SHAPING UP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
with curriculum innovation and development, improved counselling services, target-related assessment and improved language in education policy in secondary schools. This en- courages a new look at the way the effectiveness of education is assessed. It will also lead to a much greater variety of sixth form experience suitable not only for the academically able but for others who can benefit from different learning procedures.
When we were going through our own education it seemed that the whole knowledge of the human race must be found in the minds of our teachers. It comes as a shock to dis- cover how much change is constantly found to be necessary in the way young minds are nurtured. In Hong Kong, we have so far simply been catching up with what has become routine in wealthier countries. We have been going for the places in schools of a traditional sort. By the turn of the century most of the places of one sort or another for education will be there. Thereafter attention will be concentrated on devising more and more effective ways of training the great variety of the minds of the young in a great variety of skills. This will give them a more rewarding adult life and equip them to face a more complex world with confidence.
Nor can education be confined to the young. The Open Learning Institute will be able to expand on a basis of an education that was terminated before it was completed. The enormous demand that has been found, both there and in extra-mural courses provided by other tertiary institutions, is a remarkable demonstration of the anxiety of people to improve their skills.
In 1990, there are still a good many adults who either had no education at all, or very little of it. Young immigrants who arrived in 1978-80 were brought up in cultural revolution China when all schools were closed. Those who missed schooling here, before the seventies, mostly women, are still around. Adult illiteracy is not a matter that has aroused public interest but certainly a 1980 survey showed that it was not a negligible problem. The Adult Education Centres run by the Education Department may be filling in some of these gaps but there is a need for a proper assessment of this problem and a solution to it. If today's youngsters are to be trained to live in a complex world the same needs to be done to fill some of the gaps left by past shortages.
The scope for such initiatives in the next century, not only for forms of higher educa- tion, but also for less ambitious work, will be enormous. The speed of the advent of new knowledge will mean that few will be able to afford to stop learning just because they have left school. Even in the present century a pensioner like me has to get down to study to be able to do anything with a computer.
Playing
It was not until the mid-seventies that many people were well enough off to enjoy much leisure. Before that, if a man had a job that did not take all his waking hours, he looked for another in addition. Overtime was popular, as was week-end work, because of the extra income. As wages increased some of the increased wealth has been taken in leisure while additional income was forgone. The advent of leisure brought much greater government interest in recreation and the arts. Government organisations were set up to stimulate recreation and develop first music and then all performing arts. Visual arts are less well provided for.
There is no doubt that there will be an increase of leisure with increasing income. Some of this time will be given to learning but a good deal will be given to recreation and sport
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