Racist snobs indeed thriving in our city My thanks to Philip Yeung for his recent 'Land of snobs fails to look beyond race' article (Education Post, March 25). He truly hit the nail on the head. Too many Hong Kong people are indeed racist snobs when it comes to English-language teachers who are not Caucasian and aren't blond and blue-eyed. I have a college degree and took the TESOL course. When I started looking for part-time teaching work, I was advised by a couple of tutorial agencies not to admit to being Filipino. Because I look Latino and have a slight American accent (having lived in the US for many years), I informed those parents who asked that I was Hawaiian. It's a sad thing to have to do, but I needed the work. Telling people about my British husband also helped. I know of ethnic Chinese teachers, born in the west, who have been turned down for teaching jobs. It's not only infuriating but ironic to find such a pervasively stupid mindset in this so-called world city. NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED AD students brave enough to bounce back I would like to respond to the writer, who wished to remain nameless, who made a few points about associate degree students which I find at best spurious and at worst fairly insulting in 'Some people aren't born to be surgeons' (Education Post, March 25). I teach associate degree students, and find a considerable number of them to be suitable university material. Having taught HKCEE and Hong Kong A-level English preparation courses, I found the latter's reading questions to be very tough. I am a native speaker brought up in England, with more than a dozen years of English-teaching experience. I found the gap between what is expected at GCE O-level and A-level to be so stark that I would say that it is the biggest academic challenge a person may face. That is because of the standard required and also where the student is developmentally. I think that the correspondent needs to be aware of the concept of the 'late developer' before stating that 'students who do badly at school are unlikely to do well in further academic work'. It is true that standards must be maintained, and existing tertiary courses need more money in order to 'keep up with the Joneses' overseas. Hong Kong needs to produce well-trained young people in order to retain and improve our reputation. I found the idea that some people will never be able to do more demanding work than sweeping floors unnecessary. The entry requirements for institutions such as the University of Hong Kong are high, and I often wonder how students with good communication skills in English are not in university. The simple fact is that they have picked themselves up again and are, in many cases, singularly determined to do well and get into university. They also appear to be very aware that they will need to continue to work hard and improve when they get into university. My students' eyes are open to the fact that they have not performed as well as they and their families had hoped in their public exams, but they have the belief that they can succeed academically and are prepared to invest the money and effort required. If the writer knew what the associate degree students are expected to do on their programmes, then I would venture they would not describe it as 'passing time'. Based on what my students have just written about in their coursework, they would appear to have grasped that we do try to prepare them for university study by requiring them to use their initiative and generally get them away from the rote-learning scenario. Associate degree students have had to swallow a considerable 'loss of face', but have decided to get back on the horse and do what they think will best equip them to be successful at university. By no means all of them will get what they want, but I am fairly confident they will do well academically and professionally. RICHARD BROOKE Discovery Bay Funding from goods tax a world-class idea C. K. Lau closes his 'What We Say' column 'Capital idea needed for school funding' (Education Post, March 18) with: 'Education critics would do the community a great service if they would spend time dissecting the budget and offering innovative ways of tapping new resources to fund their coveted initiatives.' Anyone reading this would assume Mr Lau was the first in the pages of the Education Post to raise government funding as a topic of public concern. Yet the previous week I was given space in 'What You Say' to make exactly this case for a much-expanded education, health-care and welfare budget. My argument was that the government could easily justify introducing a goods and services tax for such laudable public benefit. It is disappointing to me to infer from Mr Lau's leader that he disapproves of the tax to the point of ignoring a policy the government is practically committed to introducing, in favour of a policy - that a portion of land tax be re-classified as recurrent income - that the government has repeatedly refused to pursue. Other advanced economies have long since decided that introducing a goods and services tax is a stable and sustainable basis for increasing public spending. What education critics need to do is not to conjure up innovative fiscal ideas but to unite and work together to convince the government that it has a public obligation to generate the income to match its aspirations for 'world-class' status. That last sentiment was deleted from my original letter, but the point is an important one. Hong Kong continues to aspire to world-class educational as well as economic status on the back of a third-world tax system. Hong Kong's teachers simply want working conditions enjoyed by their counterparts in most other societies that enjoy a thriving and stable economy. NIGEL BRUCE English Centre, University of Hong Kong
