TEENAGE STUDENTS DO not normally attend school voluntarily on Saturday morning; much less spend two hours creating and solving taxing intellectual problems in strict exam conditions. But prick-up-the-ears comments such as 'it's fun to challenge your brain' and 'this is the best thing we've done' merit further investigation.
The occasion was the inaugural competition in Hong Kong of the Macquarie Bank Future Problem Solving Programme (FPSP), held at King George V School on April 24. Four teams of four students from Hong Kong International School and KGV were presented with the same possible scenario of the future, based on the theme of 'Artificial Intelligence'.
Their daunting task was to find 16 potential problems arising from the scenario, write them in sentences conforming to a set format, choose the most significant underlying problem and find up to 16 solutions and present the best one, judged against a rigorous set of criteria.
'It is a good way of addressing the needs of gifted kids,' says Catherine Wiebusch, FPSP convenor in Hong Kong. 'Students are encouraged to be creative and innovative; to come up with original thoughts and ideas about the world they will live in as adults.'
The rewards, however, are tangible and based more in the present. 'The winner has the right to compete in the Australian National finals in Melbourne in October and the winner of that can go to the United States for the big final after that,' Ms Wiebusch says.
She was encouraged to promote the programme in Hong Kong by Valerie Volk, deputy director of FPSP Australia. 'Valerie was the head of my English department at Immanuel College, Adelaide, a private, co-educational boarding school. I was aware that she was a very successful FPSP coach who won the national competition.