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Mainland students put lazy locals to shame

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I recently took part in a civil service training programme which included some senior officers from the Fire Services Department. During lunch, one of the officers indicated that, in almost every class of inspectorate recruits, there were one or two trainees who did not know how to tie their shoelaces on the first day of training. It was quite a shocking revelation.

Obviously this was not a big issue - 20 minutes of practice would be sufficient to solve the problem. But the more significant question is: are our young people too well taken care of, so much so that they have been spoiled and lack the spirit to improve themselves? If the answer is 'yes', this is a serious worry and it may mean a decline in our next generation's international competitiveness.

In the 1980s, an authoritative news magazine dedicated an issue to the economic rise of South Korea and the challenge it posed to Japan. The cover was a photo of South Korean workers with the headline: 'They think the Japanese are lazy.'

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the world came to recognise Japan as a global economic power. The dedication and sense of responsibility of the Japanese labour force impressed their competitors. The magazine's front page clearly depicted the rise and relative decline of its international competitiveness.

This signal of relative rise and decline has clearly emerged in local tertiary institutions today. Undergraduates from the mainland almost without exception are elite students. Since Hong Kong universities still offer three-year degree programmes, the mainland students finish their first-year university courses before entering local tertiary institutions. Naturally they have more exposure and are already well adapted to the demands of university life.

Most of them plan to study further at top universities in the United States and Europe, and therefore work very hard. They are surprised that many local students are not too serious and lack dedication.

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