Hong Kong’s pressure-cooker education system is producing ‘monster parents’

When developers and investors are looking at the education sector as a growing alternative source of income, we know something is terribly wrong. Education is an investment in our children, or as governments around the world have long claimed – an investment in our future.

And, if we consider why Hong Kong’s youth are so angry, the answer really is a no-brainer. 

Consider how much we put them through for their education: all the grief, tears, pressure and demands. The children lose their childhoods, parents don’t get to live much, either, slaving away to make enough money to fund their children’s “education needs”, just so that, if the kids are “lucky” – and, by that, I mean “lucky” to have been able to secure a university degree – they get to deal with the crushing disappointments of reality.

Job prospects aren’t great. And let’s not forget that they’re often reminded by experts, studies and surveys that their education has failed to prepare them for the workplace. Homes are unaffordable. Relationships with parents aren’t great – think of all the years of toiling over never-ending exams and a lifetime of stressing over school placements. The world isn’t their oyster.

The only solace is that they’re not the only ones. The shocking 2017 report confirmed that Hong Kong parents are outspending everyone else in the world: with more than HK$1 million spent on their children’s education from primary school to university, we’re talking around three times the global average. The lengths to which Hong Kong parents go for their children’s fingers-crossed, no-promises future explains why they were, are and will continue to be exploited. 

Recently, a report on a study by the Hok Yau Club on pupils taking the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam called parents pushy for putting pressure on their children even though exam stress levels hit an all-time low this year. While parents are blamed for a lot of things, we often forget, or simply refuse, to acknowledge the enormous pressure they are also under.