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"Megastar tutor" Richard Eng. Photo: AFP

From China's public-exam meritocracy to tutorial-college tsunami

Hong Kong’s tutorial-college industry has been built on the ruthless demand for good grades, regardless of character, writes Jason Wordie

LIFE

Socio-economic mobility through meritocratic public examinations has been a noted feature of Chinese society for thousands of years. Enlightenment-era thinkers, such as Voltaire, admired the Chinese ideal of administration by the most intellectually competent, rather than by a series of (possibly hopeless) hereditary aristocrats. Europe’s 19th-century civil service examination reforms were partially modelled on this philosophy.

In contemporary Hong Kong, pressure to pass public examinations has spawned an enormously profitable industry.

Tutorial colleges possess an honesty lacking in the rest of Hong Kong’s education sector, from kindergartens to universities.

Pretence is absent. Warm-sounding “mission statement” eyewash about “making a difference” and “developing the whole person” is refreshingly nonexistent.

Students enrol to gain the skills necessary to pass public examinations. This blunt reality further reinforces widespread perceptions that the local education system is not about learning to think; candidates are simply required to pass a series of hypercompetitive memory tests. If an intellectual framework for future independent progression is accidentally provided along the way, then so much the better.

Voltaire was a fan of the Chinese system of talent-driven governance.

Profit-driven businesses first and foremost, tutorial colleges unashamedly operate on raw free-market principles. If a reasonable proportion of their students pass the public exams, a local reputation for success develops and they prosper. And if they do not, the college in question swiftly folds – it’s as simple as that.

Courses range from maths, physics and chemistry to spoken and written English and Putonghua, and other curriculum subjects. As a telling marker of how thoroughly debased what passes for Hong Kong’s mainstream education system has become, crammer courses have been created for liberal studies and critical thinking; the latter should not – by its very nature – require a candidate to memorise a series of “correct” exam responses. To use a much-deployed phrase, “only in Hong Kong …”

Bus advertisements for the latest “megastar tutor” on offer at various colleges can be seen from one end of Hong Kong to the other. “Megastar tutors” don’t actually teach in person; prerecorded lectures are screened to large classes, which enables “pack ‘em in, pile ‘em high” economies of scale. Like many other necessitydriven, mass-produced commodities, admission to these types of classes sells very well. If students from less-privileged backgrounds can get quality, cut-rate tuition and advance their grades, then they – and their families – consider the investment to be money well spent.

More expensive colleges employ native-English speaking graduates from Ivy League or Oxbridge universities to provide one-on-one tutorials. Students are mostly either local international school pupils or boarding school returnees who attend top-up classes during holidays.

Hyper-competitive, near-psychotic tiger mothers are standard fixtures around tutorial college waiting rooms. While the desire to see their offspring achieve is laudable, parental helicoptering frequently backfires. Teenagers are produced who can play three musical instruments, parrot out straight As in their exams and (despite clearly limited English-language comprehension) manage to perfect Californian or Canadian accents.

Nevertheless, many remain 18 going on 12 in terms of maturity, and were so thoroughly cocooned from the real world throughout their young lives that they can barely distinguish the moon from a streetlamp. Just how much practical use they would ever be in the wider world, unless a safe berth is eventually found for them in a family business somewhere, remains anyone’s guess.

For more on Hong Kong history and heritage, go to scmp.com/topics/old-hong-kong

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: That’ll teach 'em
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