Roots of liberal studies

The liberal studies exam in this year's Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination, under way until early next month, contained the previously taboo topic of the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. It caught some by surprise. But then, a sense of bewilderment surrounded the whole idea of liberal education.

"How can liberal education be a course?" was a question many of us raised years ago. Isn't it a way of learning? A way of training? A thing that belongs to college (meaning undergraduate) education? How is it to be defined, anyway?

These are legitimate questions, and I do not propose to deal with them in one column. But I believe they are important to the future of this community, so I'll try to explain. But first, let me clarify the "state of confusion" we are facing today.

Part of the problem stems from the very term "liberal education" and its Chinese translation. The University of Hong Kong has a lib ed department and calls it tongshi in Putonghua. At Chinese University, the tong shi department is called "general education" in English. At the University of Science and Technology, they don't have a department, only a few electives taken as tongshi. At Lingnan University, the lib ed programme is called by a different, but appropriate name - boya. In Taiwan, it's called tongshi, but on the mainland, the term most often used is suzhi (literally, quality education).

Each university, therefore, has its own approach, and although each is doing its best under the present system, it's far from desirable. Lib ed is being defined arbitrarily because there is no consensus on what it is. What's more, it also tells us - so it seems - that most of us, including those in the higher education sector, don't know what lib ed really is. It's hard to blame them, though. Just a few decades ago, we had never heard of such a term.