There are many places in the world where a foreign language is an important subject in the school curriculum, and is taught and learned efficiently. But hardly anywhere else can there be such strong resistance to mother-tongue teaching as has been angrily expressed in Hong Kong last week.
The local debate about language in education has continued for nearly two decades. That students can learn their school subjects best in their mother tongue is a sound education principle which few would dispute.
Nor would anyone deny the importance of English language skills in work and in higher education in Hong Kong. The controversy is whether students should learn every subject in English to ensure maximum exposure to the language.
For a long time the education authorities refused to adopt a compulsory medium of instruction policy. Left to decide on their own, four schools out of every five claimed to teach in English, believing that most parents were more concerned about their children's English proficiency than their knowledge of science or history.
In recent years it has become increasingly apparent that the 'English-medium' label advertised by many schools is a sham. Education experts find it a disgrace that a 'mixed code', a mixture of poor Chinese and poor English, has become the most common classroom language.
Meanwhile, studies have indicated only a small fraction of local students can benefit from English-medium teaching, and those learning in the mother tongue generally perform better.
In due course the Education Department realised, perhaps later than all others, that the decision to switch to mother-tongue teaching could not be left to individual schools.