Six-day week is merely an unwise and dangerous teaching fad

Perhaps every cloud really does have a silver lining. In the last two weeks, Hong Kong schools have taken the unusual steps of opening their windows and turning off their air-conditioners.

In addition, teachers who felt ill stayed at home, student toilet blocks were carefully cleaned and more than a few of the city's teachers managed to leave school before dark in order to find an hour or two's extra rest.

Thanks to the government's health alerts for atypical pneumonia, many teachers have been able to exercise their better judgment and put their health before their need to impress their principals.

One wonders how long the 'fresh air' will continue. As schools make plans for the next academic year, teachers' health, it seems, is not really a high priority.

The latest 'fad' to hit the city's secondary schools is the six-day week. As if extra classes after school, at lunchtime and in the holidays are not enough, many schools are seriously discussing Saturday teaching during the 2003-2004 school year.

Such ideas have a tendency to sweep around this city faster than the flu. They are nothing short of educational 'fads', sparked by the doctrine of 'keeping up with the Joneses'; if one's neighbour, or neighbouring school, is doing something and people are talking about it, then we should waste no time in copying it.

In English language teaching, recent fads have included summer camps, overseas trips, English corners, phonics teaching, self-access centres, multi-media laboratories, English days and weeks, even the hiring of native English-speaking teachers (NETs). These are seldom introduced with a great deal of integration into regular teaching. They are often initiated by people without experience in running them, so they tend to become the NET's responsibilities.