Our education system churns out robots
Being a Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) candidate myself, I welcome this initiative to make it easier for students sitting this year’s DSE Chinese exam, where they will be tested on 12 classical Chinese texts. It is common knowledge that DSE students are under tremendous pressure, and the reason for this is undoubtedly the education system we encounter.
In fact, the DSE curriculum is only churning out cohorts of robots year after year. The culture of spoon-feeding emphasises students’ skills in reciting the syllabus, which passes for learning.
Students, in an attempt to achieve good results to leap towards promising futures, have no choice but to abide by the rules of the game. The only skill most of them tend to master is memorising contexts from textbooks and useful sentence structures. Such rote-learning is ironic, when our society always emphasises that knowledge should be applicable in our daily lives.
I know very well that only if I gain entry to a renowned university can I hope for a secure future. But the cruel fact is, many of us will probably fail to do so, given the intense competition for a university place in Hong Kong. Along with expectations from parents and teachers, the situation can and does leave many of us deeply depressed.