'Learning for life, learning through life' is a much-touted slogan that accompanied Hong Kong's education reform launched in 2000 to cultivate talent for the 21st century. A decade later, local students are certainly exposed to diverse learning opportunities.
But an aspect of this worries educator Lam Bick-har, an associate professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education's department of curriculum and instruction. She supports the reform but fears the students' schedules are so packed, they are missing out.
Lam, who also won the HKIEd's Excellence in Teaching Award last year, presents many of her views in Learning and Teaching in the Chinese Classroom. It's published by Hong Kong University Press and co-written with Dr Shane Phillipson, an educational psychology expert at Monash University in Melbourne.
'The aim of education is to help individuals to develop their thinking abilities, potential and interests for living and enjoyment,' she writes.
As Lam sees it, the ideal education has its roots in the 2,500-year-old Confucian tradition, which places value on personal development and moral education. 'According to Confucius, the 'ideal person', zunji, is the human being committed to a search for personal moral perfection, without forgetting that his/her personal moral growth has social implications,' she says.
Yet what she found through contact with youngsters today is a potentially lost generation immersed in plentiful tasks in an increasingly competitive environment. They have little time for personal reflection and understanding values.