Is Hong Kong dumbing down its education system?
Regina Ip wonders whether, in its focus on education for the masses, Hong Kong has compromised on quality, thus neglecting a key goal of learning - the pursuit of excellence
Education, a key area in the chief executive's annual policy address, was rated poorly last year but received much higher scores this year. The outcome is hardly surprising, considering that the chief executive has left no stone unturned to mete out relief in response to demands tabled by interest groups in the legislature in recent years.
Even the harshest critics could not accuse the government of turning a deaf ear. From kindergartens to primary schools, from bright high school students aspiring to study abroad to "grass-roots students", from undergraduates enrolled in associate degree programmes to those admitted to universities on the mainland, the government ensured there was something for everyone.
Yet it skirted the most critical issues confronting thinking parents, teachers and students. In the government's drive to spread education to the masses, has it achieved mass education at the expense of quality? Is it possible now to turn back the tide and reverse the downturn towards defeatism and mediocrity?
The decline in English standards of local graduates is well known to be a source of frequent complaints by employers. Less well known to expatriate employers, but even more worrying to the local community, is the decline in standards of written Chinese, ever since the banishment of classical Chinese texts as compulsory reading for examination after the turn of the century.
Since then, secondary-school leavers are tested only on their ability to read, write, listen and speak Cantonese (a mere dialect). The decline in the standard of written Chinese has aroused such widespread concern that the authorities had to agree to reintroduce some classical Chinese and literary texts into the Chinese curriculum for examination in 2015.
Even less well known to the public is the fact that, since 1994, as the result of progressive curriculum reforms implemented by the education authorities, the standards of the mathematics curriculum for our high school students have been steadily dumbed down.
It's not only maths teachers who complain about the decline in standards, especially since the introduction of the core maths subject for senior secondary school students in 2009. Engineering and computer science professors at local universities also say it is hard to train undergraduates who have passed the core maths subject but lack training in advanced trigonometry, vectors and calculus.