Hong Kong's education system is hopelessly outmoded and ill-designed to equip residents with the aptitude and skills to ensure the city a prosperous future - and I mean this in more than just economic terms. Along with stifling work practices, this creates a crucial problem for its development, as Ali Farhoomand points out in 'Let the creative genie out of the box' (January 12). Even as schools and universities desperately cram data into their students' skulls in order to achieve better examination results than each other, it escapes attention that this serves little purpose other than to produce students who can pass exams.
The mass automation of a population is no present or future worth striving for. Professor Farhoomand is correct to call for the releasing of minds from the box of conformity, and an increased focus on innovation and creativity. But he doesn't go far enough. Not just Hong Kong but the world needs people who can honour the genuine roots of Chinese and East Asian culture, and who have the cognitive aptitude to help create societies and a quality of life worth living for. So we must encourage the capacities for wisdom, compassion and holistic perspectives, including the spiritual.
One of my teaching colleagues, who is leaving Hong Kong, told me recently: 'I can no longer participate in this mechanisation of the human spirit.' Many Hong Kong people agree with his sentiments. But when is anybody going to have the guts to stand up and tell it like it is?
Producing square pegs to fit into square holes is a recipe for personal, spiritual, social and economic suicide.
MARCUS ANTHONY, Tin Shui Wai
Ali Farhoomand is living in cloud cuckoo land with his article 'Let the creative genie out of the box' (January 12). He urges Hong Kong's workforce to 'think outside the box and break the old rules'. He's obviously been in academia too long, because in the real world he'd see that Hong Kong workers who challenge their bosses and suggest better ways to manage rapidly get squashed.
