"With regard to
the control of school textbooks which are approved for use in schools, a pattern is evident. This form of influence is wholly under the control of the Government's Education Department. Its decisions and 'suggestions' are communicated directly and confidentially to the publishers who, for commercial reasons, usually prefer to avoid publicity and make the suggested changes. As a result this form of control is relatively private and not easily identified. Discussions with authors and publishers provide a number of examples
A small sample of these included the suggestions that:
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Economic and Public Affairs (EPA) and History textbooks submitted for approval in 1986 should avoid reference to Hong Kong as a British Colony.
an EPA textbook should, when discussing the Korean War, revise the phrase 'North Korean armies attacked South Korea and war broke out' to read 'War broke out between North Korea and South
Korea.'
a Geography text delete a map which portrayed military missiles aimed by China and Russia at each other.
a History text and School Atlas should not show Tibet and Mongolia as separate countries prior to 1949.
These 'suggestions' are followed by a reminder: 'N.B. The Education Department reserves the right to delete the book from the recommended Textbook List if appropriate amendments are not made.
"The common element in these suggestions is the attempt to modify
textbooks to ensure that China is portrayed in a favourable light. The effect has been to produce a form of self censorship since publishers, wishing to avoid the costs of resetting a text to incorporate suggestions, have begun to edit manuscripts themselves to ensure that future amendments are not required. This is currently evident in the response of publishers to the inclusion of any references to the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in the PRC in 1989 in school textbooks. Publishers are very reluctant to include any reference to those events as they anticipate that it will be censored by the Education Department and/or could result in some form of retaliation after 1997."
I confess that when I read the above, I could not initially bring myself to believe that it is really happening. If it is, it raises issues concerning, first, the level at which such instructions are given, and, secondly, the nature of governance in the Colony in offering an example to residents preparing themselves for 1997. extract concerning the Korean War is unlikely to be understood readily by the families of British servicemen killed in that conflict: If the
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