1243
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
130
Most of us on the Council have left our own school studies very far behind us, but probably not too far for us to remember how we studied. I am quite sure that most of us were fortunate enough to have a small room where we could get some quiet. Very few students today can enjoy the luxury of a private study where they can concentrate on their books. Of the more than one million people living in Resettlement Estates, hundreds of thousands are students. Their share of space for all purposes is at best 24 square feet and at worst 12 square feet of a common room. They are distracted not only by the presence of other members of their own families, but also by a variety of noises coming from their neighbours' rooms. In the older areas such as Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, Yau Ma Tei, Wan Chai and the Western District of Hong Kong, the situation, generally speaking, is even worse. Families in these areas often occupy only a cubicle; students are even more at the mercy of neighbours; rooms are more crowded, hot, and dark. How the Hong Kong students study in these conditions never ceases to win my admiration.
Unfortunately, some students find it impossible to concentrate. Many of them go looking for suitable places to study even including the Airport and the Ocean Terminal. Recently a group of over a hundred students from different types of homes were asked to state what young people in Hong Kong need most. Almost all of them said that they needed more libraries where they could do their homework and study. You may have read recently in the correspondence columns of the newspapers how some students complained at being prevented from studying in Kai Tak Airport, where many have enjoyed the air-conditioning in the past. A few weeks ago another group complained that a library run by an organization had stopped students from taking their own books for private study. If this was correct, one cannot blame the Airport Authorities or the library staff, since these places were not set up to provide such facilities. But the complaints of the students spell out a great need that no one in Hong Kong is at the moment responsible to meet.
Our own Urban Council libraries do provide limited facilities for students, both in the Cambridge Court Kowloon Library and at the City Hall Library, but this provision is totally inadequate to meet the need. If I may digress a little without incurring the Chairman's displeasure, I should like here to pay tribute to our Chief Librarian and the Library staff who recently volunteered to open the Students' Reading rooms one hour earlier during the examination period, because students were queuing up as early as 8 o'clock in the morning to enter the reading room at 10 a.m. But our library reading rooms solve the problem for only about 0.1% of the post-primary student body of Hong Kong.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
131
In our Library Select Committee Meetings we constantly come up against this problem of how much space we are justified in allocating to students studying their own books. Theoretically a library is not obliged to make such provision. We have frequently deplored the lack of such facilities for students, but have never been able to make concrete suggestions as the matter is outside our terms of reference, and outside our present policy. If we do set up reading rooms they will have to be distinct from libraries, an appendix to or a branch of our library work.
This brings me to the second part of the Motion, that the Library Select Committee be authorized to submit proposals for the purpose of providing reading rooms.
I do not wish at this time to make detailed suggestions, since today I am only seeking permission for our committee to be authorized to submit proposals. I have in mind some large and fairly lightly-built structures on raised pillars in parks and playgrounds, the space below being utilized for play. Grass, trees and open spaces are conducive to quiet study. I visualize screened reading desks where students will meet with a minimum of distraction. The scheme could be incorporated with our parks and playgrounds planning, but would have to be on a vastly larger scale than the present children's libraries, which serve a different purpose. Placed in strategic areas, these reading rooms would serve the overcrowded districts, and students would not have to go far from their homes to study. My colleague, Mr. Wilson WANG has added the suggestion that the rooms could be adapted for use as examination centres and thus meet another critical need.
I do not want to enlarge further, as I believe that it is a well-known fact that students in Hong Kong are sorely in need of cool and quiet places for study. All I ask you to do is to recognize this need by supporting the Motion, and to authorize the Library Select Committee to submit proposals for this purpose.
Mr. Chairman, I move the Motion standing in my name.
MR. BLAKER—Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the motion. I think that all of us must be aware of the very crowded conditions that exist in Hong Kong, particularly in the older tenements. It is not difficult to imagine the problems that our young people have in finding suitable space to do their private reading or homework. What is more difficult is to assess the need for space in which they could study or read in peace, and the extent to which such space would be used. We have an impression of intensive use of such space as is provided at the City Hall Library, of students gathering at the terminal building at Kai Tak, in off-peak periods, and even sights, for example at Shau Kei Wan, of children doing their homework on the pavement, or in back streets, or sitting beside their mothers at hawker stalls.
Page 75 of 243
Page 75
Page 76
1243
130
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Most of us on the Council have left our own school studies very far behind us, but probably not too far for us to remember how we studied. I am quite sure that most of us were fortunate enough to have a small room where we could get some quiet. Very few students today can enjoy the luxury of a private study where they can concentrate on their books. Of the more than one million people living in Resettle- ment Estates, hundreds of thousands are students. Their share of space for all purposes is at best 24 square feet and at worst 12 square feet of a common room. They are distracted not only by the presence of other members of their own families, but also by a variety of noises coming from their neighbours' rooms. In the older areas such as Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, Yau Ma Tei, Wan Chai and the Western District of Hong Kong, the situation, generally speaking, is even worse. Fami- lies in these areas often occupy only a cubicle; students are even more at the mercy of neighbours; rooms are more crowded, hot, and dark. How the Hong Kong students study in these conditions never ceases to win my admiration.
Unfortunately, some students find it impossible to concentrate. Many of them go looking for suitable places to study even including the Airport and the Ocean Terminal. Recently a group of over a hundred students from different types of homes were asked to state what young people in Hong Kong need most. Almost all of them said that they needed more libraries where they could do their homework and study. You may have read recently in the correspondence columns of the newspapers how some students complained at being prevented from studying in Kai Tak Airport, where many have enjoyed the air- conditioning in the past. A few weeks ago another group complained that a library run by an organization had stopped students from taking their own books for private study. If this was correct, one cannot blame the Airport Authorities or the library staff, since these places were not set up to provide such facilities. But the complaints of the students spell out a great need that no one in Hong Kong is at the moment responsible to meet.
Our own Urban Council libraries do provide limited facilities for students, both in the Cambridge Court Kowloon Library and at the City Hall Library, but this provision is totally inadequate to meet the need. If I may digress a little without incurring the Chairman's dis- pleasure, I should like here to pay tribute to our Chief Librarian and the Library staff who recently volunteered to open the Students' Reading rooms one hour earlier during the examination period, because students were queuing up as early as 8 o'clock in the morning to enter the reading room at 10 a.m. But our library reading rooms solve the problem for only about .1% of the post-primary student body of Hong Kong.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
131
In our Library Select Committee Meetings we constantly come up against this problem of how much space we are justified in allocating to students studying their own books. Theoretically a library is not obliged to make such provision. We have frequently deplored the lack of such facilities for students, but have never been able to make concrete suggestions as the matter is outside our terms of reference, and outside our present policy. If we do set up reading rooms they will have to be distinct from libraries, an appendix to or a branch of our library work.
This brings me to the second part of the Motion, that the Library Select Committee be authorized to submit proposals for the purpose of providing reading rooms.
I do not wish at this time to make detailed suggestions, since today I am only seeking permission for our committee to be authorized to submit proposals. I have in mind some large and fairly lightly-built structures on raised pillars in parks and playgrounds, the space below being utilized for play. Grass, trees and open spaces are conducive to quiet study. I visualize screened reading desks where students will meet with a minimum of distraction. The scheme could be incor- porated with our parks and playgrounds planning, but would have to be on a vastly larger scale than the present children's libraries, which serve a different purpose. Placed in strategic areas, these reading rooms would serve the overcrowded districts, and students would not have to go far from their homes to study. My colleague, Mr. Wilson WANG has added the suggestion that the rooms could be adapted for use as examination centres and thus meet another critical need.
I do not want to enlarge further, as I believe that it is a well-known fact that students in Hong Kong are sorely in need of cool and quiet places for study. All I ask you to do is to recognize this need by sup- porting the Motion, and to authorize the Library Select Committee to submit proposals for this purpose.
Mr. Chairman, I move the Motion standing in my name.
MR. BLAKER-Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the motion. I think that all of us must be aware of the very crowded conditions that exist in Hong Kong, particularly in the older tenements. It is not difficult to imagine the problems that our young people have in finding suitable space to do their private reading or homework. What is more difficult is to assess the need for space in which they could study or We read in peace, and the extent to which such space would be used. have an impression of intensive use of such space as is provided at the City Hall Library, of students gathering at the terminal building at Kai Tak, in off-peak periods, and even sights, for example at Shau Kei Wan, of children doing their homework on the pavement, or in back streets, or sitting beside their mothers at hawker stalls.
Page 75 of 243
Page 75Page 76
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.