Opinion | The World Cup, and its lesson for Hong Kong schools

By Philip Yeung, university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

The World Cup fever has subsided. Strangely, my thoughts turn to Hong Kong classrooms. Unlike the football stadium, these learning places are cold and cruel, a world away from the cauldron of emotion and magic that has stolen the hearts  of the world.

What dazzled the world was not just the display of superb footballing skills. There was something else about these matches: their pure passion. In the slums where players grew up, football is their dream. Few come from well-heeled families; their households barely scrape a living. Football is their exit from poverty, their ticket to personal transformation. Football defines them. Without football they are incomplete. In their pocket of poverty, they still live with passion. Without passion, there is no greatness or innovation.

Not so in Hong Kong classrooms. These places are known for one thing that is wholly anti-educational: exercises—endless rounds of skull-numbing fill-in-the-blanks exercises that have little meaning in life.  From morning to night, school children are fed a dull diet of dead knowledge. The teaching serves but one purpose: to pass artificial and often error-strewn tests. This is what defines Hong Kong education.   As Einstein said: The most precious human attribute is "imagination"—snuffed out by exercises in Hong Kong schools.

There is something else evil about local public schools-- sin number one in education: the labelling effect. From as young as age 7, kids must navigate a battery of tests which are supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff, pigeon-holing schools into bands 1 to 3, band 3 being the bottom of the barrel.

Those at the bottom rung wear their shame in public, their self-belief shattered. Typically, each of these schools send about 100 students to the annual school-leaving public exams, and typically, only 2 or 3 would make it into the gates of a publicly-funded university.  The rest are also-rans, let loose into society without any generic skills—social or verbal or occupational. Worse, they leave school hating schools. In Canada, kids love their schools. Here, going to school is a form of punishment. They learn little about their country, with no emotional connection to the motherland. They exist in an emotional vacuum. A life of hopelessness awaits. What they receive is zombie education—lifeless and passionless.

In Finland, a world-leader in public education, they say that "the best school is the nearest school". They have never heard of labelling schools or schoolchildren.

These rootless youngsters are ripe for exploitation by activists who quickly fill the void with their false gods. They take out their frustrations of a meaningless life by explosive anger in the streets. With maximum freedom and uncensored inflammatory social media, they are easily led astray.

In recent inspections by officials, the majority of these schools are given a failed grade in national education efforts. Many teach it unimaginatively, drilling kids on the Basic law meant only for lawyers, instead of showing them movies of China's war against Japanese aggression, or documentaries of its world-wowing achievements in technology and infrastructure. Patriotism cannot take root in a vacuum; it comes from a sense of belonging. These impressionable kids have become putty in the hands of political manipulators. In this, the schools have been caught asleep.

The single biggest root cause for the schools' failure is that the education bureau is run by bureaucratic amateurs who know little and care even less about education. Without exception, these high officials all sent their own children to international schools, or to schools in Britain at public expense. In short, they are deserters from the public school system. With no stake in it, they simply let the schools go to the dogs.  Worse, they feel free to tinker with the system, inventing one series of anti-education tests after another, from primary three onwards and inflicting them on little kids.

I remember my good old days at La Salle College run by devoted Irish Catholic brothers. Many of us came from impoverished families. But we lived the language. We read story books—Moon Fleet, No High Way, even Shakespeare.  I never remember once doing a single useless exercise.

The results don't lie. For all the endless tests, these kids can't spell, or write a decent sentence. In low-banding schools, after 12 years of schooling, kids don't know a word like "hen". Now you know how dysfunctional Hong Kong education is. It is a monumental waste, a colossal disaster. The government must wake up to its blunder before it is too late. It is educational malpractice of the worst kind. It is downright criminal!

When wayward youngsters broke the law and got locked up, no effort at rehab took place. Wong Chi Fung, the empty-headed student activist who was intoxicated by photo ops with Nancy Pelosi, recently came out of two years of jail,  unrepentant, and is itching for another foray into fame. Why wasn't he shown anti-Japanese war movies or history of the Opium War? These misled young trouble-makers need re-education and a good grounding in modern Chinese history.

So, what needs to be done? First, any education official, from the Education Bureau Chief on down, who sends their own kids to private or international or overseas schools, is to be automatically disqualified. Second, replace amateurs who know nothingabout education with educational experts, especially those with degrees in educational psychology. Third, stop the disastrous practice of imposing senseless exercises on kids. They kill the joy of knowledge and breed a life-time hatred against meaningful learning. Fourth, no more studying the Basic Law. Watch historical movies communally instead. Arrange for Hong Kong children to visit schools in poor countryside communities to create a bond. An emotional vacuum is a dangerous thing.

Hong Kong has suffered a lost generation. Business as usual will sow the seeds for future unrest.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Read more articles by Philip Yeung:

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