XN000022-1972-11-02 — Page 14

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Thursday, November 2, 1972

New planning, she said, will surely take into consideration the

imbalance of academic education to vocational and technical education which

is at present so characteristic of our system.

But it will take much soul-searching and much subtle persuasion to

convince our parents that not all their children should proceed to university.

"All that is good and durable in the past is certainly worth extract-

ing," she said, "but an initial first step in the rethinking of a viable

education system must face this issue fairly and squarely."

Mrs. Symons welcomed the promise of bold, new ideas and the

opportunity for many to share in the new order.

She said: "It is really essential now to examine curricula being

planned in the context of preparing not just Hong Kong citizens of the future,

but citizens of the world."

"If the world is to be one world at peace at the end of this century,

then we have an opportunity never before given any city to evolve a new pattern

of education towards this aim,"

Mrs. Symons pointed out that one great drawback about the discussion

of education anywhere is the abundance of self-appointed experts to provide

instant and inevitably oversimplified answers to Hong Kong's educational

problems.

If anything, the situation in Hong Kong is further complicated because

of the traditional love of learning so characteristic of our people, the some-

what misplaced confidence in the intrinsic value of examinations and the equally

alarming insistence on academic grammar schooling both on the part of many

parents and many school authorities.

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