Deng Fei: Hong Kong's education is facing opportunities, not crises

Source: Global Times

Recently, the so-called "dropout wave" has spread in Hong Kong society. For example, according to some media reports, after the education department of the SAR implemented the reform of the general education curriculum, and when national security education was about to be implemented, some primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong had the phenomenon of students withdrawing from school, saying that they should get rid of the "brainwashing education" cloud, and then some parents took the children who dropped out of school and moved to the UK with their families.

Admittedly, choosing where to study is purely a personal choice, and there is nothing wrong with it. However, if the choice is not out of reason and calmness, but to take it for granted that there is a so-called "brainwashing education" in Hong Kong, and to assume that the level of basic education in foreign countries, especially in the United Kingdom, must be higher than that in Hong Kong, then the ultimate price will be borne by children. There is no exact data on the so-called "dropout wave", more of a "news story" written by anecdotes and some media interviews. However, when this trend exists like bno immigration, we don't have to worry too much.

Is there brainwashing in Hong Kong education? Previously, the general education department of high schools that has been implemented for more than ten years, the improper examples in many textbooks, the politicization of topics in examinations, and the biased teaching examples of parents and students reflecting complaints, etc., have been enough to show that the opposition has been deliberately using this compulsory high school compulsory subject to continuous political brainwashing of young students in Hong Kong, so that even crooked theories such as "breaking the law and achieving righteousness" can enter the classroom in a dignified manner and become the content that students must learn.

This kind of politicized high school general education, dominated by the opposition's distortions, radiates to junior high schools and primary schools like water flowing downwards, evolving into a political program propaganda for illegal "Hong Kong independence" associations, and some primary school teachers actually teach the causes of the Opium War to "Britain launched a war to help Chinese quit smoking" and so on. Such acts run counter to the most basic political ethics of the principle of one country, two systems and the unity and integrity of the country, and the content of these teachings is completely absurd.

Yet why has the opposition media and some parents ignored this brainwashing education for decades? If we ignore this kind of brainwashing, but insist on viewing the rectification of the chaos in the education department as brainwashing, and even regard the promotion of national security education as brainwashing, we will reverse right and wrong, and there is no distinction between good and evil.

In addition, have parents who blindly defected to the UK seriously compared Hong Kong's basic education with British basic education? They are probably more likely to take it for granted. According to a 2015 OECD Global Survey on Primary and Secondary Education, Hong Kong ranks second in terms of the level of basic education in primary and secondary schools in the world, and the United Kingdom ranks 20th. According to the conclusions of the 2018 International Student Ability Assessment Scheme, Hong Kong students have the fourth largest reading ability and mathematical ability in the world and the ninth in science ability, far exceeding the fourteenth and nineteenth in the United Kingdom respectively. Students' performance reflects the quality of school education, and these international authoritative tests and surveys are not more accurate than "taking it for granted"?

What's more, in the last school year, that is, when the global epidemic was still relatively serious, Hong Kong still successfully held a high-Chinese examination (equivalent to the Hong Kong college entrance examination), on the contrary, the United Kingdom, completely unable to hold a high-level examination, had to use the school results to calculate the results of fresh candidates, the result set off an uproar, many schools and parents complained, complained to the British Ministry of Education about the unfairness of the score calculation mechanism. According to media reports in January, the Uk's advanced level examination this year may not be held, and it will depend on the results of the school to calculate. At such a level of education administration in the UK, it is really difficult to understand why some people are still blindly optimistic about basic education in the UK.

But some Hong Kong people just like to follow the feelings, "go before you count" (Cantonese: go and then say again), just as in the 2012 "anti-state religion" incident, some Hong Kong people did not look at the syllabus of the National Education Department at all, anyway, what the media spread, they believed, the saying at that time was "toppling (the discipline) first counted" (Cantonese: pushed down and then said). This blind habit of thinking indulges the opposition's unlimited infiltration of basic education and the brainwashing of teenagers, while not carefully considering whether their children are really suitable for british basic education, and ultimately it is not Hong Kong education that is affected, but their own next generation.

On the surface, Hong Kong education seems to have less students, but under the great development prospects of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong education is not a crisis, but a greater opportunity for development. With the gradual integration of Hong Kong into the tide of national development, with the increase of ties between the mainland and Hong Kong and the mutual certification of various professional qualifications, teachers and students between the mainland and Hong Kong will communicate with each other more frequently, and Hong Kong's education will be on a higher level, cultivating more outstanding teachers and outstanding students with both political integrity and ability for the country and the SAR. (The writer is Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Teachers and Director of the National Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies)