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Letters | Let more Hong Kong students learn through service to the people and advocacy

  • More Hong Kong students should be able to apply their academic knowledge to serve those in need and join the conversation about related social issues

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Aerial view of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hung Hom. PolyU offers service learning, which allows undergraduates to serve underprivileged groups by applying their disciplinary knowledge. Photo: Roy Issa

University education tends to focus on academic subjects, and tends to give limited attention to skills in dealing with real-world challenges. In order to bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the real world, universities have introduced service learning to their undergraduate curriculums, offering courses where students serve underprivileged groups by applying their disciplinary knowledge.

Although such courses are also available in Hong Kong, service learning needs more support from the government and universities. More students can then apply their academic knowledge to serve those in need and join the conversation about related social issues.
We recently did a staff development course for service learning offered by the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Along with 20 colleagues from universities in Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore, we spent seven days earlier this month learning about Cambodian culture, recognising the challenges facing Cambodian society and exploring how service-learning courses could benefit both students and local communities.

We visited a local primary school where a group of PolyU students was teaching English using innovative student-centred methods. We also learned about PolyU students’ efforts to build STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) classrooms in abandoned containers powered by solar panels.

At the end of the course, colleagues presented plans for offering new service-learning courses in our universities. In our presentations, we emphasised the importance of advocacy in the form of publicity campaigns for service learning. Students should be encouraged to write for newspapers and join the conversation about how best to serve local communities. Students with experience of serving underprivileged people in less developed countries should advance the social causes they believe in through publicity campaigns.

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