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of affairs. The Social Welfare Department gives subventions to 6,000 children. No figures are available to show how many of the remaining 244,000 children come from homes where working mothers find it impossible to have their children looked after properly.
The Education Department registers, and is generally responsible for over 100,000 children in Kindergartens, where the curriculum is often solidly based on the old three R's. Anyone, note, anyone can operate a crèche for children under two, or a nursery (sometimes residential) for children from 2–6, anyhow, anywhere. There is no obligation to observe any standard, if the P.W.D. has approved of the building, and the Fire Brigade the arrangements for any domestic purposes.
Some co-ordinating policy for the Under Sixes must be evolved soon. I know various organizations, some excellent in the field of social service, have been discussing this. May the people of Hong Kong know soon, or must we wait for a fire and charred babies in cribs before we are galvanized into action? If the Medical Department is not to be involved, and the Education Department likewise, and the Social Welfare Department can properly be concerned only with a needy group, what about the Urban Council? We bury our citizens, can we not look after them shortly after birth by legislating for some of them in child care institutions? If other great cities in the world do not offer this service through their municipal councils, let us not be deterred. At a time of smaller family units, when grandmothers appear scarce and women servants are now factory hands, when the mother of a family goes to work, when we want all children to attend primary school, who will look after the babies? Private enterprise, abacus in hand. This is always Hong Kong—a demand—a supply. Only this time, we are all guilty if adequate standards are not set out.
No one knows how many profit-making crèches and nurseries there are.
There was a time when the theologian, the philosopher and the historian were the sole arbiters of standards and knowledge. Today we must listen as well to the scientist, the economist, the psychologist and the sociologist. Some of these knowledgeable people have pointed out with strident alarm in their voices, that our children are being over-protected on the one hand, and neglected on the other. In a crowded crèche or nursery, young babies are left with probably less attention than young animals or chickens, at the very time when they need not only physical attention, but also the opportunity to develop mentally and well. If half an adult's intelligence is developed by the age of 4, a theory I find incredible myself, then that aspect of a child’s development is being seriously hampered. And what about his emotional development? In any totalitarian state, this extremely pliable age-group is controlled to a degree unacceptable to many of us. But, our total neglect is, in my opinion, equally disastrous.
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If we stand condemned as a community, I would and I must plead guilty that as a community we have robbed children of their childhood. Before they reach primary school they are tired, examination prone; throughout primary school they face the dreaded chop of the guillotine that is the Secondary School Entrance Examination. That this examination has improved considerably, as it has, both in its concept and administration, is no comfort to the fifty thousand boys and girls enmeshed in all the tedious preparation for the examination. All the worry, also.
We now have universal primary education (for those who want it), we will have by next spring free primary education in a broad sector—surely a matter of some achievement. I very much hope that attached to some of the schools in the worst areas will be crèches for younger siblings so that elder children may really be free of household chores and responsibilities. The number of crèches attached to factories must be small, for many reasons. Hong Kong is so unique in many ways that crèches attached to schools would provide an early sense of belonging in our youngest citizens, a laboratory for elementary home economics and child care, and a source of comfort to hard-pressed parents, both at work, that their youngest have some kind of adult protection. Just a pilot scheme, please, somewhere, before the suggestion is considered completely nonsensical.
For a few years, some of my colleagues who are heads of secondary schools have been working on a bold, viable and sound policy of secondary schooling in the 70's. In brief, the Association of Heads of Secondary Schools made a number of suggestions in 1969, revising some in 1970, for a three-year post-primary comprehensive scheme for all primary school leavers. "Strongly affecting the decision was the desire to get rid of the necessity for the Secondary School Entrance Examination at the age of 12 and to secure automatic transfer to junior secondary courses for every child, in time to come. Similarly, in the background was the thought that universal junior secondary courses would do away with the segregation of 'academic' children from the 'non-academic' and improve the general social awareness of the whole population." The scheme envisaged would call for a ten-year development programme including money, vast sums, which should not prove impossible for us to raise, more teachers and a phased building programme. We would then be in line with other countries with the first public examination after three years of secondary education, leads on to senior academic schools, others in vocational and trade schools (provided alike by industry and government) leading on finally to university and polytechnic, training college, institutional training or work in the community. A blue-print for the future, indeed, and one worthy of our fine young people and our city.
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