124
TA ACTON
At the same time, in 1978-81, the secondary school in Aberdeen, founded in 1966, was being expanded from a three-year "practical school" into a five-year secondary technical school. This school is in a sense integrated, or at least linked to the normal education system in Hong Kong, in that its pupils are allocated by the Education Department through the ordinary secondary school places allocation system, which also allocates 300-400 children from F.M.O. primary schools to ordinary secondary schools every year. The maintenance of all the F.M.O. schools as distinct institutions for the fisherfolk does NOT imply a belief in a separate future for the children in them. In the end they feed their graduates most often not back into fishing, but into the ordinary schools system or into non-fishing jobs. Of the 77 F.M.O. Aberdeen Secondary School graduates of 1979, 22 went into further study, 31 joined the Government apprentice training scheme and 24 found employment in factories.
14
The F.M.O. schools, then, are separate in form but they are still the means of a policy of integration, not of apartheid. They exist in a situation where the barriers between Shui-sheung-yan and ordinary Cantonese are becoming blurred. The new primary school at Apleichau is sited in a new housing estate which has a large proportion of ex-fishing families. Since the school is over-subscribed by parents wishing their children to attend, the F.M.O. is having some difficulty deciding who should, on the basis of their fishing background, have a priority right to attend. This difficulty points to a further common dimension in the educational-administrative problems with Gypsies and Shui-sheung-yan: a profound ambivalence as to the ethnic status of these 'pariah' or 'marginal' communities, which means that it often appears to the authorities both important and difficult to decide who does, and who does not 'truly' belong to the community. Moreover the balance of informed opinion within this ambivalence has, over the past thirty-five years swung decisively but in the opposite direction in each of these two cases.
-
Official perceptions of the ethnicity of Shui-sheung-yan and Gypsies
After 1945 the official view in Britain was that, despite a small "Romany"
” 15 element, the vast majority of “Gypsies” in Britain were native British who had taken up a particular set of nomadic occupations, and were therefore a social, but not an ethnic problem. " As a result, however, of the growth of pan-Gypsy organisation and new scholarship, it has been well-established that the overwhelming majority of ‘gypsies'
124
TA ACTON
At the same time, in 1978-81, the secondary school in Aberdeen, founded in 1966, was being expanded from a three-year "practical school" into a five-year secondary technical school. This school is in a sense integrated, or at least linked to the normal education system in Hong Kong, in that its pupils are allocated by the Education Department through the ordinary secondary school places allocation system, which also allocates 300-400 children from F.M.O. primary schools to ordinary secondary schools every year. The maintenance of all the F.M.O. schools as distinct institutions for the fisherfolk does NOT imply a belief in a spearate future for the children in them. In the end they feed their graduates most often not back into fishing, but into the ordinary schools system or into non-fishing jobs. Of the 77 FM.O. Aberdeen Secondary School graduates of 1979, 22 went into further study, 31 joined the Government apprentice training scheme and 24 found employment in factories. 14
The F.M.O. schools, then, are separate in form but they are still the means of a policy of integration, not of apartheid. They exist in a situation where the barriers between Shui-sheung-yan and ordinary Cantonese are becoming blurred. The new primary school at Apleichau is sited in a new housing estate which has a large proportion of ex-fishing families. Since the school is over-subscribed by parents wishing their children to attend, the F.M.O. is having some difficulty deciding who should, on the basis of their fishing background, have a priority right to attend. This difficulty points to a further common dimension in the educational-administrative problems with Gypsies and Shui-sheung-yan: a profound ambivalence as to the ethnic status of these 'pariah' or 'marginal' communities, which means that it often appears to the authorities both important and difficult to decide who does, and who does not 'truly' belong to the community. Moreover the balance of informed opinion within this ambivalence has, over the past thirty-five years swung decisively but in the opposite direction in each of these two cases.
-
Official perceptions of the ethnicity of Shui-sheung-yan and Gypsies
After 1945 the official view in Britain was that, despite a small "Romany"
” 15 element, the vast majority of “Gypsies” in Britain were native British who had taken up a particular set of nomadic occupations, and were therefore a social, but not an ethnic problem. " As a result, however, of the growth of pan-Gypsy organisation and new schlarship, it has been well-established that the overshelming majority of ‘gypsies'
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.