Obsession with university bad for students
I am sure many parents will agree with the views expressed by Emily Kong ('Reforms needed', September 2). She says that many students 'cannot cope with the rote-learning environment and the difficult curriculum . . . in this exam oriented society'. Nobody seems to have offered any practical solutions to this problem.
Most parents want their children to get into a famous university. This cannot be said to be a wrong goal. To get into these universities, the student needs high marks in public exams. Therefore, we cannot tell parents and students to forget about exam results.
What parents and our society need to recognise is that universities only offer academic subjects. Not every young person is academically oriented, but they have other talents such as the arts, sport and drama. Our secondary schools' curricula do not cater for such students. We need to create more secondary schools offering subjects that meet the interests and talents of these students and have enough post-secondary school academies for them to pursue further studies.
The Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) offers many of the courses that these students are interested in. But secondary school students can only attend such courses during non-school hours.
The government must encourage certain band three schools to dovetail their curriculum to the IVE's courses, so students can study in their school hours. This will link well with the IVE courses they would want to join after leaving secondary school.
Employers of various vocations also need to work with the IVE, to set up curriculum and exam standards, so that firms value IVE diplomas. Society must understand that a vocational diploma is a valuable qualification. Can a society really function with academically inclined pe7ople alone?
