ENG-1983 — Page 18

EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS

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characteristic respect for education shown by the community) and the needs of the economy was a source of general concern in regard to senior secondary education. A widespread criticism of the 1978 White Paper was that it stressed economic needs at the expense of individual development.

'Problem Areas'

Just before the overall review began, a number of unofficial members of the Legislative Council highlighted what they saw as the problem areas in education. Echoing the Governor's statement in his address at the 1980 opening session of the Legislative Council that, after housing, education was one of the principal concerns of our population and one of our biggest and most complex programmes, the unofficials cited the following as the main causes of current concern in the education system and in higher, technical and adult education: There was a need to integrate the various sectional reviews of education which the government had carried out in recent years since the present system was too much of a patchwork; there was a need to develop more rapidly the quality of our education and to diversify its content to include far more of a vocational nature, while supporting services must also be greatly increased if our nine years of free and compulsory education was to have any proper value or meaning; a suitable balance should be maintained between economic and social demand for higher education, and the development of Hong Kong's economy in the 1980s should not be inhibited by a shortage of high-level technological manpower; there was a need to increase the annual growth rate of the universities; training facilities must be expanded for our existing workforce to upgrade their technical skills; in increasing the output of manpower at the professional and graduate level, more attention should be paid to the need for a solid infrastructure of skilled support at the technician and craftsman level; part-time or external degree or associateship courses should be introduced to meet the needs of the large number of highly motivated people in commerce and industry who, because of unfortunate circumstances, had been unable to complete a full course of formal education; and the government should ensure that adult education courses for employees after working hours reflected the need to improve skills for better pay and career prospects, and prepare adults for the changes brought about by the diversification and sophistication of industry and business.

On school education, the unofficial members took the view that there was a great deal of untidiness at the senior secondary level leading to wastage of economic resources and manpower years; sixth-form education was having to be too many things at the same time; a final and definitive decision must be taken on the question of the language to be used as the medium of instruction in Forms I-III of Anglo-Chinese schools; the time was right to consider the teaching of Putonghua in order to put Hong Kong in the mainstream of Chinese cultural and economic development; a concern that character development should become a major objective in education in accordance with the Chinese concept of education which accepts that correct behaviour and attitudes can and should be inculcated; the modernisation of Hong Kong was eroding the family system and forcing it to undergo certain structural and functional transformations and the resulting problems could be tackled more effectively if there were better co-ordination among the various government departments responsible for providing services for children; there was insufficient man- power available to provide social work services for schoolchildren; and there was a growing problem of psychological strain on young people unable to cope with the rigid academic curriculum and the pressure of examinations.