Head adds a humanist touch

When Mak Chen Wen-ning was drafting a mission statement for the Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association Secondary School in 1995, she had no idea that much of it would reappear five years later in the Government's education reform proposals.

The 'through-train' schooling system mooted by the Education Commission only last year underpinned the establishment in 1996 of the secondary school of which she is principal. It was the aim of Ms Mak and the other founders of the school that graduates of the Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association's kindergarten and two primary schools in Tin Shui Wai could continue their education in a secondary school with the same philosophy.

An intranet system tailor-made for the school had already been installed three years before the Education Department launched its Education Goes Broadband programme in August last year. The 'flexible time-tabling arrangements' recommended in the latest curriculum reform proposal is standard practice in the association's secondary school.

The proposed curriculum reform's eight key learning areas also bear a striking resemblance to the school's own curriculum design, with their emphasis on humanities, critical thinking, aesthetic and physical education, work-related experiences and a global perspective.

'It seems the direction of the Government's education reform is getting closer to ours,' said 54-year-old Ms Mak. 'Our school does not worry about not being able to catch up with the rapid change of the education system because we are way ahead of it.'

The school has also spearheaded many other curriculum reforms. For example, economic and public affairs, Chinese and world history are combined into one subject called integrated basic humanities. Co-operative learning has been introduced, where teachers of different subjects work together to devise large-scale multi-purpose educational projects for their students. The principal has also incorporated media production into the timetable to develop students' critical awareness of media information.

The school's aims and practices underscore Ms Mak's reputation as a visionary educator. 'Rather than blindly sticking to the syllabus set by the Education Department, we try to foresee what kind of society could await our students in 10 or 20 years time,' she said.

Innovations that Ms Mak has injected into teaching practice have attracted attention in the education sector. The secondary school is not only the first school Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fan visited after becoming Education Department director in 1998, but is also the place inspectors from the Curriculum Development Institute frequented while preparing curriculum reform proposals.

Ms Mak's educational ideals are rooted in humanism, which she referred to as the 'religion' of the secondary school. She dates her interest from the 1960s when she was an undergraduate student of physics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

'The Vietnam War and cultural revolution in both China and France made students all over the world reflect on their own ruling system, culture and existence,' she said.

'I read lots of works on humanism by European philosophers and have been greatly influenced by them.'

The first major impact of Ms Mak's reading was her decision not to be a scientist after graduating in 1968. Instead, she took up the post of assistant education officer at the Queen Elizabeth School (QES) in Mongkok, believing the job would provide greater opportunity to communicate with and care for people.

'The first day I stepped into the classroom in QES, I felt so much at home I haven't thought about doing anything other than education since then,' she said.

The primary school turned out to be a place that furthered her desire to incorporate a humanist dimension in education.

'QES is an ideal school. It does not care which social stratum its students come from, and it enables them to find their place in the universe,' she said.

Throughout her teaching career, Ms Mak has bombarded her students with questions about the meaning of life and helped them increase their social awareness. When she was put in charge of the Queen Elizabeth School Red Cross team she believed training was not as important as having 'a heart to serve', and turned the team into a much larger social service group, visiting children's hospitals and institutions for young offenders.

The humanist in her also believed Hong Kong's education system should focus more on decision-making skills. She criticised the sex education introduced locally as merely informational, and toured Britain to research the topic in 1989.

'My experience in Britain let me understand that sex education can't be taught through uni-directional instructions: it has to be about students sharing life experiences and how to make a right decision in different situations,' she said.

In 1995 the Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association decided to open a secondary school in Tin Shui Wai and Ms Mak accepted the invitation to become its head.

'Hong Kong's capitalist system favours the elite, but I prefer a society that is willing to invest more in the less privileged,' she said. 'The Government always emphasises that education is to produce the necessary human resources for the society, but I believe it means more than that.'

Although Ms Mak abandoned her original aspirations in science to pursue a career in education, traces of the scientist are evident in her work.

She loves to use 'action research' to devise new teaching models. This approach tests existing teaching models by applying them in real-life situations - a method few teachers employ due to lack of training and support.

As an educator at two teacher-training colleges from 1974 to 1994, she had few opportunities to try out teaching models.

'Graduates of the education colleges always came back and told me they could not practise what I taught them because of lack of support from their schools,' she said.

In 1992, she enrolled for a Master's degree in public administration at the University of Hong Kong to gain a better view of the constraints that are imposed on educators.

'I realised that teachers belong to the public service sector, where lots of politics are involved and many policies are not education policies but public policies,' she said.

But it is her time at her current school that has underlined for her that teachers also have to consider unexpected variables in their work.

'Teaching is not like a controlled experiment,' she said. 'For example, a student may come to class feeling sad because of a parent's sudden death the day before. In this case, the teacher has to be flexible. It is situations such as these that make teaching an art.'

Her work is now different from her experiences in the education colleges.

'Since I am now also working at the front-line, I feel more comfortable in teaching education because I know I am not asking the teachers to do something impossible,' she said.

Brief encounter

1964-68 Bachelor's degree in physics at Chinese University

1968-74 Taught mathematics and science at Queen Elizabeth School

1971-72 Diploma of Education at Chinese University

1971-now Member of Hong Kong Association for Science and Mathematics Education

1974-89 Taught at Grantham College of Education

1989 Studied sex education at London University

1989-94 Taught at Northcote College of Education, became deputy head in 1993

1992-94 Master's degree in Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong

1993-94 Acting Divisional Director for Primary Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education

1994-95 Designed curriculum for the Hong Kong Institute of Education

1996-now Principal of Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association Secondary School