The makers of Sesame Street, the children's educational TV programme, recently launched a pilot project aimed at two-year-olds, with the intention of giving pre-kindergarten children an early start in learning.
In many countries, governments and educators are interested in pursuing the same goal. You only have to type 'pre-kindergarten education' into an internet search engine, and you will find thousands of pages on the subject.
But in Hong Kong, we are a long, long way from schooling for two-year-olds. For years, administrations kept a hands-off attitude, apart from ensuring that kindergartens met building requirements. When officials did become increasingly involved, recently, it was more out of concern that some schools were fleecing people rather than any desire to ensure educational quality.
A certain indifference continues to dog the establishment's attitude towards kindergartens, and it seems based on two key causes. One is short-term thinking: while other governments and communities take a long-term view of life and developments, we don't have a long-term view on anything - neither our government nor our people.
The other factor is the value that governments, principally in developed countries, put on the individual: there, everyone counts. But our culture is still largely geared to the idea of every man for himself.
Taking the long-term view would help ease our worries about talent gaps in our future workforce: all our home-grown talent would be getting the appropriate nurturing. Making everyone count would also help to cultivate a community spirit, a sense of belonging. As long as we believe that the rule in Hong Kong is every man for himself, we will continue to regard the city as only a way-station to another country.
If the administration shared our views, it would put down the dollars for early childhood education - helping the many parents who scrimp and save in order to give their youngsters a good start in life. These parents carry a heavy burden: such education costs can take up as much as 20 per cent of total family income. When poor parents complain that the financial burden is too heavy, the government invariably tells them to apply for relief under the fee-reduction programme. But the restrictions are so high that most parents fail to qualify.