Help our teachers reform Hong Kong’s distorted education system
- Philip Yeung says our ailing school system, as evidenced by survey findings of unhappy teachers and students, must be fixed. In its role as a trainer, the Education University must steer teachers to stop teaching to the test
Blame it squarely on bureaucrats who know little, and care even less, about education. Teachers were first turned into report-writing clerks, spending much of their time on drafting reports to the Education Bureau, where they sat unread. Then they are yoked to a system that exists to endlessly over-test our kids.
Teachers, dictated to by desk-bound bureaucrats, mutate into drill sergeants. In a culture that reveres teachers, respect is in surprisingly short supply.
We now only have a narrow interest in test results. The reading culture, so vital to creative education, predictably fails to take root in this barren teach-to-the-test topsoil.
I recently asked a leader in a top local international school what advice he would give to our education chief. The success of his school, he said, is predicated on the pursuit of passion by students. That is, allowing them to find their own interests and individuality. It is also predicated on happy teachers who are well respected.
