Then & now: schools of hard knocks

Free universal primary education was introduced in Hong Kong only as recently as 1971. Consequently, significant numbers of people (the youngest are in their early 50s) are either completely illiterate, or so functionally compromised by the demands of the modern world that they might as well be.

A far larger number – those fortunate enough to go to school at all – remain victims of misguided educational policies that ensured their competence in either standard written Chinese or English was insufficient to fully benefit from either language as an effective intellectual tool.

How did this wasteful state of affairs eventuate?

For decades, Cantonese was used as a medium of instruction in primary schools, with English taught as a second language. Those students whose grasp of English was deemed sufficient would switch to English-medium instruction from Form 1.

Intermittent proposals in the 1970s and 80s to introduce fullcourse Cantonese-medium instruction for everybody, with English learned as a second language, were heavily resisted by church- and missionary-funded organisations, which operated English-medium secondary institutions. As major parallel and supplementary education providers, these “elite” schools carried considerable weight in the formation of government policy.

Changing linguistic “lanes” at Form 1 was disastrous for many students. In their formative years, many found it virtually impossible to develop intellectually in an acquired language context. Unable to keep up with instruction in a foreign tongue that most had no real exposure to outside the classroom, otherwise capable students simply gave up and entered the workforce, taking jobs far below their true capacity.