City Beat | Hong Kong’s education system needs more heart and ‘soulware’

“Pity that our best talents are not going to the teaching field,” a panellist lamented last week at a conference held by the South China Morning Post to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China and the “one country, two systems” policy. Other speakers, including the city’s first post-1997 leader, Tung Chee-hwa, also highlighted the need for a smarter education policy.

So what has gone wrong with education in the city that has made our opinion leaders, parents, and many youngsters so unhappy?

The panellist concerned about the shortage of talent was right and wrong. While it’s true that the cream of the crop is still likely to seek traditionally respectable options like medical or law school, the gauge of good education is more than just turning top students into teachers or professors.

The story of City University serves as a good reference. The institution, with a history of just over 30 years and which may not necessarily be the first choice for some students, has squeezed itself into the top 50, listing 49th in the QS World University Rankings.

In another achievement, City University is taking the lead in Hong Kong and ranks 54th worldwide in terms of patents published by the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association in the US.

Professor Way Kuo, president of the university and an internationally renowned scholar on nuclear energy, was modest enough to suggest that this could be a result of different universities focusing on different areas. Fair enough, but he did share one secret: the key is “soulware” – which he defines as “a type of culture, mentality, behaviour and thinking pattern”. Traditional knowledge-based teaching aside, nurturing the mindset of the students is equally or even more important.