Later this month I will be fielding my first motion in the Provisional Legislative Council and it will be on education reform.
To prepare for the subject, I have finished a 17-page analysis covering various aspects of Hong Kong education as it emerges from a colonial past and into a Special Administrative Region future.
For the final years of British rule our society was induced to focus on politics to the neglect of many issues of greater urgency. Education was one of these matters not properly addressed, a lapse that must now be corrected.
The subject of education is so complex and has such sweeping ramifications that its review should be a community-wide undertaking rather than an individual's solo brief.
Reforming education is difficult in the SAR because it has to be gradually weaned of the colonial influence which taught our youths to obey rather than initiate, to listen rather than initiate, to listen rather than think and to have self-doubt rather than self confidence.
Before leaving, former governor Chris Patten decried vehemently the inevitable rewriting of Hong Kong's history books by SAR educators when for generations the British administration had a monopoly on the practice.
No one is better placed than Elsie Tu to recall how the teaching of history and indeed Chinese culture was either discouraged or distorted to cater for colonial expediency and to ensure that the natives were docile. Tsang Yok-sing and Szeto Wah also remember how teachers were threatened with disciplinary action, if not summary dismissal, for breaching the taboo against educating youngsters about Hong Kong's past and its injustices.