Wrong Kong Part 5
Education
We’ve discussed how Mainland immigration has impacted education and Hong Kong. So let’s look at the problems with the educational quality.
On the surface, there appear to be none. In 2018, Hong Kong secondary students ranked fourth in a global study on competence in reading and math. They were ninth in science, according to Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests. PISA is administered every three years to fifteen-year-old students around the world. In 2018, a record 600,000 students from 79 nations took the test.
By comparison, the US was 13th in reading, 27th in math (dead last) and 17th in science.
So what’s not to love about Hong Kong’s education system?
No one who hires in the city is sure where the people with those great test scores go. Here’s how a Hong Kong lawyer who hires for his firm put it:
“The local lawyers we hire can’t make an argument. Even when they have five to seven years of experience.
They know how to find precedents. But they can’t think about how to use them to fit the case.
So, we still do most of our hiring overseas. That’s way more expensive. But hiring local costs us more in the long-run because of client dissatisfaction.”
Hong Kong education is rote learning. They teach to the test and little else. And demand results. (If the teacher thinks the class is behind or needs more work, they will demand everyone stay late. Or come in on Saturday.)
As we noted in our last chapter, 40 kids in a classroom is not uncommon. There is little group work or student participation. It is difficult to give children individual attention.
That makes it near impossible to use modern teaching methods like STEM that encourage analytical thinking with hands-on-learning.
No Questions Asked
Questions are strongly discouraged. I’ve had the experience of teaching at universities in China and Hong Kong. The first time, I thought I was bombing because no one asked a question. I was told asking the teacher a question is showing them up; if clarification is needed, it means the teacher’s presentation was poor.
The daughter of one of my wife’s co-workers was blacklisted by her school. Rather than being automatically admitted for the next grade, her teacher had her put on a wait list for readmission.
The reason? The girl asked too many questions.
The kicker? She was six.
Children start class at 7AM. The homework load is punishing. With extra tutoring that almost everyone does, the day in a classroom runs until 5PM. That’s followed by 2-3 hours of homework, leaving time for little else.
A survey of parents showed that 68 per cent of the schools allocated under 40 minutes for recess while 74 per cent allowed less than 50 minutes for lunch. Both were below the Education Bureau’s recommendations of two 20-minute recesses and an hour-long lunch daily.
A survey of around 1,300 primary pupils by Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service last year found that 21.7 per cent complained of constant stress, with the most common sources of pressure being too much homework, preparing for secondary school and unsatisfactory academic performance.
It’s worse in high school. Some 41.7 per cent of Hong Kong secondary students rated their stress levels as high. The poll also showed that 51.4 per cent displayed signs of depression.
Academic reasons are still ranked as the top cause of stress among secondary students, such as facing coming exams (53.6 per cent), getting bad grades (51.9 per cent) and exhaustion (49.9 per cent).
Just as worrying, international studies also pointed to Hong Kong students’ lack of interest, confidence and engagement in learning.
That might be worth it if Hong Kong was an R&D powerhouse. But it’s not. While rivals Singapore, Tokyo Shenzhen and increasingly Taipei are often touted as hotbeds of innovation, Hong Kong is not.
And it has a rising youth suicide rate, with more than 70 teen suicides reported from 2015 to 2017.
Local parents vote with their feet.
Anyone who can gets their kids into international schools. Keep in mind this is an abuse of the international school system, which is supposed to be for foreign children staying temporarily. In Taiwan, you can’t even apply for international school without a foreign passport.
In Hong Kong, the number of international schools has surged in the last decade even as the expat population not from Mainland China has been stagnant. At least seven large international band names including Harrow, Nord Anglia, Malvern and Wycombe Abbey have opened or will open campuses.
Perhaps the middling economic outcomes of Hong Kong’s system reflect its stagnant social structure. Clearly, there are very capable Hong Kongers. Li Ka-shing, Stanley Ho and the Kwok brothers have built world class businesses. However, they’re all octaganiarans … or older.
Conglomerates follow a cycle. Innovative in the beginning, over time they become sclerotic bureaucracies with endless rules about “how we’ve always done it.” Hong Kong’s problem is not unique in Asia. Japan and South Korea have it, too.
Making obedient bureaucrats for the conglomerates is the goal of Hong Kong’s education system. It turns out people who can ruthlessly implement four bullet points as instructed. But who can’t … or won’t … figure out what bullet points five and six should be.
This is the problem when all the capital ends up in the hands of the very few. Control the capital, and you control the idea flow. So, Hong Kong’s budding innovators and entrepreneurs either emigrate or end up as stifled salarymen in the conglomerate empires.
Either way, the education system is just another ingredient building pressure in the cooker.