Curriculum and National Identity: Evidence from the 1997 Curriculum Reform in Taiwan
2019/11/28
研討會日期 : 2019-11-28
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Tzu-Ting Yang
主持人 : Professor Wan-Jung Cheng
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Yang received his Ph.D. in Economics at University of British Columbia in 2015. He is currently an Assistant Research Fellows at the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica. His research interests are Public Economics and Applied Econometrics.
演講摘要 : This paper examines the causal effect of textbook content on individuals' national identity, exploiting a curriculum reform that introduced a new perspective on Taiwan's history for students entering junior high school after September 1997. Using a repeated nationally representative survey and a regression discontinuity design, we show that students exposed to the new textbooks were more likely to consider themselves Taiwanese. The effect is greater for academic track students and those living in neighborhoods where fewer people hold the Taiwanese identity. Finally, our results suggest the Taiwanese identity of old textbook readers catch up that of those who read the new textbook in the long run.
