National education and the quest for a Hong Kong identity
Regina Ip says the divisive debate on the introduction of national education reflects a larger issue at hand - our continuing quest for a Hong Kong identity that most can agree on
Whether you like it or not, national education had been high on the government's agenda for years, featuring in five of the seven policy addresses by former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen. Earlier this year, legislators approved funding of over HK$600 million for schools to implement national education as a new subject. There was no lack of schools gearing up to teach it.
Yet, on the eve of this year's Legislative Council election and in the face of mass rallies against the introduction of the subject, the government said schools would be free to decide whether to implement it, "on the basis of their professional judgment", as well as how and when to do so. Last month, the government backtracked further and announced that its guidelines for the curriculum would be shelved, effectively stopping the launch of the subject in the tracks.
It was a great victory for the opponents of the subject, but it seems to symbolise everything that has gone wrong in the implementation of "one country, two systems".
The government's withdrawal left many in the lurch. Schools which have been taking students to the mainland in an honest effort to help them learn more about their country have been labelled fawning leftists. At the opposite extreme, schools or teachers who are tempted to use the classroom to vent their anger at the communist regime now have unfettered opportunity to do so, in the absence of a curriculum guide and professionally drafted teaching materials.
Worse still, for those who want to strengthen the sense of national identity among Hong Kong's youth, national education is now a lost cause, just like the national security legislation that the government tried to push through the legislature in 2003. Despite Beijing's solid political and economic support for "one country, two systems" in the past 15 years, is every policy initiative intended to promote national unity and acceptance of China's sovereignty doomed to fail in Hong Kong?
Many played a part in the fiasco: the former chief executive who was charged with strengthening Hong Kong people's sense of belonging to the country but never applied his heart and mind seriously to the task; the reluctant subordinates to whom the task was delegated; the civil servants who played a key role in producing the curriculum guidelines but hid behind the advisory committees when things started to turn sour; those who contracted out the production of teaching materials to the National Education Services Centre, which in turn subcontracted it to the Baptist University's Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies; and the ailing former education secretary and his top aides who authorised all that.
No doubt the current administration inherited a poorly phrased curriculum guide and some flawed teaching materials - which smacked of spreading Communist Party propaganda but produced the opposite effect - but its own inept political handling of the issue helped create a perfect storm.