The collapse of the 'Asian economic miracle' was partly triggered by the lack of long-term education planning by governments in the region, a Hong Kong academic claims.
Professor Leslie Lo Nai-kwai, director of the Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research at the Chinese University, was speaking at a recent conference at the CU.
The conference was designed to give academics an opportunity to look at the regional monetary crisis from an education perspective and discuss the need to restructure the knowledge base of education.
He quoted the 'perspiration theory' by economist Professor Paul Krugman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which attributed the impressive economic growth in the region to people working harder, not wiser.
Professor Lo told the conference, entitled Restructuring the Knowledge Base of Education in Asia, that policies by the SAR Government and others in the region contributed to popularising education and the accumulation of human capital, but lacked long-term planning.
'Education should lead to change and should be ahead of society,' he said. 'A lot of the restructuring depends on the major concerns of the countries involved.' Professor Lo said the knowledge base in the region was not rich in content because of the relative immaturity of educational research in Asian societies which had a short history of support for research.
'Our knowledge is not really relevant to societal needs because it addresses present educational concerns instead of looking into the future, such as the developmental requirements of the information age,' he said.
