There was news last week of a new edition of the School Administration Guide, a regular publication from the Education Bureau. This handy document runs to no less than 313 pages, ensuring that few people will read it and fewer still will remember the contents.
Still, awareness is a good idea. These days things labelled “guidelines” have a way of being laws in effect and intention.
The guide mentions national security about 50 times. Clearly the Education Bureau is not at all discouraged by the suspicion that the most popular motive for emigration is to move kids out of range of its propaganda preoccupations.
Well, we live in interesting times. I cantered happily through the new rules on external events, speakers and reading exercises, which must not endanger national security. I take it, from a recent last-minute cancellation, that this includes not allowing your pupils to participate in debates if the judges are going to be retired democratic politicians.
This is a shame. Former democratic politicians have a lot of time on their hands these days. And I can say, as a very experienced debate judge, that one really does not consider the merits of the motion as an idea, because that is not chosen by the contestants. If the luck of the draw puts you in defence of Adolf Hitler you defend him as best you can and should be judged on the quality of your efforts, not on the judge's opinions of Adolf.
Anyway, onward and upward, as we used to say, until we get to the innovations in the primary area, where I found something a bit shocking.
Pupils will, apparently, be expected to acquire a basic knowledge of national defence, the national security law, and the Hong Kong People's Liberation Army (PLA) garrison.
Of course, there can be no objection to an introduction to the law, to national defence, or the PLA, at least from me. I chose military history as my undergraduate special subject, did a Master's degree in War Studies and then by way of penance spent three years in a Peace Research programme, which is just war studies from the other direction. National defence is a worthwhile subject of study, though perhaps an ambitious one for primary schools.
I object, though, to the classification of this kind of thing as “humanities.” This label is sometimes abused as a catch-all term just meaning Not Science and Not Social Science. This is an error.
Humanities properly applies to the study of philosophy, religion, history (if like most historians you think it is not a social science) and the arts: performing, visual, and dramatic. This is not the way the word is used by the Education Bureau, which offers humanities for primary pupils in six flavours: Health and Living, Environment and Living, Financial Education and Economics, Community and Citizenship, Our Country and I, and The World and I.
Some curiosities here. Who decided, I wonder, that every item should include the word “and”? One might also consider the merits of replacing My Country and I with My Country and Me. Just a suggestion.
More seriously, most of these items – at least health, environment and economics – are not humanities at all. What seems to have happened is that the old general studies subject was divided. One part became Science and the other part became Not Science. Calling it “humanities” is lazy.
It is also likely to lead to disappointment. One of the attractions of studying the humanities is supposed to be the encouragement of critical and creative thinking. But we're not really looking for that any more, are we?
Source: Tim Hamlett
Hong Kong Free Press Members Newsletter
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