28 June 1989
45
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
——————————一九八九年六月二十八日
香港立法局
group is led by heads and teachers of kindergartens. They possess years of experience in the field and they do have first hand knowledge of the difficulties. Secondly, I wish to support the suggestion that Secondary V level should be the minimum requirement for child care worker and kindergarten teachers after 1991 so as to improve the quality and maturity of the front-line workers in pre- primary services. By 1991, 95% of our young people will be educated up to Secondary V or an equivalent level and recruitment should not be difficult provided a reasonable career ladder can be offered. Thirdly, I would like to see an acceptable proposal coming forward even though it may take more time in consultation with involved parties in the field, rather than having a set of proposals which are attractive on paper but failed to gain the confidence of those who have a vital role to play in its implementation. I believe Mrs. Selina CHOW was making a similar point in her speech earlier.
Sir, turning now to services for gifted children, many of us in this Chamber including myself would like to think of ourselves as gifted children who have survived the system and not a few of us believe that we are parents of gifted children. My honourable colleague, Mr. Martin LEE's first question when he joined this Council in 1985 was whether there was any policy or programme on the teaching of specially gifted children and the Honourable Stephen CHEONG asked in supplementary for the definition of gifted children. The answers they got as far as I could make out was both negative except that the Director of Education would be consulted on this. Since then, the Education Department had presented papers on education provision for gifted children to the Board of Education for discussion and advice.
The United States Education Consolidation and Improvement Act in 1981 defined gifted children as those who "give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership capacity or specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capability." Researchers and educationists have indicated that exceptionally gifted children run the risk of boredom, frustration and suppression of their giftedness if their abilities are not recognized in time to prevent serious educational or other problems, such as maladjustment and delinquency. It appears to be universally accepted that these. children deserve more attention and support, no less than their counterparts who are slow learners.
It is reckoned that about 20 000 gifted children in the age of 6 to 18 are currently within our school system. The first step is to identify them. This can