While it’s not exactly an uprising of Middle Eastern proportions, students in Taiwan have taken to Facebook to protest new educational requirements that make mandatory the study of the Confucian classics.

In February Taiwan’s Ministry of Education said it planned to require Taiwan high school students to study what is known as the “four books”– the Analects of Confucius, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Great Learning, and Mencius– in order to combat widespread bullying, drug use and gang problems among Taiwanese youth.

The Analects and the other three texts came to form the backbone of China’s Imperial era civil service examinations after being emphasized by Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi in the 12th century. The books are written in classical Chinese, as distant from contemporary Chinese as Middle English is from modern English. Like literature students trying to make sense of Chaucer in the U.S. or UK, modern Chinese students often rely on contemporary Chinese “translations” to get through the works.

Over the past month, students and educators alike have ramped up criticism of the policy, questioning how useful the ancient texts will be in promoting students’ moral development and arguing that forcing students to study them will severely reduce the time they have to devote to other, arguably more useful subjects.

The movement has jumped back into the news recently after teachers and students took their protest online, using Facebook and other internet forums to distribute a petition and organize a phone campaign aimed at Taiwan’s minister of education.

Student behavior has become an increasingly hot issue in Taiwan after a report came out last year that a principal at a middle school ignored a string of bullying incidents. The ministry also announced in February an anti-bullying campaign would be carried out in the island’s elementary and middle schools.

But on one Facebook petition site, which has garnered more than 2,100 signatures since it was launched in early March, students and teachers alike expressed skepticism that the change in curriculum would solve bullying and drug problems and called for greater flexibility in the curriculum. One commenter, Kuo Song-king, found a golden mean of his own in the debate.

“Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is playing politics. If a new party is elected there will be another change to the curriculum: Where will our competitiveness come from?” he wrote. “Students have become lab rats. Education policy should be determined independent of political parties by experts and teachers, and it should be in alignment with the demands of college.”

The ministry’s effort to turn back the educational clock comes as authorities in mainland China are also seeking to revive interest in Confucius, partly to fill the moral vacuum left when the Communist Party decided to embrace late leader Deng Xiaoping’s exhortation that “to get rich is glorious.” Beijing installed a 31-foot bronze statue of the sage on the east side of Tiananmen Square in January and threw its weight behind an expensive (though widely panned) Confucius bio-pic starring Hong Kong’s Chow Yun-fat last year.

While some on the mainland have appeared to embrace the return to Confucian morality, critics say the effort is more a soft power play (government-backed Chinese language schools abroad are managed by an entity called the Confucius Institute), than a genuine effort to reform society.

In an editorial published in March (in Chinese), Taiwan’s Liberty Times argued against the new requirements on the ground that ancient Chinese texts were pedologically inappropriate for a modern, democratic society like Taiwan’s:

“Whether in blood or in culture, we have many differences with Chinese people and Chinese culture,” the editorial said. “The leaders of the KMT and China’s Communist Party, the two Chinese parties, have the same goal of suppressing democracy while advocating Chinese culture; isn’t it convenient that Chinese culture and democratization are described as moving in opposite directions?”

Emphasizing the plurality of cultural influences that have formed contemporary Taiwanese identity, the editorial called instead for influences from Japan, Western countries and aboriginal tribes to be given greater representation in Taiwan’s educational system.

In its own editorial on Tuesday (in Chinese), the Commercial Times argued in favor of the policy, insisting the lessons and debates in the texts would benefit Taiwanese youth. Beyond discussing values like respect and hard work, the editorial said, the books also contain many practical insights, such as differing perspectives on tax rates put forth in the Analects and Mencius.

“Reading the classics isn’t just about education, but the competitiveness of the whole country. The sophistication of the use of words reflects the conciseness of one’s thinking; without proper logic in language and cognition, one’s expression will become dull and vague. It will curb the creativity of private enterprises and the policy-making of the government.”