In an education system undergoing reform in the context of a shrinking school population, it should be possible to put the well-being of students at the centre of the process. One would think that the presence of fewer pupils in the system would mean a lowered need for intense competition. Unfortunately, Hong Kong education continues to remain addicted to large class sizes and the 'pressure cooker' atmosphere of several decades ago. This same addiction also drives many Hong Kong parents, who pass on their former schooling pressures to their children. Recently this unhealthy combination of adult pressure cost 11-year-old Yu Cheuk-him his life. The Primary Five pupil leapt to his death in Fanling after being chided about missed homework. Missed homework? Just what is it about homework in this city that has turned it into a life-and-death issue? In most Hong Kong schools, homework has become the proverbial 'cart' that leads the horse. It has evolved into an all-consuming series of rituals that combine to strangle the daily routines of our primary and secondary schools. Students who fail to complete a single homework exercise quickly learn that this is a very public crime indeed. By design, the Hong Kong school homework-collection ritual guarantees maximum publicity of student non-compliance. Oddly, far less loss-of-face follows from incorrect, misunderstood or even copied homework. A close examination of most schools' daily routines will demonstrate that 'homework processing' has become the default purpose of many local schools. First thing in the morning, students proceed directly from assembly to their form classes where their row monitors will make several trips down the aisles between the desks, collecting the students' English homework, Chinese homework, maths homework and any other exercise or piece of work that may have been chalked up on the classroom blackboard. Each exercise book needs to be opened at the correct page so that the monitors can stack them in numerical order from the front of the row to the back. Each open pile is then folded shut and stacked alternately, together with those from the other rows. The combined bundle is encircled by a rubber band, accompanied by a checklist that indicates any missing books, and is immediately delivered to the relevant teacher's pigeon-hole. Teachers will then spend their non-teaching time checking and 'marking' these stacks of identical exercises. The numerically ordered, corrected books will be returned to the students by their row monitors after a number of days. This 'homework ritual' takes up most of the form-class period, almost all of the subject teachers' non-teaching time and a fair proportion of every 30-to-40-minute lesson. When every student is required to do the exact same exercises, there is ample opportunity for copying. Indeed, a peek through the fence before any school begins in the morning will almost certainly reveal small 'nests' of students in the school canteen, madly copying homework answers from each other. To add another level of absurdity to this 'homework circus', it should be noted that it is these very exercise books that department chairpersons and principals collect and examine when the time comes to assess the competency of their teaching staff. To anyone from outside the Hong Kong school system the entire 'ritual' appears strangely Pythonesque. There is an air of clockwork efficiency about it, but the whole thing is a time-wasting absurdity. It is a rare thing to hear a Hong Kong teacher say: 'Take out your homework.' It has already been collected and is waiting for them back in the staff room. However, the ritualised collection routine also means that students will not receive immediate feedback on the work they did the previous night. Instead they will have to wait until the specific weekday designated as 'grammar' or 'algebra' to get that particular exercise book back. Being seen to have done homework, that's what really counts in this time-consuming, almost sacred ritual. The death of any young person for homework-related reasons should surely ring a loud alarm bell in the corridors of Hong Kong's Education and Manpower Bureau. 'Reform' is not a strong enough word for what is needed. Hong Kong's often soul-destroying, cart-before-the-horse education system needs a total, top-to-bottom overhaul. Pauline Bunce teaches Humanities subjects at an international school.
