Make Chinese history compulsory to end Hong Kong youngsters’ identity crisis, says CPPCC Standing Committee member Annie Wu
Businesswoman calls for secondary school students to engage critically with mainland’s past, and for a less narrow curriculum
Young Hongkongers will face an identity crisis for at least another decade because they have not been taught enough about Chinese history, a Hong Kong school supervisor who serves on the nation’s top advisory body has said.
To remedy that, Annie Wu Suk-ching, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, called for educators to focus more on teaching Chinese history in a critical way, teaching the city’s position as part of China, as well as reforming what she said was a narrow curriculum.
Her comments came as the Education Bureau revises the junior secondary Chinese history curriculum, and as pro-establishment politicians demand the government make Chinese history a compulsory subject at senior secondary level, after independence-minded university and secondary school students started advocating the city’s breakaway from the mainland, handing out fliers and hanging banners.
Wu, also chairman of the Chinese History and Culture Educational Foundation for Youth, which promotes Chinese cultural activities, said Chinese history had been forced into a back seat in Hong Kong, following an education reform that began in 2000.
She added that in improving and revitalising the city’s education system, the team leading the reform – led by former financial secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung – focused too much on the core subjects of English, Chinese language, maths and liberal studies to get students into universities, and neglected Chinese history, which is optional at senior secondary levels.