Is the real challenge for community colleges being a government mouthpiece or a platform for independent civil voices?
Recently, a community college in central Taiwan held a "public forum" and invited officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to promote the cross-strait service trade policy, but because anti-service-trade protesters were refused entry, a conflict eventually broke out. Since the incident, the repercussions have continued to ripple, triggering a wave of heavy reflection and discussion in the field of the community college movement.
Many community college workers believe that refusing to let anti-service-trade people enter to listen or protest violates the spirit of public participation in open discussion at a public forum. Based on the spirit of community self-discipline and reflecting on the ideals of civil society movements, many community college workers have expressed deep regret over the incident in public or private settings, and they hope even more to inquire into the truth behind the conflict.
The author believes this incident cannot be dismissed as an isolated case. Behind this conflict, what is actually reflected is the structural predicament faced by the community college movement. This predicament originates from government departments viewing community colleges as an extension of government departments, an authoritarian management mentality. This relationship has become an invisible structural oppression that erodes the original public character of community colleges.
On April 25, the National Alliance for Community Colleges issued a statement demanding that the government return a public space to community colleges. For a long time, local governments, including Taipei City, have been accustomed to using official documents to suggest that community colleges cooperate with government policy propaganda during Civic Week, and many local governments have even unilaterally set that during each semester's Civic Week at community colleges, a certain proportion must be allocated for local government bureaus and offices to promote the policies of the businesses they administer. So why are community colleges willing to accept such unreasonable demands?
Because what is even more absurd is that each year's community college institutional evaluation includes an item that evaluates "cooperation with and implementation of policies of relevant county and city government bureaus and offices," examining the results of each semester's Civic Week cooperation with the government in carrying out policy propaganda. Therefore, planning lectures is called a suggestion, but in reality, through evaluation and control of subsidy resources, it indirectly forces each community college to carry it out. Under consideration of annual evaluation results or whether a community college's contract to operate will be renewed, most community colleges can only reluctantly cooperate with the will of county and city governments, and the original local character and democratic vitality of Civic Week are completely lost.
In recent years, Taiwan's community college movement can be said to be blooming everywhere, yet the autonomy and degree of freedom of the community college movement are increasingly restricted. The government uses bidding systems and bureaucratic assessment systems to strengthen its will to govern community colleges. More and more evaluations and regulations, and even attempts to require community college teachers to accept course and license examination systems, clearly show a regressive phenomenon of returning to "packaged knowledge" and following political authority.
Returning to this conflict that occurred recently at a community college in central Taiwan, it is truly regrettable. It not only damages the social image of community colleges, but also harms the sense of identification with community colleges among many community college teachers and students. Yet it also compels us once again to think deeply: against the reality of Taiwanese society's collective anxiety about its future destiny, the value of civil society is even more precious.
In the concept of the "public sphere," the various critical utterances of public opinion are meant to force the political authority of the public sphere to operate on the basis of the legitimacy of supervision by public opinion, and to accept public scrutiny and oversight. Community colleges are precisely the platform that has self-consciously aspired to develop Taiwan's public sphere.
Although the public sphere dares to challenge political authority, when facing dissenters it can also demonstrate tolerance and listening. Interpreted from the angle of "social capital," this courage in communication, trust, and self-regulation toward differing opinions should be regarded as a public asset of social progress. However, many local government competent authorities regard community colleges as subordinate institutions of the government. In this way, the public platform function of community colleges will be greatly discounted, and they will also be unable to convey the true voice of the people.
Community colleges have the idea of social movements leading social progress, the public value of nonprofit organizations, and social functions such as community building, preservation of tradition, revitalization of local knowledge and innovation culture, and adult education. Only by allowing community colleges to develop under autonomous will and growth can the possibilities of various kinds of social progress be explored and allowed to grow naturally.
The author believes that every team operating a community college is devoted to the movement of running community colleges because it identifies with certain public-interest ideals. Based on the spirit of autonomy with which the community college movement began, and based on respect for the autonomy of community college management teams, please, government departments, withdraw the hand of "policy propaganda" from community colleges!
National Alliance for Community Colleges, Incorporated Association [Press Release]:Give Community Colleges a Diverse and Autonomous Public Space
http://www.napcu.org.tw/2012/task452.html
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