990s. These findings became central to my digital exhibit for the Asian Library and inspired an upcoming research panel on the politicization of history. This project, which highlighted the narratives of history that nations use to construct collective memory and identity, shows the ways in which historicizing education can actually reveal what people want for their futures.
Terms of Use & License Information
Recommended Citation
Tsai, Holden, "How To Teach History: What lessons the international community can learn from post-1949 Taiwanese educational policy" (2025). 2025 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award. 1.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cclura_2025/1
