in-search-of-an-identity-the-politics-of-history-n — Page 1

EAST ASIA HISTORY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, CULTURE
Edited By
Edward Beauchamp University of Hawaii A ROUTLEDGE SERIES
EAST ASIA HISTORY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, CULTURE
EDWARD BEAUCHAMP, General Editor
VILLAGE, MARKET AND WELL-BEING IN A RURAL CHINESE TOWNSHIP Tamara Perkins
STATUS POWER
Japanese Foreign Policy Making toward Korea
Isa Ducke
WORDS KILL
<p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><span><!--more--></span><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>
Destruction of ��Class Enemies�� in China, 1949�V1953
Cheng-Chih Wang
THE TRIFURCATING MIRACLE
Corporations, Workers, Bureaucrats, and the Erosion of Japan��s National Economy
Satoshi Ikeda
STATE FORMATION, PROPERTY RELATIONS, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TOKUGAWA ECONOMY (1600�V1868) Grace H.Kwon
OPENING THE DOOR
Immigration, Ethnicity, and Globalization in Japan
Betsy Brody
THE POLITICS OF LOCALITY
Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan
Hsin-Yi Lu
JAPAN��S FOREIGN POLICY MATURATION
A Quest for Normalcy
Kevin J.Cooney
ENGINEERING THE STATE
The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927�V1937
David A.Pietz
JAPANESE DIRECT INVESTMENT IN CHINA
Locational Determinants and Characteristics
John F.Cassidy
SH.K.-KEN A Late Medieval Daime Sukiya Style Japanese Tea-house Robin Noel Walker
FROM TRANSITION TO POWER ALTERNATION
Democracy in South Korea, 1987�V1997
Carl J.Saxer
HISTORY OF JAPANESE POLICIES IN EDUCATION AID TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, 1950s�V1990s
The Role of the Subgovernmental Processes
Takao Kamibeppu
A POLITICAL ECONOMY ANALYSIS OF CHINA��S CIVIL AVIATION INDUSTRY Mark Dougan
THE BIBLE AND THE GUN
Christianity in South China, 1860�V1900
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee
AN AMERICAN EDITOR IN EARLY REVOLUTIONARY CHINA John William Powell and the China Weekly/Monthly Review Niel L.O��Brien
BETWEEN SACRIFICE AND DESIRE
National Identity and the Governing of Femininity in Vietnam
Ashley Pettus
NEW CULTURE IN A NEW WORLD
The May Fourth Movement and the Chinese Diaspora in Singapore, 1919�V1932
David L.Kenley
ALLIANCE IN ANXIETY
Detente and the Sino-American-Japanese Triangle
Go Ito


IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY
The Politics of History as a School Subject in Hong Kong, 1960s�V2002
Edward Vickers
Routledge New York & London
Published in 2003 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 http://www.routledge-ny.com/
Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE http://www.routledge.co.uk/
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Copyright c 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vickers, Edward. In search of an identity: the politics of history as a school subject in Hong Kong, 1960��s�V2002/by Edward Vickers. p. cm.�X(East Asia) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index ISBN 0-415-94502-X (alk. paper) 1. Politics and education�XChina�XHong Kong. 2. Educational change�XChina�X Hong Kong. I. Title: Politics of history as a school subject in Hong Kong, 1960��s�V2002. II. Title. III. East Asia (New York, N.Y.) LC94.C5 V53 2003 379.5125�V dc21 2002156727
ISBN 0-203-48848-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-57666-7 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-94502-X (Print Edition)
Dedicated to the memory of Colin Matthew



Contents
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii ABBREVIATIONS x
CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2 History, Politics and Education in Hong Kong 20 CHAPTER 3 History, Culture and the Politics of Identity in Hong Kong 47 CHAPTER 4 The History Curriculum from the 1960s to 1982 65 CHAPTER 5 History in Crisis: 1982�V1989 91 CHAPTER 6 Curriculum Change in a Climate of Uncertainty: 1989�V1997 124 CHAPTER 7 1997�V2002: New Hong Kong�XNew History? 162 CHAPTER 8 Conclusion 189
APPENDIX 210 NOTES 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 244 INDEX 252

Preface and Acknowledgments
THE IDEA OF CONDUCTING RESEARCH INTO HISTORY CURRICULUM development originally occurred to me while I was a history teacher at a secondary school in Hong Kong��s New Territories, in the four years immediately preceding the territory��s retrocession to China. It struck me then as particularly odd firstly that there were two completely separate ��history�� subjects in the curriculum�Xone, ��History��, taught (like most subjects at that school) in English, and the other, ��Chinese History��, taught in Chinese�Xand, secondly, that there was absolutely no coverage of local history in either of these subjects. The ��History�� subject instead consisted almost exclusively of topics in modern European and East Asian topics while, from what I could gather from my students, ��Chinese History�� purveyed a highly triumphalist and ethno-centric narrative of the ancient Chinese past. In 1996�V7 there were a number of reports in the local media concerning the pressing ��need�� (usually expressed by pro-Beijing elements either locally or on the mainland) to purge the local history curriculum of ��colonialist�� interpretations of the past. However, it was not immediately apparent to me, as a practising history teacher, precisely what these ��colonial�� elements consisted of, nor how ��colonialism�� might explain the undoubted peculiarities of the history curriculum for local schools. I decided to investigate, and the result, in 2000, was the PhD dissertation upon which this book is based.
My thanks go first of all to my two supervisors at the University of Hong Kong, Paul Morris and Tony Sweeting. Their advice and encouragement were invaluable, and they were extraordinarily patient, generous with their time, and acute in observing any lapses in my own exercise of the sort of ��critical thought�� that History teachers in Hong Kong are supposed to promote.
Many other people have helped me in the course of this research, and those who were kind enough to give up their time to be interviewed are listed in the appendix. However, I must record my particular gratitude to Patrick Wong of the HKEAA, who gave me every possible assistance, and to his secretary, Iris Au, who saved me days or weeks of work by photocopying for me most of the documents that I needed to consult. I also wish to express my special thanks to Lee Chi-hung of the CDI, who assisted me in gaining access to the files there, and whose own M.Ed. research into the development of the curriculum for local history has been of great use to me. My thanks also go to Mrs. Alice Ho of the CDI and Mr. Justin Lam of the HKEAA. Flora Kan of the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Hong Kong has also given me much invaluable advice, as at various times have Bob Adamson, and Professors Mark Bray and Philip Stimpson.
My parents, besides the gratitude due to them on any number of counts, deserve a special mention for supplying my reason for coming to Hong Kong in the first place, my father having been attached to the British garrison there. I also wish to thank two uncles of mine: Simon Vickers, formerly of the Hong Kong Government, who did much to inspire my interest in Hong Kong history; and Peter Cain, from whom I have learnt more about the ��craft�� of history than from anyone else. I am also grateful to my former colleagues and students at the Madam Lau Kam Lung Secondary School of Miu Fat Buddhist Monastery, particularly Mrs Leung, the History Panel chairperson, who gave me the opportunity to teach History to senior form students, and gave me much support and encouragement. Perhaps my greatest thanks, however, should go to those who funded my PhD research�Xthe taxpayers of Hong Kong. I hope they have got their money��s worth.
I am very grateful to the editors at Routledge for giving me the opportunity to publish my dissertation as a book: Ed Beauchamp of the University of Hawaii, who first recommended the dissertation for publication, and Farideh Kamali, who showed great patience in waiting for me to deliver the final manuscript. My thanks also to Kim Guinta and John Shea for their help in the final stages of the editing process.

Abbreviations
AL Advanced level (examination)
AS Advanced Supplementary level (examination) CDC Curriculum Development Council (ED) CDI Curriculum Development Institute (ED) CUP Cambridge University Press DBQ Document-based question
CUHK The Chinese University of Hong Kong ED Education Department (Hong Kong Government) EMB Education and Manpower Branch (Hong Kong
Government) HKEA Hong Kong Examinations Authority HKCE Hong Kong Certificate of Education
HKU The University of Hong Kong
HKUP Hong Kong University Press MCQ Multiple-choice question OUP Oxford University Press STC Syllabuses and Textbooks Committee

IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY


Chapter 1 Introduction
��Before Britain leaves her colonies, she always implements divisive policies, creating conflicts and contradictions. These are intended to extend Britain��s ability to manipulate and control, and to secure political and economic benefits for her, by ensuring that the post-colonial administration falls into the hands of pro-British elements. But [in Hong Kong]�K Britain��s evil and merciless colonialist policy stands absolutely no chance of success.��
(��How Britain withdraws from her colonies�� Yingguo ruhe chechu zhimindi, (xianggang wenwei chubanshe, 1996), preface (in Chinese))
��School text books, especially those dealing with history, have been changed to give another view of Hong Kong and China��s past. This should produce little surprise: as the great Indian nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, ��History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their viewpoint.�� The British were shameless in offering an imperial version of history. The post-British regime has been busy with the scissors and wants to ensure that the new generation learns its version of the past.��
(Steve Vines, ��Hong Kong, China��s New Colony�� (Aurum Press, 1998, p. 258))
���Kthe formal end of colonial rule in Hong Kong may signal far less of an end to colonialism than is thought, not only because of the continuing structures of neo-colonial capitalism and the continuing presence of colonial culture, but also because of the continuing relationship between English and the discourses of colonialism.��
(Alastair Pennycook, ��English and the discourses of Colonialism��, (Routledge, 1998), p. 193)
JOURNALISTS LOVE A CONSPIRACY, AND LIBERAL WESTERN ONES, SUCH AS Steve Vines, have perhaps been almost as ready as their socialist Chinese counterparts to detect colonial conspiracies at work in Hong Kong. Though his overall interpretation of Hong Kong��s colonial and post-colonial politics is considerably more subtle than the above quotation suggests, Vines�� assumptions concerning the nature of the history curriculum before and since 1997, and of the policy-making process which has produced it, are widely shared. Journalists, academics and political figures, both Chinese and foreign, have tended to take it for granted that, since Hong Kong was a British colony, the government must have manipulated the history curriculum for local schools to ensure that it carried a pro-British message. They assume that such direct interference was integral to the conduct of colonial administration in Hong Kong as elsewhere.1 In noting that Hong Kong��s new administration shares many of the ��colonial�� features of its British predecessors, Vines therefore takes it as read that one of these features is a crudely interventionist approach to the development of history curricula for local schools.
This conspiratorial view of colonial education policy has been refined and reinforced by ��postmodernist�� or ��postcolonialist�� theories such as those espoused by Pennycook.2 He sees schooling in British Hong Kong as an example of a more subtle form of cultural and linguistic imperialism, helping to create ��cultural and discursive frames�� which distort and devalue indigenous history and culture.3 Edward Said appears to take a similar view, asserting that ��since one of the purposes of colonial education was to promote the history of France or Britain, that same education also demoted the native history.��4 Though this is almost certainly true for many colonies in many periods, neither Said nor Pennycook adequately differentiate between colonies and periods, instead appearing to view (Western) ��colonialism�� as a unique, timeless and malignant ��essence��. Similarly ��cultures��, both ��colonial�� and indigenous, are conceived of by many postmodernist cultural theorists as contending homogenous entities, the former oppressing, and the latter struggling to resist. What is important, in this view, is that the ��authentic��, indigenous version is liberated from colonial oppression and allowed to flourish untainted by foreign influences. This assumes, of course, that it is possible to isolate a single, purely indigenous perspective on Chinese history and culture�Xan assumption that some ostensibly ��progressive�� Western scholars such as Pennycook appear to share with ultra-conservative pro-Beijing traditionalists. Whether this simplistic juxtaposition of indigenous cultural ��authenticity�� with implicitly illegitimate ��colonial�� influences is intellectually coherent, let alone capable of adequately explaining Hong Kong��s cultural and historical identity or its school curriculum, is, however, very much open to doubt.
It is striking that neither the ��cultural imperialist�� view of curriculum policy in Hong Kong, nor conspiratorial interpretations generally, have been backed up by detailed research into how policy is made and implemented. In particular, little research has been done on the development of the curriculum for history�Xtypically the most politically sensitive of all school subjects�Xand none has so far examined the changes to that curriculum and the process by which it has been developed in the years immediately preceding and following Hong Kong��s retrocession. Furthermore, this is a reflection of a wider neglect that has afflicted the entire field of curriculum history�Xa victim of the fragmentation and ��pigeon-holing�� so characteristic of academic life today. Historians (or university history faculties) have tended to assume that the history of education is for ��educationalists��, while the latter all too often appear to view history as a peripheral area of research, preparing to pursue their endless quest for a ��theoretical�� holy grail (pausing only to re-invent the wheel).
The present study is informed by the conviction that an understanding of the history of curriculum development is, or should be, central to all considerations of curriculum reform, for reform never occurs in a vacuum, the slate is never clean, and it is only through historical research that we can appreciate how and why the curriculum for any school subject has acquired its present form. Moreover, school history curricula are, as has long been recognised but only recently begun to be seriously researched, both reflections and agents of the process of identity formation in any society. The study of history education thus also makes a vital contribution to the study of how cultural and political identities have been constructed, ��invented�� or, in some cases, dissolved. The relationship between history education and identity (re)production in Hong Kong is distinguished by the unique presence of two entirely separate history subjects in the school curriculum�X��History�� and ��Chinese History��. The focus here is primarily on the development of the ��History�� subject, the curriculum for the rival ��Chinese History�� subject having, for reasons that are discussed in the following chapter, remained largely static for most of the period since the 1960s.5 Nonetheless, the existence of two history subjects, and the implications of this for the development of ��History�� and for history education in general, inevitably forms one of the main themes of this study.
The purpose of this book is to subject common assumptions concerning the role of ��culture�� and ��colonialism�� in the development of the history curriculum to careful scrutiny. Special attention is given to the aims and beliefs of those most closely involved in developing the curriculum, and to the nature and causes of the various problems they have faced in realising their vision of history teaching. The picture that emerges of the relationship between politics, colonialism, and culture in the making of the History subject is considerably more complex than has often been assumed. It shows that while Hong Kong��s pre- and post-colonial politics have unquestionably had a crucial impact on syllabus drafting, textbook production and teaching, this has seldom been the result of direct governmental interference. Nor can curriculum development be represented simply as a clash between ��Chinese�� and ��Western�� cultures, since Hong Kong��s culture�Xlike ��cultures�� generally�Xis too fluid and varied to permit of such crass stereotyping. Those responsible for the History subject, most of whom have been Chinese officials, teachers and academics, have in fact long been attempting to promote a vision of history as a liberal, critical discipline. They have been frustrated in their efforts not by colonial manipulators or cultural inhibitions, but by a host of inter-related practical and political factors. Of these, perhaps the most fundamental has been the tension between their pursuit of a critical approach to the past, and the limits to the prudent expression of critical thought imposed by the climate of uncertainty that, with varying intensity, has persisted in Hong Kong from the 1960s down to the present day. Indeed, this study will show that the politics of history education has in many ways been a microcosm of the politics of Hong Kong and its relations with both China and Britain.
This opening chapter briefly surveys the relationship between views of history, ��culture�� and identity, and the practice of history teaching around the world, with a particular focus on the two historiographical traditions that have had enjoyed the greatest currency in Hong Kong�Xthose of China and Britain. It identifies a range of approaches to ��culture�� and to the study of history, and shows how these are to be found in both ��Chinese�� and ��Western�� traditions�Xemphasising that the dominant strand in modern Chinese nationalism, with its assertion of Chinese cultural specificity, in fact owes much to ��Western�� influences. The point is made that ��cultures�� and identities do not neatly coincide with the boundaries of ��the nation��, despite the desire of many nationalists that they should do so.
HISTORY, NATION-BUILDING AND THE STATE
In a wide range of modern societies, history has been pressed into service by politicians and scholars eager to bolster or, sometimes, to invent a national identity for the inhabitants of their states, and to foster among their populations a sense of patriotic loyalty.6 Such efforts to socialise citizens as patriots have naturally been concentrated in school civic education and history curricula. In some states�Xusually if not always those considered to have been ��totalitarian���Xthe whole apparatus of academic history has been geared towards the construction and dissemination of fiercely nationalistic interpretations of the past. In Weimar Germany, for example, the version of Germany��s recent past promulgated by the right-wing, nationalist academic establishment helped to undermine the legitimacy of the country��s fragile democratic institutions.7
��Patriotic�� history of this kind is, according to Hobsbawm, a phenomenon of the past two hundred years in Europe, though precedents for it can be found much earlier.8 It has developed in tandem with the development of national education systems that in Europe were largely concerned with reinforcing ��social control, moral conformity, and political acquiescence�� amongst the populations of new and often fragile nation-states, and legitimising the authority of dominant elites.9 ��Public education��, Green observes, ��has everywhere been Janus-faced, at once the very font of enlightenment and liberty, and a vehicle for control and political socialization��.10 The use of history�Xboth in schools and more broadly�Xto inculcate nationalist kinship myths has been a key feature of the legitimating strategies deployed by political elites worldwide. Brown has observed a similar process at work in contemporary South-East Asia, where particular visions of ethnicity have been promoted by post-independence states.11 In the most extreme versions of nationalist history in Europe or Asia, such as those inspired by German historicists like Spengler, ��nations or cultures or civilizations�� have become ��not merely convenient collective terms for individuals possessing certain characteristics in common; but seem more ��real�� and more ��concrete�� than the individuals which compose them��.12
Green has shown how the differing nature of the state in Germany, France, Britain and the United States helped to shape the development of national education systems in those countries. He emphasises also the way in which those states themselves, and the values or ��cultures�� which have characterised them, were moulded by the contingencies of history rather than by any ��blood and soil�� cultural essence. Thus, on the continent of Europe,
��in those countries where the attainment of national unity, both cultural and territorial, was particularly delayed and protracted or characterized by long periods of military conflict, nationalism became an important factor in state formation. In many states [e.g. Prussia], in fact, the creation of the modern bourgeois state and the rise of nationalist movements were inseparable.��13
The education system which arose in Prussia, and later Germany, was from the start dedicated to the purpose of inculcating loyalty to the Junker-dominated state and to fostering in students the bureaucratic and military skills particularly required by that state. The Prussian system of schooling was characterised by A.J.P.Taylor as ��a massive engine of conquest��.14 Meanwhile, French state education represented, in the words of Zeldin, ��an organized onslaught on regional and local eccentricity��.15 Durkheim reflect-ed mainstream nineteenth-century European assumptions concerning the purposes of education when he wrote:
��Society can only exist if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity. Education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child, from the beginning, the essential similarities that collective life demands.��16
In England and America, however, a more laissez-faire approach to education predominated. In America, there was a popular drive to establish schools, largely inspired by a desire to inculcate republican virtue, morality and a respect for social order. In England, the relatively early establishment of a nation state, and a more complacent nationalism bred of economic and imperial success, strengthened liberal faith in the virtues of voluntarism in education (though Green argues that England��s liberal, laissez-faire tradition has contributed to the development of a comparatively incoherent and miserly state education policy).
In China, as in East Asia more widely, the impact of Western precedents on the development of modern systems of schooling has been huge. Early Chinese and Japanese modernisers, faced with the threat of Western imperialism, tended to share the preoccupation of the creators of the Prussian state with building up national strength, and with the importance of modern education as, first and foremost, a means of acquiring the technical skills and inculcating the ��patriotic�� values that would be conducive to this end. The Neo-Darwinist conception of international relations as a struggle for survival between ��race��-based nations was highly influential in East Asia, and this reinforced the view of ��nation-building�� as the primary aim of schooling. In China, other conceptions of the purposes of education influenced, for example, by the liberal ideas of John Dewey, the internationalism of Marxist socialism, or the Confucian humanist tradition, have also gone in and out of vogue. However, the conception of nationalism and the strong state as ��goods�� in themselves has persisted, with major implications for history education.17
In Europe, by contrast, the experience of genocidal war has largely discredited Neo-Darwinist notions of nationhood, and the process of European political integration has encouraged a widespread trend in history education away from the triumphalist chauvinism of the past, and towards more inclusive and diverse perspectives.18 As is discussed further below, in Britain the loss of empire and the experience of post-imperial guilt (at least on the part of large sections of the educational establishment) gave particular impetus to the trend away from triumphalism, while history educators increasingly sought ways to make their subject above all a vehicle for the promotion of critical and analytical ��skills��. Insofar as it has been subject to influences from both Britain and China, therefore, Hong Kong in the period since the 1960s has been exposed to two very different educational ��cultures��.
CONCEPTIONS OF ��CULTURE��, ETHNICITY AND CROSS-CULTURAL INFLUENCE
Recent trends in the study of culture, such as the more extreme variants of ��postmodern�� or ��postcolonial�� analysis, have called into question the possibility of analysing cultural difference critically from a historical perspective. Instead, the emphasis placed on cultural ��authenticity�� by scholars such as Pennycook implies a view of culture as ��a rationale or means for placing individuals, organisations, societies or even nations into straight-jackets of incommensurable difference��.19 This view of culture has demonstrated ��a startling ability to bring critical inquiry to a halt��.20 The question of how ��culture�� and ethnicity should be defined or interpreted is particularly crucial to an analysis of the development of Hong Kong��s History curriculum, as is, given the range of influences on that curriculum, the issue of how cross-cultural influence is to be characterised and evaluated.
In his discussion of the ��ethnic polities�� of South-east Asia, Brown has categorised most of the scholarship on ��ethnicity�� as a concept as either ��primordialist�� or ��situationalist��.21 The former school of thought sees ethnic identity and the cultures through which it is manifested as an entirely irrational, primordial ��given��.22 ��Situationalists��, meanwhile, take a more instrumentalist view of ethnicity, seeing it as a concept that communities utilise or adapt in a rational manner, for political ends. Brown himself, however, while conceding that ethnic ��kinship myths�� may be invented or adapted for political purposes, argues that such myths, or variants of them, may take on a life of their own, so that they become the objects of a very real ��ideological consciousness�� for whole communities. In addition, though such ��kinship myths�� are often propagated by political elites with the intention of reinforcing or legitimising their own power within the state, these elites may have very little control over the ways in which these myths come to be adopted and interpreted in society at large.
Scholars whose main concern is to identify and criticise examples of Western ��cultural imperialism�� or post-colonial ��dependency�� often adopt an implicitly or explicitly ��primordialist�� conception of cultural and ethnic difference. Indigenous and non-indigenous elements are seen as clearly and fundamentally distinct, and the role of Western ��colonialism�� as a vehicle for cultural supremacy is seen as historically unique and uniformly deplorable. The process of globalisation is also, for many, an essentially contemporary phenomenon associated, by definition, with the spread of Western cultural dominance. However, the ��cultural imperialism�� thesis has been criticised for under-estimating the extent of ��native�� agency in the colonisation process�Xby implying, for example, that colonised peoples were merely the passive dupes of Western influence.23
This is not to deny that cultural exchange often takes place in the context of relationships characterised by inequalities of power. However, the perception that this is anything new, or uniquely characteristic of Western imperialism is misplaced. According to Hopkins, a historically more balanced approach, rather than one informed primarily by ��presentist�� neo-Marxist social science, would ��underline the antiquity and importance of non-Western forms of globalization and demonstrate that encounters with the West produced a world order that was jointly, if also unequally, created.��24 An awareness of the longue duree tends to discredit notions of cultural interaction that emphasise the purity or homogeneity of any particular ��culture�� or ethnic group.
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF HISTORICAL STUDY�X CONTRASTING APPROACHES
An analysis of history curriculum development requires a framework for distinguishing between different approaches to the past�Xin other words, a typology of different visions
of the nature and purpose of history. The typology elaborated below represents, admittedly, only one of a number of ways in which historiographical approaches might be categorised and differentiated. It aims to identify various approaches that have influenced or been reflected in history curricula in China and ��the West��, namely history as ��established knowledge�� (or ��scissors-and-paste��), various determinist views of the past (influenced by the paradigm of the natural sciences), and a vision of history as a ��craft�� tradition. Since the current study inevitably involves judgements concerning ��better�� and ��worse�� in approaches to history education, the present section also outlines�Xalbeit only briefly and inadequately�Xthe philosophical case, derived primarily from MacIntyre and Collingwood, for a vision of history as a critical-rational ��practice�� or ��craft��.
Collingwood applies the ��scissors-and-paste�� label to the kind of history which involves assembling the statements of previous ��authorities�� in order to construct a true narrative of the past.25 This has been and largely still is for most people what ��history�� has meant�Xbeing instructed at school to base their essays on extensive reference to secondary sources, usually consisting of textbooks which are themselves the distillations of other secondary sources, with little if any opportunity to engage in the critical analysis of historical evidence. The scissors-and-paste historian is in essence a collector of ready-made statements that he then arranges into a coherent narrative. The methodology itself does not imply any particular political ideology, but easily lends itself to any attempt to prove a thesis by reference to the works of recognised ��authorities��. It may be particularly prevalent in societies, such as those of medieval Europe or modern totalitarian states, where the political or religious authorities impose narrow constraints upon the range of acceptable historical interpretations. When the scissors-and-paste historian is free to exercise his own judgement, he may not necessarily accept the statements of his authorities uncritically since, especially in cases where different authorities say conflicting things, he may have to attempt to identify ��true�� statements from ��false��. The ��true�� statements are then incorporated into the narrative, while the ��false�� statements deemed unworthy of inclusion are discarded. Nevertheless, for Collingwood the ultimate reliance of the ��scissors-and-paste�� historian on the ready-made verdicts of the recognised ��authorities�� ��makes it impossible to attribute to him the autonomy which is everywhere essential to scientific thought; where by autonomy I mean the condition of being one��s own authority, making statements or taking action on one��s own initiative and not because those statements or actions are authorized or prescribed by anyone else.��26
The European Enlightenment witnessed the emergence of more ��scientific�� approaches to history, with attempts to fit the facts of the past into theoretical frameworks claiming some of the properties of the natural sciences. Thus Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Spengler, Toynbee and a host of others proclaimed the discovery of universal ��laws�� of history�X laws with predictive as well as explanatory power. MacIntyre has used the term ��encyclopaedic�� to describe this mode of thought, since Enlightenment thinkers aspired to construct an account of all human knowledge and experience that would, they believed, ultimately yield a scientific view of both the physical and social universe with which no rational person could disagree. However, the result was a plethora of rival and contradictory theories of ethics, society and history, each claiming universal and absolute validity. The ethno-cultural determinism of Herder, Neo-Darwinist racialist determinism, and the materialistic determinism of Marx, were just three of the more influential variants. The more consistent theorists of this ��scientific�� approach to history, such as E.H.Carr, insisted that scientific ��objectivity�� precluded the historian from passing moral judgements�Xsomething, however, that Isaiah Berlin argued was in practice both impossible and undesirable. Maintaining that all such views of history were fundamentally non-susceptible to proof or disproof, Berlin pointed out that if all human thought and experience were ��scientifically�� structured and determined, then it could not be possible for any individual to step outside the structure and gain objective knowledge of it.27
It was the genius of Nietszche to appreciate this failure of the Enlightenment project, but his response was to abandon theory and the pursuit of ��truth�� altogether. In place of social scientific theory, he at one stage proposed the construction of ��genealogies�� that would be nothing more than projections of the individual thinker��s ��will to power��. Nietszchean ��genealogy�� and the preoccupation with ��power�� were central themes of Foucault��s work,28 and have also characterised much ��postmodernist�� theorising about history and culture. ��Genealogical�� thought has obvious affinities with a ��primordialist�� approach to issues of culture, and an approach that reduces all cultural interaction and influence to relationships of ��power��. Ultimately, however, the concept of ��genealogy�� when taken to its logical conclusion leads to solipsism, just as scientific determinism tends to collapse into relativism.29
Postmodernists are correct when they point out that ��truth�� in philosophy, history or the social sciences is not, and cannot be, something eternal, absolute and unchanging but is necessarily provisional, shifting and open to doubt. Nonetheless, MacIntyre argues that while we cannot aspire to ��truth�� as an absolute, or to ��a perfect theory��, we can and must aim at ��the best theory so far��30�Xand the only way to ascertain this is through historical study�Xthrough the sort of history which, in Collingwood��s words, attempts to ��understand the present by reconstructing its determining conditions��, and which sees itself as nothing less than ��the science of human affairs.��31
If history as Collingwood sees it is scientific, however, it is not a science on the model of the natural sciences, since it does not aim at constructing a ��science of human nature�� with predictive power. This is because the subject matter of history is not external to the human mind; it is that mind itself, which, though it contains irrational elements, is in the ��self-conscious creation of its own historical life�� necessarily rational and autonomous.32 In studying the past, Collingwood tells us, the scientific historian is ��like the hero of a detective novel putting the evidence to the torture��33�Xnot simply by rearranging his sources into a plausible narrative account, but by imaginatively re-enacting in his own mind the past thought of which his sources constitute the present traces.34 Of course a bad historian, like a bad detective, may in reality do the former rather than the latter, but a good one will follow Lord Acton��s advice, and ��study problems, not periods��.35 The question then arises as to which problems the historian should study. The answer to this is provided by the history of historical enquiry prior to his participation in it. As MacIntyre puts it, the problems or ��goals�� of each particular discipline or ��practice�� do not arise randomly or arbitrarily, but ��themselves are transmuted by the history of that activity.��36 Indeed, for Collingwood and MacIntyre this is as true of the history of natural science as it is of history tout court or of thought in general, for, as Collingwood points out, ��It is only in so far as Einstein knows [Newton��s] theory that he can make an advance upon it. Newton thus lives in Einstein in the way in which past experience lives in the mind of the his-torian.��37 Progress, therefore, is not, like biological evolution, ��a mere fact to be discovered by historical thinking: it is only through historical thinking that it comes about at all.��38
For MacIntyre, as for Collingwood, the ��standards of truth, reference and rationality�� which we need to make our thought intelligible must be found, if they are to be found at all, in the history of thought itself. This is the basis of MacIntyre��s concept of philosophy as a ��craft tradition��. When he speaks of ��tradition�� as a mode of enquiry, however, he is not advocating the uncritical acceptance of the legacy of the past. On the contrary, he characterises this uncritical concept as ��dead tradition��, contrasting it with ��vital traditions�� which, he argues, are
��in a centrally important way�Kconstituted by a continuous argument as to what [for example] a good university is and ought to be or what good farming is or what good medicine is. Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict.��39
MacIntyre sees it as the central purpose of education to communicate and embody this concept of tradition, arguing that universities in particular should be places of ��constrained disagreement, of imposed participation in conflict.��40
The discussion below of history education in Britain shows how an approach to the teaching of the subject in schools that sees it as a training in intellectual conflict�Xas an initiation into a critical-rational ��craft���Xhas gained ground in recent years. The extent to which curriculum developers there have consciously adopted the philosophical stance outlined above is debatable, but an acceptance of the provisional nature of historical truth, of history as a ��continuous argument�� rather than a body of received knowledge, and of the other values (such as rules of evidence) that characterise the ��craft�� of the historian are all integral to what has become the dominant vision of history as a school subject. This vision of the nature and purpose of history as a discipline has also been intimately associated with the aim of training pupils for participation in what MacIntyre (following Aristotle) sees as the supreme ��practice���Xthat of active democratic citizenship.41 As subsequent chapters will reveal, this vision has appeared highly attractive to developers of the curriculum for History in Hong Kong. However, liberal-democratic views of history as a critical discipline have had to contend with powerful illiberal trends in mainstream Chinese thought.
CULTURE, NATIONALISM AND HISTORY IN CHINA
The problem of squaring the desire for a critical, rational approach to the Chinese past and present with the demands of a militant and often xeno-phobic patriotism is one that Chinese thinkers have faced throughout this century. As Vera Schwarz observes with regard to the intellectuals of the May Fourth era:
��Sceptics in an age of nationalist revolution, they faced the added obstacle
of being seen as traitors of national culture. Their repeated efforts to prove
that rational doubt is not inherently corrosive of national self-confidence
consumed much of the intellectual energy that might have gone into
deepening their own understanding of critical philosophy.��42
There is, according to some scholars, an irony here, since the concepts of ��patriotism�� and ��the nation�� are, strictly speaking, themselves alien to indigenous Chinese traditions. For example, Ng-Quinn argues that Chinese thinkers traditionally equated Chinese culture with the civilised culture of the world, and exhibited ��a preference for differential interaction with other states on the basis of cultural compatibility.��43
This view of the incompatibility of modern nationalism with ��traditional Chinese culture�� is to some extent supported by Fitzgerald��s recent study, ��Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution��.44 This demonstrates the tension between the universalist ethics which were a feature of China��s traditional culture, and the emphasis on cultural and racial difference which came to characterise the thinking of many nationalists. Kang Youwei, in particular, agonised over the contradictions between these different conceptions of culture.45 Nonetheless, while acknowledging the continuing strength of the relationship between ethical concerns and conceptions of nationalism and culture in China, Fitzgerald cautions against extrapolating from such observations a theory of the fundamental incommensurability of ��Chinese�� and ��Western�� cultures. For example, he notes how Western residents of the Treaty Ports in the nineteenth century attributed the apparently languid pace of Chinese life to ��John Chinaman��s�� cyclical conception of time, and tended to ��essentialise�Ka timeless Orient and a progressive Occident��. Fitzgerald points out, however, that ��it is well to remember that Hong Kong Chinese have been prone to make similar comments about the leisurely pace of life and work in the People��s Republic in recent years.��46 He then goes on to argue that differences between European and Chinese perceptions of ��time��, as of ��nation�� or ��community��, need to be understood in terms of history rather than of ��culture�� viewed as a timeless essence:
��In comparing the imagined community of the nation with earlier forms of community, Benedict Anderson has drawn a historical distinction rather than a cultural one, which applies equally to Europe in the age of monarchy and to China under the emperors. This historical distinction is one between consciousness of a moral order outside of progressive time and consciousness of movement in history. In Europe, the transition from one to the other marked a watershed in the development of a distinctively modern consciousness, ��which, more than anything else, made it possible to ��think�� the nation��.��47
Fitzgerald thus sees tradition not as a pre-determined ��given��, but as a historical construct. This does not involve denying the existence of highly significant differences between Chinese traditions and those of ��the West�� or elsewhere, but it questions the assumption that these differences represent an unbridgeable chasm between monolithic absolutes.
In dynastic China, history served as a guide to bureaucratic practice, and as a mirror which Confucian officials could and, on occasion, did hold up before the Emperor in order to upbraid him. ��Distributing praise and blame in order to provide uplifting examples and warnings against infringements of the ethical code��48 has typically been seen as central to the historian��s role in China, and in this respect, as Jenner has put it, ��the Mao era strengthened the moralising approach to the past, changing only a few of the criteria of judgement��.49 One key criterion, according to Michael Hunt, has been the importance of a strong state, and this sense of the overriding need for a strong and unified state has been intensified by China��s traumatic experiences over the past hundred and fifty years:
��The preoccupation with state power stood�Xand still stands�Xas one of the signal features of modern Chinese national identity. Looking to the past to define the new China, political activists in the late Qing and the early Republican periods took as a fundamental point of departure in their thinking the conviction that establishing a strong state was essential if China were to be saved.��50
Jenner goes so far as to assert that history in China ��plays a role comparable to that of religious texts in other cultures. It is also,�� he argues, ��the Last Judgement. The religion of the Chinese ruling classes is the Chinese state, and it is through history that the object of devotion is to be understood.��51 This analogy between history and religion is one that is explicitly drawn by the eminent twentieth-century Chinese historian Qian Mu, who argues that history, and the ��moral spirit�� for which it is the vehicle, does indeed perform in China a role comparable to that performed by religion and nationalism in Western countries.52 Qian��s approach to history was highly influential in the development both of history education in Nationalist Taiwan, and of the subject of ��Chinese History�� in Hong Kong.53
The prevalence in China of this view of history as the religion of the state does not, however, necessarily imply a vision of Chinese tradition as a monolithic, timeless entity. As scholars such as Siu, Faure, Tao,54 and Schrecker55 have demonstrated, Chinese culture has in fact always been immensely varied, diverse and subject to change. In particular, while strong cultural similarities and shared values have tended to characterise and bind together Chinese societies, there is an important distinction to be made between elite and popular culture, with the latter especially being characterised by substantial regional as well as temporal variations. Faure and Tao argue that the Chinese past needs to be seen in Chinese terms, though this does not in any way preclude the making of meaningful comparisons with non-Chinese societies, nor does it imply an uncritical acceptance of some notion of a timeless Chinese ��essence��. Schrecker shows how, even within the culture of China��s bureaucratic elite, rival schools of thought�Xusually arising out of disputes over the exegesis of classical texts�Xhave vied for influence over the centuries. He argues that the mainland authorities, far from allowing the Chinese past to be interpreted in its own terms, have perpetuated gross ideological distortions. Even before the 1989 crackdown, he says,
���Kin what might be considered the relatively minor area of historiography, scholars were still forced to call pre-revolutionary China fengjian [the Chinese term usually translated as ��feudal��]. This bizarre distortion of the past, of course, simply served to keep society from knowing where it stood historically and, what was most important to the Communists, utterly cut it off from the nation��s liberal tradition.��56
There does, nevertheless, still seem to be a real problem even for many supposedly more ��liberal�� Chinese intellectuals when it comes to tolerating plural and conflicting viewpoints. Perry Link has noted in his journal of conversations with mainland intellectuals during the 1980s that:
��The search for Chinese precedents seemed to answer a need, perhaps especially strong in Chinese culture, for a way ��to speak of�� the current historical period. Ancient conceptions of the moral dimensions of language still tended to require that the historical record reflect not just what happened, but ��the proper view�� of what happened. To look for ways to understand the current predicament in earlier ��proper views�� was emotionally and intellectually satisfying for many.��57
While differences and disagreements�Xwhether over historical interpretation, political principle, religious beliefs or private values�Xhave therefore always been as much a feature of Chinese society as of any other, the worship and primacy of the state, combined with the habit of seeking ��proper views�� from past authorities, seems to be so strong a feature of the culture that even many political dissidents have tended to couch their demands for change in terms of the need for a new (or revived) ��correct�� orthodoxy, and for strong, effective national leaders to embody and enact it.58 A number of scholars have noted that notions of civil society�Xthat is, of limits beyond which the authority of the state ought not to step�Xare, while not entirely absent in traditional Chinese thought, nonetheless relatively weak. In the Confucian tradition, according to Edward Shils, although ��tolerance is one of the virtues�K, it does not extend to divergent beliefs in religious, philosophical, or ethical matters.��59 This assessment is supported by Ambrose Y.C.King, when he writes that ��in Confucianism there was no recognized autonomous realm of politics, separate from or independent of morality,�� and ��political pluralism was hardly conceived as a desirable state of affairs.��60 In a society where official history also tends to be treated as religious text�Xa depository of moral exemplars from the past�Xit is also seen as part of the state��s function to define the ��correct�� view of the past.
Notwithstanding this emphasis on state-defined ��correctness��, Lucien Pye argues that twentieth century Chinese nationalism lacks what he calls an ��idealistic substance��. Whereas countries like France, Britain and America each have, according to Pye, sets of values or ideals, derived from the defining events of their national histories, which in turn ��establish constraints on the behavior of the elite by setting standards as to what is expected of true national leaders��, Chinese nationalism, he argues, lacks such a ��content��:
���KChina lacks the idealistic substance of a modern form of nationalism which can provide either inspiration for popular mobilization or disciplining constraints on elite behavior. Instead an overwhelming sense of ethnic identity operates to obscure the fact that there are very few specific ideals for defining unambiguously the meaning of ��Chineseness��. Chinese nationalism is not something Chinese society can use to limit the Chinese state. Rather, Chinese nationalism is what the leaders of the day
say it is, and this means that it becomes a defense of their formulation of
what the consensus should be.��61
One is tempted to quibble over the degree of ��unambiguousness�� which any nationalism displays, but Pye��s central assertion concerning the extremely state-centred, state-defined and ethnically chauvinist nature of Chinese nationalism seems to be well-supported by the findings of other scholars. This appears to have been particularly the case in the field of history, where the interpretation of key historical events or phenomena such as the May Fourth Movement has tended to be tightly controlled and manipulated by the state authorities, whether Communist or Guomindang.62 It has also been reflected in changes to history curricula, with syllabuses in the People��s Republic closely tracking shifts in the balance of political power within the party to accord with the correct ��line�� of the moment. Recent aspirations to make history a vehicle for training students in generic ��skills�� (inspired by British and other overseas practice) have run up against the brick wall of state-imposed nationalist political ��correctness��.63
Marx��s view of history as a ��science�� has of course been highly influential in mainland China. It was implicit, for example, in the statement made in May 2000 by Chen Zili, China��s Minister for Education, when in response to a question regarding the proposal to create a ��New History�� subject in Hong Kong (see Chapter 7), she insisted that ��Chinese history�K should be introduced to students in a very comprehensive and scientific way��.64 However, a number of variants on the Marxist theme have risen to and fallen from favour in the post-1949 period. For example, orthodox Soviet interpretations of history-as-class-struggle were very influential during most of the 1950s, but after 1959 more traditional and ethno-centric attitudes towards the national past began to reassert themselves, so that whereas ��class struggle�� might still provide the main model for interpreting ��foreign�� history, there was some resistance to applying ��class analysis�� to the history of China.65 The Cultural Revolution represented something of a hiatus in academic history, but it featured hysterical campaigns against ��old thought��, for example the campaign condemning Confucius and Lin Biao.66 The Deng era of ��Socialism with Chinese characteristics�� brought some freeing up of debate over the Chinese past, but the decay of socialist ideals in China has encouraged a growing emphasis on ��Chinese characteristics�� rather than on socialism.67
The waning of the influence or credibility of Marxism in China in recent years has led the regime to place new emphasis on the nationalist, culturalist and racialist elements in its ideology.68 In other words, the ethnic and cultural Chineseness of the People��s Republic now matters far more than its internationalist, proletarian character. Indigenous prejudice plays a large part in the definition of this Chineseness, but ��Western�� science or Neo-Darwinist pseudo-science has also been deployed to construct theories of biological and cultural determinism which claim to provide a scientific basis for assertions of the ��primordial�� origins and incommensurability of Chinese history and Chinese values. For example, Sautman observes that most Chinese scientists continue to reject out of hand the ��out of Africa�� theory and insist that all Chinese are descendents of ��Peking Man��, and therefore that ��the Chinese race�� evolved separately in China.69 This resistance of Chinese scientists to conclusions that are accepted by scientists virtually everywhere else is, according to Sautman, a reflection of the fact that ��sinocentric views are a state-certified orthodoxy in China��.70 Myths of descent, whether from ��Peking Man�� or ��the Yellow Emperor�� are, he writes, used to ��draw a scientifically false wall of separation between Chinese and other peoples��.71 It is sometimes claimed that China��s various ethnic minorities somehow share in this common descent, thus theoretically binding these minorities more closely within a Chinese biological unity�X albeit a hierarchical unity, with ��the Han race�� implicitly superior to all others. This vision of an ethnically-defined nation has been a feature of Nationalist as well as Communist ideology�XChina��s first national museum, established in the 1930s, ��embraced ethnology (with a particular emphasis on the study of border peoples) and biological evolution with the aim of demonstrating that human life originated in China.��72 Symbols from China��s past are still used by the government of the People��s Republic to bolster this sense of blood-brotherhood between the minorities and the Han majority, as in the statement that ��the Great Wall is the joint achievement of all China��s minority nationalities���Xa claim that Sautman compares to ��characterising Germany��s Festung Europa of 1940�V4 as a pan-European endeavour.��73
While state-centred and state-defined visions of history have therefore held the field in Communist China, these have not been the simply the expression of a quintessentially ��Chinese�� historical discourse, but rather an amalgam of powerful moralising, statist strands in traditional historiography with certain ��Western�� ideas, notably Neo-Darwinism and Marxism.74 Moreover, an examination of developments in historical scholarship in Taiwan (see Chapter 8), Hong Kong and amongst the Chinese diaspora reinforces the impression that the dominant discourse on the mainland, far from being culturally ��determined��, is ultimately the product of political conditions. Tu Wei-ming��s conception of Chinese culture as a ��living tree�� echoes MacIntyre��s distinction between ��living�� and ��dead�� traditions. For Tu, Chinese thought is not a monolithic, static tradition rooted solely in the soil of the ��motherland��, nor is participation in it necessarily restricted to those who are Chinese by birth or descent, but it is rather something at once more varied, changing and open. The same view is implicit in the conclusion to William Theodore de Bary��s ��The Trouble with Confucianism��, when he writes:
��Today no people can look to their own traditions alone for�Klearning and understanding, any more than could the Confucians earlier. The latter at least understood the need for dialogue and discussion as essential to ��advancing the Way��, even though they were unable to sustain it, much less broaden it, in the given circumstances. Now the time has come for us to extend and expand the discourse, as a dialogue with the past, with other cultures, and even with future generations, who cannot speak for themselves but whose fate is in our hands.��75
POLITICS, IDENTITY AND HISTORY EDUCATION IN BRITAIN
Until relatively recently, history education in Britain, as in China, usually consisted of a dry, factual, state-centred narrative, peppered with moralis-tic verdicts�Xan approach famously parodied in the classic 1066 and All That.76 Slater has similarly described the immediate post-war history syllabus in England as follows:
��Content was largely British, or rather Southern English; Celts looked in to starve, emigrate or rebel; the North to invent looms or work in mills; abroad was of interest once it was part of the Empire; foreigners were either, sensibly, allies, or, rightly, defeated. Skills�Xdid we even use the word?�Xwere mainly those of recalling accepted facts about famous dead Englishmen, and communicated in a very eccentric literary form, the examination length essay. It was an inherited consensus, based largely on hidden assumptions.��77
As Phillips has noted,78 these remained the dominant features of history teaching in most English schools well into the 1970s. However, the dominance of the chronological, narrative, state-centred approach was not a result of adherence to any officially prescribed curriculum, since British governments until the 1980s believed that they should ��leave the ��secret garden�� of the curriculum alone��.79
Phillips argues that questions of history curriculum content in England have been very much bound up with questions of national identity as well as with changing ideas concerning the purposes of teaching history. Thus Britain��s relative decline on the world stage, the influx of immigrants into the country, the growing importance of relations with the rest of Europe, the growth of social science and changes in educational theory all contributed to feelings that history in schools was far too Anglocentric, as well as being ��useless and boring��.80 The Schools Council History Project (SCHP) sought to promote a ��new history�� in the 1970s, which aimed to reduce the ��over-emphasis upon chronology and the consequent tension upon the need to ��get through�� the syllabus�Kthrough ��patch�� or ��thematic�� approaches to the selection of content.��81 It was hoped that this would allow greater scope for the exercise of creative teaching methods, as well as selection of content on the basis of interest and relevance to students. Thus SCHP courses included social, economic and cultural history as well as political history. Historical events and periods were chosen for specific purposes: the history of medicine (a study in development), the American West (a study in depth), the Arab-Israeli or Northern Ireland conflicts (understanding of contemporary problems) and so on. The promotion of ��new�� history, in England as in America, was also a matter of providing new justifications for history��s place in the school curriculum in an era of mass education. This stimulated attempts to demonstrate the subjects usefulness in teaching ��skills��, and hence an elaboration of the nature of history as a discipline or ��craft��, and not simply as a body of established knowledge to be uncritically absorbed. Those who promoted ��new histo-ry�� saw the purpose of the subject as to teach not simply what historians had already discovered about the past, but how they went about discovering it.82
Studies of the British Conservative Government��s moves in the late 1980s and early 1990s to incorporate history into a new ��National Curriculum�� for England have highlighted the role that ideas concerning national identity and the purpose of history teaching played in the debate over National Curriculum history. With regard to content, this often fierce debate between politicians, academics, teachers and the press tended to become polarised between those, many of them supporters of the government, who wanted more British history in the curriculum, as well as a more chronological approach to teaching it, and those, often on the political left, who emphasised the importance of skills and fought for a reduction of the proportion of British history in the syllabus. The latter tended to equate calls for an emphasis on British history with attempts to inculcate an uncritical patriotism.83 Aldrich and Dean cite a 1988 speech by Kenneth Baker, the Education Secretary, in which he insisted that children should be taught the key events in British history, among which he included ��the spread of Britain��s influence for good throughout the world��, largely as a means of inculcating national pride.84 Goodson illustrates the opposing point of view when he quotes from the Interim Report of the National Curriculum History Working Group:
��At the heart of these disagreements on historical knowledge, British history and chronology, is the lingering fear among some members of the group, particularly those who are teachers and educationists, that the history curriculum will be dominated by rigid external testing and rote learning of famous dates in British history.��85
For many teachers and educationalists in Britain, the issue of content�Xand particularly of the proportion to be devoted to national history�Xwas intimately bound up with questions of values and pedagogical methods. However, a number of academic historians, holding a variety of political viewpoints, defended the decision to devote forty percent of the history curriculum to British history. Keith Robbins, a historian with Labour sympathies, warned that seeking to avoid national history and ��set sail in a global ship without anchorage in a particular place through time�� would not help to make history more relevant and interesting for pupils.86 For his part, the Liberal Democrat peer Conrad Russell noted that the History Working Group showed awareness that British History did not necessarily mean ��the History of greater England��.87 The growth in recent years of Scottish and Welsh nationalism, as well as the problems of Northern Ireland, have ensured that the National Curriculum definitely does not envisage British history being taught exclusively from the perspective of England, let alone from that of Whitehall.88
The gradual integration of Europe has provided another politically contentious dimension to debates over history curriculum content in Britain and other European countries. Janet Nelson, a historian of medieval Europe, criticised the History Working Group in England for omitting the reign of Charlemagne from the curriculum, while including ��medieval Islam�� and ��medieval China��. ��If pupils are to understand European distinctiveness�Kas they become citizens of the new Europe,�� asked Nelson, ��do they not also need to learn something of the old?��89 In France, by contrast, a new, compulsory, year-long course in European history was inaugurated in the autumn of 1997 as part of a move in French schools away from the traditional ��heroic, patriotic��, Franco-centric history towards what ��The Economist�� called ��the more academic, ��how-it-really-happened�� sort�� which seeks to place French history in a wider perspective.90
Arguments over the nature of ��Britishness�� (and ��Englishness��, ��Scottishness��, ��Welshness�� etc.), and over the best way to teach students to locate their historical identity in European and global contexts, have thus been central themes of the debate over the reform of history teaching in Britain, as has the role of the subject in providing a training in ��skills�� as opposed to simply communicating a body of received knowledge. The emphasis on ��skills��, and initiatives such as the promotion of local history, have also played a crucial part in enabling history teachers to redefine their subject, helping to divest it of its ��dry-as-dust�� image, and rendering it more relevant to students in an era of mass secondary education. Moreover, although the debate over history teaching in Britain involved lively and intensive public controversy, the curriculum that emerged did not reflect the kind of triumphalist account that many key figures in the Conservative government would have preferred. The proportion of content devoted to British history was high, but representatives of history teachers and others involved in the development of the curriculum were largely successful in ensuring that the conception of ��Britishness�� enshrined in the syllabus was diverse and pluralistic, not monolithic and homogenous. As subsequent chapters will relate, the relative autonomy enjoyed by curriculum developers in Britain, and the freedom this has allowed them to promote a liberal vision of history as a critical discipline, contrast markedly with the political constraints within which their Hong Kong counterparts have had to operate in their pursuit of very similar aims.
THE PRESENT STUDY
This opening chapter has analysed in broad terms the historical, cultural and philosophical background to the development of history curricula worldwide, with special reference to the cases of China and Britain. The following chapter provides an overview of the political, social, and administrative contexts of the development of Hong Kong��s education system from the 1960s to the early 21st century. The nature of ��colonialism�� in Hong Kong is examined, along with the political and social changes that have occurred during the transition to Chinese rule. The ways in which political factors have influenced the education system and the curriculum policy-making process generally are also analysed. In particular, the implications are discussed of the shift from a relatively depoliticised context to one in which a patriotic or nation-building agenda has been openly adopted by administrators, politicians, educationalists and sections of the media in the years before and after Hong Kong��s retrocession.
In Chapter 3, an analysis is attempted of local people��s evolving sense of identity as reflected in popular culture and the media, and the roles of ethnicity, language and culture, as well as history, in shaping that identity. This is followed by a discussion of the new Hong Kong Museum of History (opened in 2001) and the controversy that surrounded it. The museum is seen as one public expression of an ��official�� (or officially-sanctioned) view of the local past. It reveals how acknowledgement of local cultural and historical distinctiveness vis-a-vis the Chinese mainland has become largely taboo in post-1997 Hong Kong.
The findings of the present study are discussed in Chapters 4 to 7. In Chapters 4 to 6, the findings are analysed in two main sections discussing, respectively, changes to curriculum content and aims, and the process of curriculum policymaking. Firstly, the visions of history and the pedagogical recommendations contained in official syllabuses are examined against the background of the broader socio-political and educational developments discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, and are compared with the values and pedagogy of the separate subject of Chinese History. The second section of each of these chapters is devoted to an analysis of the curriculum development process, and examines the bureaucracy responsible for formulating the official curriculum, and the composition of those committees in which syllabus and examination policies have been debated. The roles of education officials, teachers, and academics are considered�Xparticularly those of any key individuals�Xand their principal aims and concerns are identified. Interviews were undertaken with a number of individuals who had sat on the main curriculum committees, but the principal sources for this research were the minutes of those committees, and other documents contained in the files of the Hong Kong Examinations Authority, to which I was given full access. To obtain a more complete picture of the kinds of political pressures to which curriculum developers were subject, reference was also made to coverage of history curriculum development in the local Chinese-and English-language press.
While some inferences are made regarding curriculum implementation, this does not form the main focus of this study, which is primarily (though not exclusively) concerned with the politics of curriculum formulation.91 Studies of the school curriculum in Hong Kong have in any case demonstrated the high degree of correlation between official guidelines on syllabus content and textbook production (and the consequent similarity of most textbooks in terms of content), and the high degree of reliance placed by teachers and, especially, students on these textbooks.92 Analysis of the content of History textbooks undertaken in the course of this research, as well as the testimony of interviewees, confirms this impression.
Chapter 7 discusses developments related to history and history teaching in the period from Hong Kong��s return to Chinese rule until 2002. Recent and current initiatives in the field of history curriculum policy are discussed, with special attention given to the production of new senior secondary level curricula for both History and Chinese History, and the debate over a proposal to create a ��New History�� subject, merging History and Chinese History at junior secondary level. These developments are regarded here as litmus tests of the new regime��s priorities in the educational field, particularly in terms of its willingness, in the interests of promoting critical and analytical ��skills��, to countenance the exposure of students to visions of Hong Kong��s historical identity that might conflict with the ��official�� version outlined in Chapter 3.
Chapter 8 summarises the findings of the previous four chapters, assessing the various influences that have shaped the History curriculum, and in particular identifying those problems which have been most crucial in frustrating official efforts to promote a critical-rational, liberal approach to history teaching. The discussion then returns to an analysis of the role played by ��colonialism��, ��culture�� and politics in the development of the History subject, drawing on the findings of this study to construct a critique of the assumptions, mentioned at the start of this chapter, which continue to influence debate over history education in Hong Kong.
NOTES: ��History��/��history��; ��England��/��Britain��
Given the confusion involved in referring to two history subjects in Hong Kong, I have followed the practice throughout this study of using ��History�� with a capital ��H�� to denote the school subject of History in Hong Kong. I use history with a small ��h�� to talk about ��history�� more generally, and sometimes to refer to the ��history curriculum�� or ��history teaching�� in general, encompassing both ��History�� and ��Chinese History��.
References in the text to ��England�� or to ��English�� curricula or education are not sloppy shorthand for ��Britain�� or ��British��. England and Wales have their own education system, distinct from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Chapter 2 History, Politics and Education in Hong Kong
INTRODUCTION
HISTORY AS A SCHOOL SUBJECT IS A MIRROR THAT HOLDS UP BEFORE children a vision of their collective past, but the shape of that mirror, and thus the vision of the past reflected in it, is influenced by the political, social and cultural forces at work in society as a whole. In most countries, it is seen as a subject whose importance for purposes of political socialisation is too great for history teachers alone to be left to decide how to teach it. However, even when the autonomy of schools and the freedom of teachers are relatively secure, the nature of history itself means that current political concerns and societal values inevitably impinge upon the ways in which teachers and students approach�Xor are expected to approach�Xthis subject.
This chapter therefore seeks to trace the evolution of these concerns and values in Hong Kong from the 1960s onwards�Xthe period of enormous political, societal and educational change that constitutes the focus of the present study. It is suggested that the state in Hong Kong, after as well as before the transfer of sovereignty to China, is best characterised as a collaborative partnership between local elites and the British-or Beijing-sponsored local government, acquiesced in by the bulk of the population. The terms of this partnership have, however, shifted markedly during the period under study. The causes and character of this shift, and the ways in which it has both influenced and been influenced by a strengthening sense of local identity, are among the principal themes of the discussion in this and the subsequent chapter.
To begin with, a brief survey of economic and social conditions in Hong Kong since the end of the 1960s is provided. The turbulent political scene during the years of transition is also analysed, and particular attention is devoted to the following issues: the nature of ��colonialism�� in British Hong Kong; the relationships between Britain, Hong Kong and the PRC; Hong Kong��s bureaucratic administrative culture; and the implications of the administration��s low level of legitimacy. Four different phases of Hong Kong��s transition are identified, and the shifts that have occurred in the pattern of political influence are examined. This historical analysis provides the background for an assessment of changes to and influences on education policy. Special emphasis is placed on those aspects of the education system which have impinged most directly on the development of History as a school subject, and on its status within the broader school curriculum.
I �XTHE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
A. THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONTEXT
During the 1960s, Hong Kong was overwhelmingly an immigrant society, consisting of refugees from Guangdong who provided the cheap labour for a booming manufacturing sector. The capital for local industry was largely provided by refugee entrepreneurs who had fled Shanghai in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Meanwhile, the finance, banking and property sectors were still controlled by old British firms, the most powerful of which was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. The economy was undergoing rapid export-led growth, which lasted into the 1970s.
The economic base changed drastically from the late 1970s onwards. The first major change was the introduction of Deng Xiaoping��s ��Open Door�� policy in China. Deng��s reforms encouraged many local entrepreneurs to move their factories across the border into Guangdong, a trend that was to accelerate during the 1980s and 1990s. Hong Kong was transformed into an economy largely dependent on financial and other service industries linked to a manufacturing base that by the late 1980s had relocated itself to mainland China. The move towards a more service-based economy, and the massive expansion of Hong Kong��s prosperity during this period was accompanied by the rise of a local middle class largely born, bred and educated within the territory. However, despite greater social stability and growing economic prosperity, Hong Kong society remained characterised by massive inequalities of wealth. Such inequalities were to some extent perpetuated through the ��banding�� system for the allocation of places in local schools. This is discussed further below.
A second major change to Hong Kong��s identity was signalled by the Hong Kong Government��s abandonment, in October 1980, of the ��touch base�� policy on immigration from mainland China. The sheer numbers of immigrants were proving problematic, and the improving political and economic situation on the mainland in the early 1980s, along with improved mainland-Hong Kong co-operation, made it politically easier for the administration in Hong Kong to introduce a stricter immigration regime. The predominance of impoverished first-generation refugees from China was thus further diluted, as a new generation of educated young Hongkongers whose only ��home�� was Hong Kong gained increasing social prominence. The greater immigration control enjoyed by the government increased its ability to regulate population growth and thus to better plan the provision of public services such as housing, health and education. The tightening of immigration controls was also part consequence, part cause of a gradual increase in anti-immigrant sentiment amongst the local population, whose own refugee roots seemed to fade from popular memory, giving way to determined opposition to any further influx of migrants from the mainland.1
Hong Kong society was further influenced by another population trend�Xa rise in emigration. During the 1980s and early 1990s, many thousands of mainly middle-class Hongkongers, including many teachers and government officials (and some of those interviewed in the course of this research) managed, through emigration or other means to obtain foreign nationality�Xusually Canadian, Australian, British or American. In some professions, such as teaching, the ��brain-drain�� became quite severe for a time. The cause of this scramble for passports was the uncertainty aroused by the troubled politics of Hong Kong��s transition to Chinese rule, especially following the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.2
B. HONG KONG��S COLLABORATIVE POLITICS�XWITH OR WITHOUT COLONIALISM
Hong Kong was a British colony until June 30, 1997, although from the 1970s it was officially described as a ��territory��.3 Caution is in any event necessary when applying the ��colonial�� label to Hong Kong during this period. This is not to deny that the administrative and institutional structure (the education system included) retained many features that were recognisably ��colonial��. It is simply to stress that Hong Kong��s uniqueness cannot be accounted for by more simplistic or stereotypical theories of colonialism such as those alluded to in the previous chapter. Hong Kong by the last quarter of the twentieth century was an anachronism: a postcolonial colony, a relic of the British Empire still surviving in an era in which ��colonialism�� had become a dirty word in Britain and throughout the world. Like other colonies, it had been developed and governed on the basis of a tacit contract with local elites. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere, the colonial system was not simply an imported model ��made in England��. Hong Kong��s version was, at least in part, Hong Kong-made, since the British were only able to govern effectively by ��manipulating, reforming and unifying indige-nous economic and political structures.�� However, unlike other colonies, Hong Kong society was not ��inevitably nationalised through its own dynamic.��4 In other words, colonialism did not foster in the local elite an active desire for national independence.
The reasons for this lie in the nature of the tacit collaborative contract which underpinned Hong Kong��s colonial state. This notion of a ��collaborative�� colonialism is taken from Ronald Robinson, who has proposed an ��excentric idea of imperialism�� which, unlike most Marxist-inspired theories, does not see the process ��almost entirely in terms of metropolitan drives projecting on passive peripheries��.5 Robinson notes that, in the British case, the main drive behind the establishment of empire was the protection and extension of trade. Therefore, he argues, ��to be worthwhile, empire of any kind had to be ��on the cheap����, and ��unless the weightier part [of the indigenous society] could be cajoled to co-operate, or at least acquiesce, trade could not be promoted, imperium upheld or xenophobic reaction contained cheaply��.6 This necessitated the establishment of collaborative relations between the colonising power and local elites. However, imperialism brought changes and influences to colonised societies that led to a gradual change and eventual breakdown in the collaborative arrangements which upheld British rule. In the post-war period, the costs to Britain of maintaining imperial rule in South and South-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere came to outweigh the benefits�Xquite apart from the shifts in opinion whereby colonialism came to appear odious to an increasingly large segment of the public in Britain itself as well as in the Empire.7
Hong Kong, however, was exceptional in this regard, essentially because, as C.K.Lau has noted, British rule continued to be preferred by the vast majority of the population to rule by Communist China, which represented the only realistic alternative.8 This did not mean that local people actually enjoyed being ruled by foreigners, but rather that they were prepared to acquiesce in this state of affairs for fear of something worse. At the same time, the colonial government was compelled in the post-war decades to perform a delicate balancing act, conscious of the fact that its continuation in power depended entirely on the continuation of this acquiescence. It did not ultimately have the power to enforce obedience upon a recalcitrant populace, and it could not appeal to the legitimacy afforded by a popular mandate. As the Secretary of Home Affairs put it in 1974,
��We [the Hong Kong Government] proceed by consensus rather than debate for this is the only course open to a government required to continue indefinitely in power. A government newly elected to power on the basis of a political programme can ride roughshod over even quite substantial minorities. This we cannot do here. Consensus implies consultation, negotiation and compromise on a scale that would be unacceptable to a party returned to power by election.��9
In other words, the terms of the collaborative contract that maintained colonial rule in Hong Kong meant that, by the 1970s, the legitimacy of the colonial administration was very fragile, and its coercive power in consequence was very weak.
British colonialism in Hong Kong during the post-war period has been described by the local historian Steve Tsang as leading to ��the best government possible within the Chinese tradition��. By this he seems to mean a benevolent autocracy governing with the passive acquiescence of the population, while successfully discouraging their active participation in politics.10 In the words of another local historian, Tak-wing Ngo, ��there is a high degree of consensus that the benevolent policy of the colonial state was the major determinant of Hong Kong��s developmental success.��11 This benevolence was seen to consist principally of an adherence to laissez-faire economics, low taxation, tight control of public spending and the upholding of the rule of law. However, a revisionist school of Hong Kong historians has recently challenged this long-established consensus, arguing that the penetration of the colonial government in the political, social and economic arenas was far deeper than has commonly been supposed. For example, Ngo argues that the government��s much-vaunted commitment to laissez-faire was to a large degree hollow and hypocritical. He and others have applied to Hong Kong Robinson��s theory of colonialism as a network of collaborative contracts, and have concluded that the colonial authorities, the local and expatriate commercial elite and, more recently, the mainland authorities have all actively conspired to maintain a political and economic order which funnelled the vast bulk of the benefits of economic growth into the hands of a tiny, privileged minority. Nonetheless, Ngo concedes that the relatively positive perception of the colonial regime, both amongst historians and the population at large, ��did not rest on a totally hypocritical construction of benevolent rule�K
Probably it was a mixture of positive as well as negative policy measures, and the intended and unintended outcomes of progress and development, that allowed the ruling authorities to convey the belief among many Hong Kong citizens that colonial policies were for the most part benevolent in nature.��12
The weakness of a distinct Hong Kong consciousness amongst the Hong Kong population before the 1970s, and the subsequent emergence of such a consciousness, is
discussed in Chapter 3. In terms of its political significance, this phenomenon was linked to a widespread avoidance of political involvement, reflected in the absence of any significant popular pressure for greater democracy in the territory. The local British administration was nonetheless acutely conscious of the precariousness of its own author-ity, the principal threat to which came not from within Hong Kong itself, but from across the border on the Chinese mainland. In essence, the survival of Hong Kong had come to depend by the 1950s almost entirely on the Chinese government��s continuing perception of Hong Kong��s economic usefulness. Instability on the mainland, in the form of famine and political turmoil, rocked Hong Kong during the 1960s, particularly in 1967 with the Red Guard-inspired anti-colonial demonstrations.
These disturbances, and perhaps more especially the Star Ferry Riots of 1966, awoke the government to the fragility of its domestic legitimacy. It sought to bolster this in the post-1967 period through an extension of public services, particularly in the areas of housing, health and education, as well as through efforts to improve its sensitivity to the concerns and needs of the local community through the City District Officers�� Scheme�X a classic attempt at what King has termed ��the administrative absorption of politics.��13 The administration also found itself coming under some pressure from a growing, educated local middle class. The 1970s saw the emergence of pressure-group politics in Hong Kong, with a number of groups pushing for improved public services and greater recognition of the Chinese identity of Hong Kong.14 The ��Chinese Language Movement�� of this period helped to persuade the government finally to make Chinese an official language in 1974, while the Student Movement tried to whip up patriotic Chinese sentiment over issues such as the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai (Senkakuji) Islands. Student nationalism ��served both as a source of identity formation and as an ideology for the critique of colonial administration.��15 However, there seemed to be little public appetite for challenging the governmental system itself, and the prevailing attitude amongst the general population was one of ��apoliticism�� or an avoidance of political controversy. At the same time, the government, under Governor Maclehose, sought increasingly to identify itself with the local population, and to mould Hong Kong society into a more cohesive community, though one which would nonetheless remain depoliticised. Campaigns were launched to ��Fight Crime�� and ��Clean Hong Kong��, with slogans such as ��Hong Kong for Hong Kong people��, ��Be loyal to Hong Kong��, and ��We are a family living under one roof��.16 The Maclehose administration was also responsible for purging the police force of its most seriously corrupt elements, and bringing the problem of official corruption under control by setting up the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). In these ways, and through reforms to the civil service and further efforts to improve the opportunities for, and management of, public consultation, the colonial government was able, with considerable success, to transform its image and strengthen its position during this period.17
That said, the Maclehose regime made no moves to introduce into Hong Kong any significant element of representative government. The administrative culture remained one of bureaucratic hegemony, with the civil service, in alliance with entrenched business interests, enjoying a virtual monopoly on political power. The fact that Hong Kong society in the 1970s was remarkably free and open by the standards of East Asia was due less to the institutional structure of the government, than to the respect for rule of law and the liberal instincts which had become part of its bureaucratic culture. This in turn was influenced by the fact that the administration, the legal system and the civil service were institutionally linked or ultimately accountable to a democratically-elected parliament in London,18 where old-style ��colonialism�� was no longer ��politically correct��. Nonetheless, the benevolence of the administration had its limits: it could not afford to alienate the business leaders who were its chief collaborators, and whose prosperity still constituted, to a large extent, Hong Kong��s raison d��etre. For Hong Kong to retain its economic usefulness, its government had to remain a government ��on the cheap��. This, at least, was broadly the view of the local and expatriate business community, as well as of the mainland Chinese government. In addition, neither the leaders of the People��s Republic nor Hong Kong��s commercial elite were willing to countenance the development of representative government in the territory.19 Such resistance, along with the lack of popular agitation for any such change, was often cited as an excuse for the British Hong Kong Government��s failure to introduce democracy.
By the period with which this book is concerned, Hong Kong remained under British rule not primarily as a result of the might of ��British Imperialism��, but more as a consequence of the self-interested collaboration of the British Government, Hong Kong��s business elite, and the rulers of the Communist state to its north, combined with the acquiescence of the local population. The unwillingness of these elements to ��rock the boat�� meant that the business-oriented slant of government policy went relatively unchallenged, and government spending as a proportion of GDP remained low by the standards of East Asian countries with similar levels of prosperity. One result of this was that education spending in Hong Kong continued throughout the final period of British rule to lag significantly behind levels seen in countries such as Singapore or Taiwan.
PHASES OF THE POLITICAL TRANSITION
Having discussed in the previous section what kind of colony Hong Kong had become by the late 1970s, it remains to outline the main stages of the process by which the colony/territory became a Special Administrative Region of the Peoples�� Republic of China. The purpose of this section is to provide a brief summary of the politics of Hong Kong��s transition, sufficient to enable the reader to understand the background both to educa-tional change during this period, and more specifically to changes related to the teaching of history in schools.
LATE 1970s�XEARLY 1980s
This was the period during which the ��1997 factor�� first began to loom large in the consciousness of Hong Kong��s population. Governor Maclehose raised the issue on a visit to Beijing in 1979 in connection with the question of commercial leases in the New Territories (all of which were due to expire on June 30, 1997), and returned to Hong Kong declaring that it was ��business as usual��. For the next two years, the British continued to solicit a formal agreement from the Chinese government to resolve the problem of the post-1997 status of the New Territories, hoping that China would consent to a lease-back arrangement allowing continued British administration. Deng and the Chinese leadership, for their part, do not seem to have developed any definite policy on Hong Kong��s medium-term future in advance of Maclehose��s initiative.20 Once the issue was raised, however, the Chinese leaders quickly saw the possibility of applying to Hong Kong the formula they had been devising for reunification with Taiwan�Xthat of ��one country; two systems��.21
Serious negotiations over Hong Kong��s future began in 1982 with a visit by British Prime Minister Thatcher to Beijing, during which she tried to insist on the need for continued British administration in Hong Kong, while in response the Chinese hardened their own position over the question of sovereignty over the territory. These conflicting views were openly stated, with the Chinese side declaring that sovereignty over Hong Kong belonged to China and was not negotiable. Such statements led, according to Tsang, to a dramatic change of mood in Hong Kong, so that from 1982 ��an air of anxious anticipation prevailed.�� Local people had very mixed views on the subject of Hong Kong��s status:
On the one hand, Chinese nationalist writings and communist propaganda had made most local residents believe that the British acquired Hong Kong through the so-called ��opium wars�� and that colonialism was inherently bad. They felt they should be proud of being Chinese and should desire the early departure of the British ��imperialists��. On the other hand, the idea of being handed over to a communist regime whose atrocious record some had experienced first hand and others had experienced through relatives and friends terrified them. Most of them had seen the great differences between the Hong Kong and the Chinese governments at work�K They were themselves affected by Chinese nationalism, but could not believe that the Chinese leaders would put nationalism above Hong Kong��s economic value.��22
In 1982, it suddenly appeared as if China��s leaders were, ultimately, prepared to put nationalism first, and though ��a latent sense of optimism or naivete��23 on the part of the local population soon reasserted itself, an air of anxiety surrounding ��1997�� also persisted.
1982�V1989
The outcome of the Anglo-Chinese negotiations which lasted until September 1984 was that the British agreed to surrender sovereignty in return for a raft of guarantees that Hong Kong��s ��lifestyle�� would be preserved essentially unchanged for fifty years following the territory��s retrocession in 1997. The ��Joint Declaration�� was thus designed to ensure that the ��colonial�� system of governance (now termed ��executive-led government��) as it had evolved in Hong Kong up to that point would be preserved. The considerable powers enjoyed by the British Governor before 1997 would therefore, the Chinese side assumed, be inherited on July 1, 1997, by the Chinese-appointed ��Chief Executive��. The British managed to have included in the 1984 agreement stipulations designed to bolster the confidence of investors and of the local community�Xin particular the promises to preserve the common law system in the territory, and to introduce a greater representative element into local political institutions. However, the real test of the ��one country; two systems�� promise was to lie in the drafting and post-1997 implementation of China��s ��Basic Law�� for the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. In this regard, Tsang observes that
��interpretation remains a major problem, not least because the Chinese did not understand what made Hong Kong tick when they signed the agreement. In an important sense, they did not really know what they had committed to maintain unchanged for fifty years.��24
This was only to become gradually apparent after the handover. In the mid-to-late 1980s, however, apprehension and uncertainty about the approaching return to Chinese rule led many Hong Kong people to think seriously for the first time about what defined their ��lifestyle�� which was supposed to remain unchanged for half a century. In other words, many Hongkongers were forced to address the question of what it was about the way Hong Kong worked that made it so different from the Chinese mainland. Their confidence in the future was not greatly boosted by the minimal measures taken by the Hong Kong Government to fulfil the promise of greater democracy. Elections for District Boards were introduced in 1984, but in 1987 the Government manipulated the results of a public opinion survey to support its claim that there was insufficient popular demand in the territory to justify a faster pace of democratisation.25 The British administration in Hong Kong was anxious to do nothing that would cause open conflict with Beijing and damage confidence in Hong Kong��s future.
The administration��s pusillanimity during this period was largely a reflection of its weakening base of support. The legitimacy of British rule in Hong Kong was slipping away. Those groups, particularly in the financial and commercial world, which had previously been the administration��s principal collaborators, moved to demonstrate their loyalty to Hong Kong��s future sovereigns across the border. There was also a measure of anxiety within the bureaucracy itself, which had seriously begun to ��localise�� its senior ranks only after the inevitability of Hong Kong��s retrocession became clear. During this period, British or other expatriate administrative officers still dominated the senior levels of the administration. There was a recognition that this situation could not last, but uncertainty about the pace and extent of localisation that the Chinese government would require. Some reassurance was provided, however, by China��s public commitment to a ��through train�� for the civil service and for Hong Kong��s other major institutions.26
The growing Chinese influence over Hong Kong was evinced by a phenomenon much commented upon during the period of political transition: ��self-censorship��. This refers to the practice of media organisations, publishers (particularly of school textbooks) and individuals in various public or not-so-public positions second-guessing the wishes of the mainland regime and suppressing material or opinions that might offend or displease the Chinese authorities. It was feared that the spread of ��self-censorship�� might lead to a subversion of Hong Kong��s promised autonomy even before the official handover of power to China had taken place. The manipulation by the British Hong Kong authorities of the results of the 1987 survey on the expansion of democratisation was an example of the way in which a fear of ��rocking the boat�� on the part of Hong Kong��s establishment seemed to be turning it into an accomplice of mainland interests.27 Such episodes helped bring home to community leaders the limits of the extent to which they could rely on Britain to protect Hong Kong��s autonomy and way of life.
The event which above all others helped to shape Hong Kong people��s consciousness of a distinct and separate ��Hong Kong identity�� was the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4 1989. The crushing of the mainland pro-democracy movement, with which millions of Hongkongers had come to sympathise, shattered overnight the mood of cautious optimism concerning the retrocession that had prevailed prior to this, and brought home to local people the fragility of the promises of autonomy for Hong Kong made by Beijing. At the same time, the strength of support within Hong Kong for the students in Beijing surprised and alarmed the Chinese leadership. They had seen Hong Kong as a purely commercial city�Xa place where most people were simply not interested in political issues, but only in making money. The protests by over a million local residents on Hong Kong��s streets following the massacre in Beijing seemed to show that Hong Kong was a ��political city�� after all, and, as such, a possible base for sub-version of the mainland regime. The events of 1989 thus led to a hardening of Beijing��s line on matters concerning Hong Kong, and to an increasing polarisation within Hong Kong between the so-called ��pro-�� and ��anti-China�� elements.
1990�V1997
The final phase of the transition to Chinese rule was marked by British efforts to shore up local and international confidence in Hong Kong��s future following the political earthquake of 1989, and by increasing suspicion and hostility in Anglo-Chinese relations. Among the major confidence-building measures taken by the Hong Kong Government in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen were the decision to build a massive new international airport, and the move to greatly expand the provision of tertiary education.28 These proposals ran into opposition from ��pro-China�� elements for different reasons. The expansion of tertiary education, taken together with the decision to retain English-style three-year degree courses rather than moving to the four-year model adopted in mainland China, was seen by some as an attempt to extend British ��neo-colonial�� influence in higher education beyond the handover.29 In the case of the new airport, suspicions were expressed that this was part of a plot by the British to drain the coffers of the Hong Kong Government before the handover, by awarding fat contracts to British companies. Such suspicions tended increasingly to poison dealings between Britain and China over Hong Kong in the years after 1989.30
Political affiliations in the 1990s were increasingly defined by the degree to which political groupings were prepared to collaborate with the future sovereign power. When political parties first emerged in Hong Kong in the late ��80s and early ��90s, the two main groupings as they were referred to in the media were the so-called ��pro-China�� parties on the one hand, and the ��pro-democracy��/��anti-China�� parties on the other.31 There was no such thing as a ��pro-British party���Xidentification with Britain was clearly not an option for those who wanted to play any part in shaping the territory��s political future. The emergence of local political parties also reflected the growth of an increasingly vibrant civil society in Hong Kong.32
The atmosphere of relations between Britain, Hong Kong and China was not improved by the strong performance of pro-democracy parties in the first direct elections to the Legislative Council in 1991. The following year, Governor Patten��s reforms, and the way in which they were received on the mainland, had the effect of exacerbating the polarisation of Hong Kong politics between the ��pro��- and ��anti-China�� camps. At the same time, however, the ��colonial�� administration��s late push for greater democracy brought it the qualified support of the pro-democracy parties, amongst whose members were many who had previously been amongst the ��colonial�� government��s most severe critics. As a result of Patten��s programme, the popularity and authority of the outgoing British administration was enhanced, while it increasingly found itself alienated from the predominantly wealthy, pro-business, establishment interests from amongst whom the British had previously recruited their most important collaborators. The ��pro-China�� forces in Hong Kong drew much of their support from big businessmen, many of whom had been closely associated with the colonial regime as recently as five or ten years earlier.33
While these political upheavals were taking place, many Hongkongers who could afford to do so were taking out insurance against future political instability in the form of foreign nationality for themselves and their families. The British Government refused to grant full British nationality to Hong Kong citizens, despite pressure from the Hong Kong Government for it to do so.34 Instead, in the aftermath of Tiananmen, London introduced a ��British Nationality Scheme�� targeted at people in what were seen as key professions, with the intention of preventing an exacerbation of the ��brain drain�� which was resulting from the exodus of professionals seeking foreign nationality. Teaching was among the professions most affected by this. The British scheme was denounced as shamefully inadequate by pro-democracy elements in Hong Kong, and as insidious imperialist ��fifth-columnism�� by the ��pro-China�� faction.35
Following the breakdown of co-operation between Britain and China over the preparations for Hong Kong��s handover, the Chinese-appointed ��Preliminary Working Committee�� for Hong Kong moved to establish ��provisional�� legislative bodies which would take over from those elected in 1995 under Patten��s reforms. The derailing of the promised ��through-train�� put the civil service in an extremely awkward position in the run-up to the retrocession, since the ��provisional�� bodies, once constituted, proceeded to pass resolutions and make pronouncements that conflicted with those of their elected counterparts in Hong Kong.
Among the issues addressed by the Beijing-sponsored bodies was education, with their main concerns revolving around how to remove the supposed taint of ��colonialism�� from the local system, and socialise Hong Kong students as Chinese patriots. The school subjects seen as being most important in this regard were Chinese History and History. The comments made by mainland officials on such matters were often vague, as when Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen declared in November 1996 that
The contents of some textbooks currently used in Hong Kong do not
accord with history or reality, contradict the spirit of ��one country, two
systems�� and the Basic Law, and must be revised.��36
By not saying which textbooks he was referring to, Qian left it to Education Department bureaucrats and publishers to decide how much they should change, thus encouraging the growth of ��self-censorship��.37
The months and years preceding the return of Hong Kong to China were a time of mounting anxiety for many in the territory, not least those involved in education, concerning the extent to which the post-handover government was likely to tolerate the continued exercise of academic freedom and other civil liberties. The official line taken by the Chinese leadership remained reassuring, but contradictory signals occasionally emanated from officials and individuals closely associated with the Beijing authorities, making the task of second-guessing their intentions all the more difficult.38 Uncertainty persisted as to whether the emphasis of ��one country; two systems�� would be on the ��one country�� or the ��two systems�� after July 1, 1997.
POST-1997
Hong Kong��s return to Chinese rule was accompanied by a return to a pattern of politics in some ways reminiscent of the 1960�V70s period, except that it was ��pro-China�� big business which now enjoyed privileged access to the corridors of power. Other moves, such as the return to the practice of appointing members to District Boards, and the reinstatement or strengthening of certain draconian colonial ordinances relating to public order indicated that the new administration intended to reclaim many of the prerogatives which recent British administrations had foregone. The legislature was weakened, due partly to the dilution of its elected component, and partly to the unwillingness of Hong Kong��s new leaders to involve it in the decision-making process as closely as the Patten administration had done. The ��executive-led�� style of the new government was seen by some commentators as more ��colonial�� than what had immediately preceded it. Indeed, Scott has characterised the Chinese Government��s preferred model for post-handover Hong Kong as a ��revamped traditional colonial model��.39
However, the ability of the new regime to remodel itself along these lines has been limited by a number of factors. Firstly, following several administrative blunders in the first year following the handover, Tung was temporarily thwarted in his efforts to mould his appointed, business-dominated Executive Council into a pseudo-cabinet with individuals given responsibility for particular policy areas. Instead, decision-making authority remained principally in the hands of Hong Kong��s ��heaven-born��, the administrative grade of the civil service. ��More colonial again�� is how at least one former administrative officer has described the post-1997 culture of the governing elite.40 The Hong Kong Transition Project in 1998 reported that
The civil service, which had begun to open up and democratize under Chris Patten��s support of Anson Chan��s civil service reforms, reverted to a near colonial, quasi-mandarin attitude of arrogance, isolation and disdain of its fellow citizens.��41
When, at the outset of his second term as Chief Executive in 2002, Tung appointed ��ministers�� to head the administration��s policymaking branches, a number of the appointees were the civil servants who had previously performed the same duties as ��secretaries�� rather than ��ministers��. Moreover, the civil service position of ��secretary�� remained, though theoretically subordinate to the new ��minister��. In the case of Education, the former ��Secretary��, Fanny Law, remained in post while the new minister, Arthur Lee, was installed above her. The government claimed that the ministerial system would ensure greater ��accountability��, but given the nature of the post-handover political system this could only mean accountability to the Beijing-appointed Chief Executive, rather than to an elected majority in the Legislative Council. In the event of any stand-off between the new ��ministers�� and the powerful civil service, it thus remained unclear whether the un-elected ministers would enjoy greater authority or legitimacy than their un-elected civil service counterparts.
Secondly, despite the disbanding of the Legislative Council (Legco) elected under the Patten reforms, its post-handover successors�Xthe ��provisional�� Legco appointed by Beijing�Xstill retained a critical attitude towards the executive. This leads Scott to conclude that, by the time of the handover, ��the informal role of the Legislative Council, as a body which held the Executive accountable, had become institutionalised��.42 Hong Kong��s post-1997 polity thus consists of a predominant bureaucracy, a conservative, pro-Beijing and pro-business executive, an assertive if weakened legislature, and a civil society which, ��far from being cowed into passive acquiescence�� has ��maintained its vibrancy��. As a result, according to Scott, the links between the various components of Hong Kong��s political establishment have become ��disarticulated��. This has limited the capacity of the new administration to mould a new order in Hong Kong according to the wishes of local ��pro-China�� forces, despite the increased influence of the latter and of conservative elements more generally.
One instance of the administration��s adherence to a ��softly, softly�� approach in its remoulding of Hong Kong��s institutions has been the issue of legislation on Clause 23 of the Basic Law (Hong Kong��s post-1997 mini-constitution). This requires the introduction of a law on subversion, and has therefore been viewed with extreme nervousness by local human rights organisations and the ��pro-democracy�� camp in general. At the time of writing (November 2002), the ritual process of public ��consultations�� over the subversion legislation is finally underway. Doubts about the commitment of the administration to a liberal approach to civil liberties issues were reinforced when the Minister responsible for the legislation, Regina Ip, declared publicly that people should not regard democracy as ��a panacea��, since, she claimed, Hitler had been elected on the basis of universal suffrage�Xcomments that provoked a storm of criticism in the local press.
There have, meanwhile, been signs that press and academic freedom have come under greater threat since the handover. Steve Vines, formerly the editor of a local English-language newspaper, has noted that Hong Kong did not really acquire an energetic and assertive free press until the 1970s, while he sees the 1980s as the heyday of press freedom. By the 1990s, however, he argues that this ��golden age�� was already coming to an end:
���Kmedia tycoons, who were previously on intimate terms with the colonial administration, have had to leap out of the British bed and try and get comfortable in the Chinese bed. This meant having to prove themselves as loyal converts. Most have made the transition with little effort, leaving a mere two Chinese-language daily newspapers [Apple Daily and the Hong Kong Economic Journal] at true arms length from the administration.��43
Commercial considerations, and the importance and influence in Hong Kong of mainland investors and government-backed corporations, played an important role, according to
Vines, in persuading editors, or their proprietors, of the virtues of toeing the mainland line. In particular, this has meant adherence to the ��one China�� orthodoxy of the PRC government. Vines describes the controversy that erupted over this issue before the handover, in June 1996, when Lu Ping, the head of Beijing��s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, attempted to clarify the official mainland view on this issue. Lu demonstrated, according to Vines,
a lack of awareness of how press freedom operates in the rest of the world: he said that he could not envisage the United States permitting its media to advocate the independence of Hawaii from the rest of the US. Realising the damage he had done, he returned to the subject of press freedom during a visit to Tokyo, when he stressed that ��people in Hong Kong can disagree and criticise Chinese policies, and even oppose the Chinese Government��, but ��It��s all right if reporters objectively report. But if they advocate, it is an action. It has nothing to do with freedom of the press.��44
Since 1997, the editorial policy of Hong Kong��s flagship English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (owned by Robert Kwok, a Malaysian Chinese businessman with close links to Beijing) has shown a particularly marked shift, with the effective dismissals in 2000�V2001 of its respected China editor, Willy Lam, and its Beijing correspondent, Jasper Becker. Criticism of the Beijing authorities, and especially of senior figures in the central government, has become ��off-limits�� for Post reporters.
In the summer of 2000, fears over academic freedom were aroused by allegations of an attempt by the Vice-chancellor of Hong Kong University to interfere in the conduct of opinion polls by a member of his staff. It emerged that an advisor to Tung Chee-hwa had met the Vice-chancellor and queried the conduct of polls which were showing the Chief Executive to be unpopular with the public. The Vice-chancellor then raised the issue at a meeting with some of his staff, one of whom passed on the message that the Chief Executive was ��concerned�� about the conduct of the polls. Tung himself denied ever having asked anyone to pass on such a message.45
Education was from the beginning very high on the agenda of the new Hong Kong SAR Government. As Morris and Scott observe, ��as whole areas of public policy, such as those related to the economy and defence, are largely determined by external forces, education, along with housing and social welfare, is one of few areas which can be usefully addressed by Hong Kong��s political system.��46 The Maclehose administration in the 1970s had managed to bolster its legitimacy by virtue of the public support generated by its massive quantitative expansion of educational provision, along with other public services�Xand the post-1997 regime clearly hoped to replicate this success in particular by improving the quality of education. However, both the regime��s legitimacy and its ability to dole out social ��goods�� were severely damaged by the effects of the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, from which the local economy as yet (2002) shows no signs of recovering. In this respect, the contrast between the present administration and its colonial predecessor is especially striking, since the latter derived a form of economic legitimacy from the sustained period of rapid economic growth and rising affluence that preceded 1997.
The local education system had long been seen as suffering from a number of severe problems which will be discussed in more detail below, but issues such as the ��Medium of Instruction�� (MOI) controversy acquired highly political connotations. Possibly the most politicised aspect of the government��s educational agenda, however, was the repeated emphasis by Tung Chee-hwa in particular on the need for students to learn more about China and to acquire a stronger sense of Chinese identity. In this respect, the official emphasis was firmly on the ��one country�� side of the ��one country; two systems�� equation. The implications of this emphasis for the school curricula in history and civics will be discussed below.
In areas other than education, the post-handover government also tended to be far more interventionist than its colonial predecessor. The government intervention in the stock market in August 1998 was one case in point. However, the administration��s most striking and, for many, most disturbing interventionist foray has been its successful attempt to have an adverse ruling handed down by Hong Kong��s Court of Final Appeal overturned by appealing to the Basic Law Standing Committee of the National People��s Congress for a ��reinterpretation�� of the relevant articles. In the view of many commentators, this has provoked a serious constitutional crisis and a threat to Hong Kong��s promised autonomy.47 In defending this action the Secretary for Justice significantly called for more emphasis to be placed on ��one country�� rather than ��two systems��. At the same time, the issue that prompted the ��reinterpretation���Xthat of the right of abode in Hong Kong for mainland relatives of local residents�Xwas all about keeping citizens of the ��one country�� out of Hong Kong. Therefore, while the government was exhorting Hongkongers to ��love the motherland��, it was also tapping powerful local anti-immigrant sentiment bordering on Hong Kong chauvinism. This episode highlighted deep-rooted contradictions in Hong Kong people��s sense of their own identity, discussed in more detail in the following chapter.
II �XDEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATION POLICY FROM THE LATE 1960s TO THE PRESENT
Since the 1960s, Hong Kong��s education system has moved extraordinarily rapidly from one which catered disproportionately for a small, privileged and largely Anglicised elite, to a system of mass education comparable in its scale of provision with education systems in other developed countries. Compulsory, free primary education was achieved in the early 1970s, and extended to nine years of compulsory education in 1979. At that time, only two per cent of students entered the territory��s two universities, whereas by the late 1990s almost twenty per cent were doing so.48 While this massive expansion has been funded out of the proceeds of Hong Kong��s spectacular economic growth during the same period, the standard of provision�Xparticularly at primary and secondary levels�X has nonetheless been limited by the desire of the government to obtain a system of mass education ��on the cheap��.
POLITICS AND THE MECHANISMS OF EDUCATIONAL POLICYMAKING
Educational policymaking, particularly during the period of British rule, was also constrained by the weakness of the government��s own legitimacy and its consequent fear of any threats to its control. In the period during and immediately after the Chinese Civil War, education had been a highly politicised issue in Hong Kong, with schools controlled by pro-Communist or pro-Kuomintang groups engaging in intensive propaganda and counter-propaganda. The response of the government in the 1950s was to tighten bureaucratic control of the school curriculum ��via model syllabuses, approved textbooks and exhortation��49, with the principal aim of combating the spread of Communist influence in schools. The mechanisms put in place at that time constituted the basis of the highly bureaucratised and centralised pattern of educational policymaking that has prevailed in Hong Kong ever since. For example, the Advisory Inspectorate of the Education Department originated from the Special Bureau set up in 1949, and the Curriculum Development Council (CDC) and later the Curriculum Development Institute (CDI) evolved out of the earlier Syllabuses and Textbooks Committee (STC).
The curriculum development bureaucracy thus owed its origins to attempts, largely spurred by political concerns, to tighten official supervision of syllabuses and textbooks. In 1952, the year that witnessed the founding of the STC, the first examinations for the Hong Kong Chinese School Certificate were held. Whereas, prior to the 1950s, many local students had pursued further studies in China, and had therefore followed mainland syllabuses in numerous local private Chinese schools, the Education Department was now anxious to provide Hong Kong with an autochthonous�Xand depoliticised�Xsystem of Chinese education.
The STC was given the tasks of drawing up model syllabuses for use in schools; advising the director of the Education Department on textbooks and other teaching aids; and stimulating the writing and publication of teaching notes and textbooks suitable for use with the model syllabuses.50 According to Sweeting, the first and last of these tasks were entirely new, while the second corresponded to the function of the pre-existing textbooks committee. In addition, a new unit�Xthe Special Bureau�Xwas created within the ED with the specific aim of countering communism in schools by utilising ��methods similar to those employed and proved effective by the communists.��51 Such methods were envisaged as including ��newspaper articles, special news sheets, special school texts, broadcasting, films, and the formation of dramatic and singing groups.��52
Nonetheless, it is unclear how much was done in the way of positive counter-propaganda. The strategy that emerged in practice, and which came to characterise the government��s education policy for the next three decades, was one of depoliticisation, or the exclusion of politics as far as possible from the Hong Kong school curriculum. In the period from 1955 to 1982, schools were left to busy themselves with the task of preparing pupils for the academically-oriented public examinations. The depoliticisation of the school curriculum also reflected and reinforced the prevailing mood in Hong Kong society.53 A situation thus arose whereby ��the apoliti-cal general politics of the territory have been closely paralleled by an apolitical education system and school curriculum.��54
By the late 1970s, the educational bureaucracy had acquired the structure it was broadly to retain for the next twenty years. The Advisory Inspectorate of the Education Department had the task of inspecting schools to monitor teaching standards and conformity with the official curriculum. Development of the official curricula and teaching syllabuses for school subjects was the task of the CDC, also part of the Education Department, which was made up of separate committees devoted to developing curricula for particular subjects. This role was taken over in 1992 by the new CDI, along with the responsibility for reviewing textbooks to decide whether to include them in the list of ��recommended textbooks�� issued to schools. The CDC/CDI and the Advisory Inspectorate were staffed mainly by ex-secondary school teachers who had left the teaching profession to become career civil servants, though from the mid-1990s top positions in these institutions were increasingly filled by personnel on fixed-term contracts�Xusually academics seconded from local tertiary institutions.
In 2000, the CDI underwent a major reorganisation, abolishing the old subject committees and replacing them with an inter-disciplinary structure intended to facilitate the integration of the school curriculum. This restructuring has been accompanied by efforts to devise curricula for new, ��integrated�� subjects�Xsuch as ��Integrated Humanities�� and ��History and Culture���Xas a means of broadening the curriculum, making way for additional subjects such as Putonghua and Information Technology, and enforcing a general shake-up of established teaching practices. However, whether or not these new subjects will in fact be taken up and implemented in schools remains far from clear, given the traditional reluctance of the government to resort to coercion. It is far easier to reform the educational bureaucracy than to enforce implementation in schools, especially in Hong Kong where attempts at ��enforced�� implementation pit a government with weak legitimacy against the powerful vested interest of the teaching profession.55
The subject committees of the CDC/CDI have been paralleled by those of the Hong Kong Examinations Authority (HKEA), established in 1977. The HKEA subject committees prepared examination syllabuses and set and marked the public examinations. During the 1980s, it took over responsibility for the setting and marking of the Higher Level and A�� level examinations from CUHK and HKU respectively, though academics from these and other tertiary institutions continued to sit on the various subject committees of both the HKEA and the CDC/CDI. Secondary school teachers nominated by their principals, and selected through slightly differing bureaucratic procedures, also sat on these committees.56 However, the most influential members of the subject committees tended to be the subject officers at the HKEA, CDC/CDI and the Advisory Inspectorate, who acted as committee secretaries, and who held cross-membership of the various committees. The HKEA was set up as a self-financing, autonomous examinations board on the English model�Xthe main difference being that, unlike its English counterparts, it enjoyed a monopolistic position. Hong Kong schools had no choice but to follow the syllabuses it issued. As is noted in subsequent chapters, the division of responsibilities between the HKEA and CDC/CDI, while it may have made sense to a government concerned in the late 1970s to crack down on all opportunities for official corruption, in fact constituted an obstacle to the coherent formulation of curriculum policy, since issues relating to assessment could not in practice be considered separately from issues of content and pedagogy.
The key role of HKEA syllabuses and examination papers in determining what gets taught in schools has been reinforced by cultural, social and economic factors. Bond claims that acceptance of the primarily selective function of schooling is ingrained in Chinese culture.57 Certainly, other East Asian countries sharing ��Confucian�� characteristics, such as Taiwan, Japan and Korea, arguably put their students under even more pressure to perform in public examinations than does Hong Kong.58 However, Morris sees local economic and social conditions as reinforcing this emphasis on examinations:
As the economy grew, so access to well paid employment, in a transient society where mobility was based on achieved rather than ascribed criteria, was provided by educational qualifications. This placed a premium on the selective and allocative role of schooling, and created public pressure for the expansion of educational provision.��59
According to Morris, the most significant influence on the curriculum has been ��the emergence of an allocative mechanism which has encouraged the operation of a market in which schools compete for pupils.��60 This mechanism operates not primarily through the public examinations taken by senior secondary students, but through the ��banding�� of students according to academic ability as they leave primary school, which in turn ensures that education from kindergarten upwards tends to be rigidly ��examination-oriented��.61 ��The impact of this market,�� Morris argues, ��has effectively superseded direct control by the state.�� Its terms of trade have also favoured the language subjects (Chinese and English), and Maths, rather than ��humanities�� subjects such as History.
THE EXPANSION OF PROVISION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Secondary schooling provision in Hong Kong was expanded very rapidly in the late 1970s. The speed with which this expansion took place was partly a consequence of the concerns aroused by the riots of the late 1960s. The rapidity with which compulsory secondary education was extended in the late 1970s may also in part have been due to fears that the EEC was about to impose restrictions on imports from Hong Kong because of use of child labour in local factories.62 The system of mass secondary education that resulted was almost entirely modelled on the elitist system out of which it had grown. This grammar school model was also reinforced by parental demand and by the operation of the banding system. Thus the curriculum taught to most students in most schools consisted of ��abstract academic content, taught by transmission and examined in English by means which emphasised memory over understanding and reproduction over application to real problems.��63 The effect of this has been that concerns over the weakness of students�� language abilities and critical thinking skills have figured prominently in debates over Hong Kong��s education system over the past two decades. Moreover, with the expansion of senior secondary schooling in the 1980s, and of tertiary education in the 1990s, the problems associated with the transition from elite to mass provision have increasingly provoked complaints about declining academic standards amongst Form 7 graduates and university students.64
The speed of expansion and the limited funds made available to finance it have resulted in problems of teacher recruitment and high teacher-student ratios�Xwith a secondary school class typically containing forty to forty-five students. While teachers�� salaries by the 1990s were relatively high by international standards, one result of this has been to ��substantially [increase] the recurrent costs of any educational reform that requires increasing the number of teachers.��65 High salaries have also not been matched by generally high levels of training or professionalism amongst teachers. On the contrary, the language standards of many teachers themselves have been a cause for concern, prompting the government in the late 1990s to take moves to introduce a scheme for ��benchmarking�� practising teachers as well as new entrants to the profession. Such moves have been resisted by Hong Kong��s main teachers�� union, the Professional Teachers�� Union (PTU), which has tended to focus almost exclusively on protecting the interests of its members, while playing a largely reactive role in debate over education policy.
Since its establishment in the late 1970s, the PTU has been one of the most aggressive and effective lobbies in Hong Kong, and one of the principle obstacles to the government��s tentative efforts to reform the education system.66 In this respect, it typifies ��the tendency of the political classes to avoid promoting a constructive policy manifesto��,67 a phenomenon also evident in the political stances adopted by the Democratic Party (DP), the largest of Hong Kong��s pro-democracy parties, with which the union maintains strong connections. This overwhelmingly negative approach to public policy is explained by the nature of the political system, which confines elected politicians to the role of a permanent opposition to the unelected government. This tends to reduce policy debates to ��political theatre and posturing��, whereby PTU leaders and their associates in the DP ��will mete out criticism over the quality of education provided by the government at every opportunity, and subsequently criticise the government for taking any actions designed to address the problem they have identified.��68
The debate over the reform of schooling during the 1980s and 1990s centred on the issue of the medium of instruction in schools. Hong Kong parents have for many years put a high premium on obtaining an English-medium education for their children. Therefore, until the late 1990s, the vast majority of schools claimed to be English-medium. However, more often than not, the actual language of classroom instruction was Cantonese, with a smattering of English, although the textbooks and examinations (apart from those for the ��Chinese�� subjects�XChinese Language, Literature and Chinese History) were all in English. The mixing of languages in the classroom, known as ��mixed code�� teaching, prompted much official hand-wringing and expert concern, so that from the late 1970s it became government policy to encourage most schools to teach through the medium of Cantonese.69 However, schools were only encouraged, not compelled, to implement mother-tongue instruction. The weakness of the pre-handover administration��s sense of legitimacy meant that it was unwilling to provoke opposition from parents, schools and the PTU over this issue. Encouragement was succeeded by compulsion only on the eve of Hong Kong��s return to Chinese rule, the administration perhaps then feeling that a greater sense of legitimacy enabled it to force the issue on grounds of political and cultural correctness as well as those of educational effectiveness. Certainly, the move was carried through rapidly in an autocratic manner that contrasted starkly with the extreme caution of the previous government. After a public outcry that persuaded the government to slightly revise its initial plan, about a quarter of secondary schools were permitted to continue using English as the medium of instruction, while the rest were forced to switch to Chinese. This arguably exacerbated the elitism already inherent in the schooling system, since the 114 schools designated as English-medium were assured the pick of Hong Kong��s ��upper-band�� students. The debate over medium of instruction has not ended, however. Studies continue to emerge purporting to show that students in English-medium education tend to receive a poorer training in, amongst other things, critical or creative thinking skills than students learning through the medium of Chinese,70 but public and business pressure for English-medium education continues. Moreover, there are indications that in the longer term the government intends to promote the use of putonghua as the medium of instruction in local schools, at least (or initially) for the teaching of ��Chinese��, despite its continued insistence on the educational benefits of mother-tongue teaching.71 The reasons for this may owe something to the perceived commercial usefulness of putonghua, but almost certainly owe more to the nation-building priorities of the Beijing authorities.
In January 1999, Hong Kong��s Education Commission published a consultation document, ��Education Blueprint for the 21st Century��, in which it identified what it saw as the main problems with the existing education system:
Common criticisms of our present education system are that there are many subjects, the homework is heavy, and the examination pressure is intense. Students prepare for examinations through rote-learning and memorisation, without sufficient freedom to give free rein to their creativity and imagination, and to develop an interest in self-learning. The language proficiency of students has deteriorated. However, these very qualities, that is, creativity, imagination, self-learning ability and language proficiency are the essential requirements for building our future society.72
The Education Commission had already drawn attention to these problems in the eight previous reports it had prepared since its establishment in 1984. It was set up following the recommendations of a visiting panel of foreign experts in 1982 (The Llewellyn Commission), and was designed to advise the government on long-term planning for education. The need for a quasi-governmental advisory body involving, and being seen to involve, some measure of public participation in the policy-making process was also brought home to officials by the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee School incident of 1978.73 However, during its lifetime, the overall impact that the Education Commission has had on the implementation of education policy ��has been minimal��.74 It has certainly influenced government policy, for example with recommendations to reform sixth-form education, to standardise the system for university admissions, and to establish the CDI and the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIED), but it was never given any authority to supervise the way in which the bureaucracy enacted such recommendations.75 The conservative, ��don��t rock the boat�� mentality of the pre-handover government meant that policy making in the area of education remained ��reactive rather than proactive and tended to involve a response to crises rather than an exercise in long-term planning.��76 According to Morris, the role of the Commission has tended to shift over time, so that it has become less a real advisory ��think-tank��, and more a vehicle through which the state could obtain greater legitimacy for its own educational agenda.77
Especially in the years since 1997, however, considerable confusion has seemed to surround many aspects of this official agenda itself�Xnot least the medium of instruction issue mentioned above�Xwith different agencies within the government or the ��establishment��, including the Education Commission, apparently pulling in several different and conflicting directions simultaneously.78 This may be a reflection in the field of education policy of the ��disarticulation�� of Hong Kong��s post-handover political system postulated by Scott. Contemporary developments in education policy are discussed more fully in Chapters 7 and 8.79
EDUCATION, PATRIOTISM AND POLITICAL SOCIALISATION
The attitude of the colonial government to the question of Hong Kong people��s identity is discussed further below, but it has already been noted that, following the riots of the late 1960s, the authorities were keen to foster a depoliticised sense of local ��belonging��. This keenness prompted the government to attempt to place more emphasis on social education in local schools. A relatively low-status ��Civics�� subject (renamed ��Economics and Public Affairs�� in 1965) already existed at junior secondary level, and this was designed to teach students to become ��law-abiding, politically apathetic, and hard-working participants in an urbanised economy, seeking personal and family advancement��.80 The underlying themes of the subject were, according to Morris, McClelland and Wong, ��apolitical and universalistic in the sense that they studiously avoided issues arising from the local political context��.81
In the early 1970s, a local pressure group called the Educators�� Social Action Council (ESAC), consisting of university lecturers, school principals, and several government officials, pressed for the introduction of a ��Social Studies�� subject at junior level, along the lines of overseas models. Officials in the ED set about drafting a syllabus for such a subject, which was envisaged as giving ��attention to process (inquiry and discovery), critical thinking�Kcontemporary issues and relevance��,82 and which would be taught through the medium of Chinese. However, as Morris, McClelland and Wong have shown, this vision of an integrated, ��skills��-oriented subject was undermined by a rearguard action on the part of the ED Inspectors responsible for established subjects such as History, Geography and EPA, who feared that Social Studies would leave students inadequately prepared for study in forms 4 and 5, and that its establishment would threaten the status of their own subjects.83
More particularly, Chinese History officials, teachers and their supporters amongst university academics vehemently objected to the inclusion of elements of Chinese history in the proposed syllabus, alleging that this was part of a colonialist conspiracy to dilute Hong Kong people��s Chinese identity.84 In a process that showed the administration��s consciousness of its weak legitimacy, Chinese History was duly dropped from the proposed syllabus, and the resulting product represented a compromise between the interests of the established subjects, rather than a truly integrated approach. Subsequent efforts by the colonial government to promote radical educational reforms met with a similar fate at the hands of vested interests which the administration felt too weak to confront. In the following twenty years there were no similarly ambitious attempts to promote a critical approach to civic education, and no attempts whatsoever to reform the Chinese History subject.85
By the late 1990s, one item was firmly on the education policy agenda which had been altogether absent twenty years earlier, namely an assertion of the role of education in nation-building and the inculcation of an uncritical, state-centred version of Chinese patriotism. One paragraph from the Education Commission��s 1999 Consultation Document reflects the post-1997 official line on Hong Kong��s role and identity within the new China:
��Of social significance is the fact that reunification with the motherland confirms the Chinese national identity of the Hong Kong people. Under the principles of ��One country, Two systems�� and ��Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong��, our young people need to understand more about the culture, as well as the present and future developments of our motherland. They also need to appreciate the unique geographical and political characteristics of Hong Kong to the full, and build on the best of East and West, so as to develop a society which is outward-looking, culturally confident, united, free and democratic.��86
However, even while moves to introduce ��patriotic education�� have intensified since the handover, with patriotism and ��traditional Chinese values�� featuring as recurring themes in the speeches of Tung Chee Hwa, the present regime shares with its colonial predecessor a reluctance to foster the development of a distinctive local identity. One local scholar noted in 1995:
��Given the vehemence of its objections to democratic development, China cannot be expected to approve representations of the Hong Kong people that show a cohesive cultural identity, particularly an identity constituted against the Mainland�K For quite different reasons, Britain has also avoided any policy emphasizing the separateness of local culture. This has less to do with acceding to China��s wishes than with justifying its decision to dispose of 3.25 million British passport holders.��87
Before 1982, the British administration in Hong Kong had discouraged any discussion of contemporary political issues in schools, holding broadly to the view expressed in the 1930s that ��special local conditions justified more attention being paid to ancient civilisations than to current affairs.��88 The Social Studies proposal in the 1970s had represented a flirtation with a more daring approach, but the opposition that it aroused if anything reinforced the ��don��t rock the boat�� approach of the ED. However, once the inevitability of Hong Kong��s return to China became apparent, steps were taken to alter the school curriculum in ways intended to prepare students for their future as citizens of a Special Administrative Region of the People��s Republic of China. In subjects such as Geography and EPA, more topics relating to China were included, though in EPA the tendency has been for students to be required simply to study descriptions of existing institutional arrangements, rather than look critically at how these have changed over time. The new subjects of Government and Public Affairs and Liberal Studies were also introduced, in 1989 and 1992 respectively, providing extensive scope for students to study and discuss the contemporary politics of Hong Kong and China. Their introduction was a response to pressure during and after 1984 from certain legislative councillors and other pressure groups for Hong Kong citizens to receive ��a true democratic education��.89 The Director of Education at first resisted, claiming in March 1984 that the inclusion of political studies in the curriculum was ��too risky��, but the following month the HKEA announced that it was considering the introduction of a new GPA A��level. However, the take-up rate for these new subjects amongst secondary schools has been relatively low.90
More interesting and relevant, for the purposes of comparison with changes to the History curriculum, have been developments in civic education and in the separate subject of ��Chinese History��. The first set of Civic Education Guidelines was produced in 1985, but was markedly apolitical, refusing, for example, to define democracy on the grounds that ��Democracy means different things to different people.��91 Like the distinctly Confucian guidelines for Moral Education issued in 1981, which aimed ��to develop a moral sensibility, to promote character formation and training, to encourage correct attitudes (sic) towards life, school and community��, the Civic Education Guidelines were ��platitudinous and vague.��92 By comparison, the 1996 revised Guidelines were more politicised and less descriptive. In terms of their effect on classroom learning, the 1985 guidelines were particularly irrelevant, since they promoted civic education as a ��cross-curricular theme�� which different subject teachers were supposed to implement in the course of teaching their particular subjects.93 The 1996 guidelines went further in encouraging the introduction of civic education as a subject in its own right. In general, however, as with the Government��s recommendations on medium of instruction and many other educational initiatives, the civic education guidelines performed a symbolic function and in practice were largely ignored. They served to indicate the Government��s worthy intentions, but allowed schools to continue operating as ever in the same narrowly examination-focused way. Any attempt at compulsion would have invited non-compliance, which for a colonial government conscious of its dependence on the collaboration of local vested interest groups was too dangerous to contemplate.
The post-handover regime has sought to be far more proactive in the area of civic education, though the approach has so far remained predominantly ��cross-curricular��. The new government moved extraordinarily swiftly (by the standards of its predecessor) to have a syllabus produced for Civic Education as a school subject in its own right. The government��s educational advisory bodies, the membership of which now includes longstanding supporters of the People��s Republic as well as an increased proportion of businessmen, have been considering making this subject compulsory, along with putonghua and Chinese History.94 The new civics curriculum, which is largely based on the 1996 guidelines, is organised around six areas: family; neighbouring community; regional community; national community; international community; and citizenship and civil society. As in the pre-1997 guidelines, the emphasis is on students�� moral obligations and duties to the family and community. Pupils are also to be taught to understand ��the special features of Chinese culture and the structure of the Chinese government��.95 Teachers are provided with ��guiding questions�� and ��reflections�� intended to stimulate classroom discussion. These include:
��To what extent do I understand the traditional Chinese family values?��
��Do I possess any of them?�� ��What traditional family values do
Chinese people hold?�� ��Do I possess any of them?�� ��What are the
meanings of these values to families nowadays?��96
��What feelings do I have towards the rivers and lands of our
country?��97
��Am I proud of being Chinese?�� ��What will I do to promote my sense
of pride in being a Chinese?��98
��What are the major thoughts and beliefs of the Chinese?��99
��What creations and inventions of China have had an impact on the
world?��100
��What attitudes should I have during the ceremony of raising the
national flag and playing the national anthem?��101
It is proposed that answers to these questions are to be arrived at through open and critical discussion amongst students in the classroom, and the syllabus therefore avoids laying down any ��model�� answers. However, the questions themselves clearly imply a vision of ��Chineseness�� that is monolithic and homogenous�Xa vision that coincides with the often-stated views of Hong Kong��s Chief Executive.102
CHINESE HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE HONG KONG SCHOOL CURRICULUM
The task of civics teachers themselves in developing a critical approach to Chinese values, thoughts and beliefs has, argue Morris, Kan and Morris, ��probably not been facilitated by their own exposure in school to Chinese culture through Chinese history and Chinese language/literature.��103 The effects of these subjects on students�� sense of ��Chineseness�� has been summarised by Luk:
���Kgenerations of Hong Kong pupils grew up learning from the Chinese culture subjects to identify themselves as Chinese but relating that Chineseness to neither contemporary China nor the local Hong Kong landscape. It was a Chinese identity in the abstract, a patriotism of the ��emigre��, probably held all the more absolutely because it was not connected to a tangible reality.��104
The presence and nature of these separate ��Chinese�� subjects within a school curriculum otherwise largely derived from Western (particularly English) models constitutes perhaps the most peculiar feature of this curriculum. In particular, the division of ��Chinese History�� and ��History�� into two entirely separate subjects is unique to Hong Kong. [It is common practice in many countries for national history and world history to be taught in separate lessons and often by separate teachers. The difference in Hong Kong is that the two subjects of History and Chinese History are regarded as entirely separate disciplines, not only in secondary schools but also at tertiary level in the curriculum of the University of Hong Kong. In addition, despite the common practice in Hong Kong of referring to History as ��World History,�� the subject does in fact include substantial coverage of modern Chinese history and, more recently, of local history as well.] According to Luk, this division arose as a consequence of collusion between the colonial authorities and a number of very conservative emigre Chinese scholars in the inter- and post-war periods.105 The colonial government was anxious to prevent local students from being exposed to the vehemently nationalist and anti-foreign interepretations of recent Chinese history then current on the Chinese mainland. It was therefore very willing to allow the development of a curriculum for Chinese History that focused on periods of ancient history, and which adopted a traditional, didactic, moralising approach designed to inculcate ��cultural�� more than political values.106 At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate the degree of direct control that the British colonial authorities exercised over the cur-riculum for Chinese subjects. The tacit collaborative contract struck in the 1950s between the government and the highly conservative scholars and teachers who drafted the curricula for these subjects gave the latter the opportunity to push their own moral and cultural agenda. By the 1970s, indeed, the terms of collaboration appeared to have shifted as a result of the weakening legitimacy of the British administration, and Chinese History teachers and their supporters were portraying their subject as a totem of Hong Kong��s Chinese identity under colonial rule.107
This collaborative contract or compromise has allowed these subjects to promote a rigidly moralistic ethos and a highly chauvinist cultural outlook. Teachers of Chinese History and Chinese Language, Literature and Culture came to see themselves as keepers of the sacred flame of Chineseness within a school curriculum which was otherwise largely decontextualised and depoliticised, and transmitted through the medium of a foreign language. Moreover, the vision of Chineseness they have sought to preserve and transmit has by and large been one that assumes an opposition between, on the one hand, ��Chinese culture�� as a homogenous, timeless set of traditional virtues and, on the other, foreign or ��Western�� culture as a morally decadent ��Other��. The view of ��culture�� underlying this vision, and which has long imbued the school syllabuses for the Chinese subjects and (more recently) for Civics, assumes a relativist world of incommensurable cultural products, while at the same time asserting the superiority of the Chinese brand.
While the formal curriculum for History underwent a number of significant changes prior to 1997, that for Chinese History remained unchanged in terms of approach, and very little changed in terms of scope.108 While the latter was extended gradually, by 1995 the end date for the syllabus was still 1949, and after 1995 it was brought forward only to 1976, thus excluding the 1989 June 4 incident. ��This arrangement,�� according to Morris, Kan and Morris, ��might be attributed to political sensitivity, which meant that the British colonial government did not want the already tense relationship with China to deteriorate further.��109
In the form of the separate subject of ��Chinese History��, the British ironically bequeathed to the Hong Kong SAR Government a ready tool for the promotion of Chinese ethno-nationalism�Xof a sense of national identity focused not so much on the state of Communist China, but upon ��a homogenous and totalizing sense of Chinese culture, morality and values.��110 Amendments recently made to the formal curriculum for Chinese History have been aimed at strengthening the subject��s role in this respect. For example, ��cultivating a sense of belonging to our country�� has become one of the subject��s overall aims, while other objectives include ��to enhance pupils�� sense of belonging and affection to the Chinese race through learning Chinese culture��, and ��to understand that Chinese culture has the char-acteristics of being able to integrate with different cultures and transform into a new form of Chinese culture.��111 The syllabus recommends that teachers transmit a sense of ��correct�� and ��incorrect�� values to their students, by encouraging them to emulate or condemn the good or bad behaviour of certain historical personalities. Since the handover, teachers of Chinese History have also been encouraged to make reference to Hong Kong history in their teaching, though before 1997 there were no moves to introduce local history into the curriculum for the subject. Nonetheless, in contrast to the situation in History, where local history is in the process of being integrated into the syllabus at all levels, in Chinese History local history is merely an appendix to the junior secondary syllabus, which covers 5,000 years of Chinese history. Any attention devoted to local history must not detract from the primary aim of teaching China��s entire dynastic history, and the emphasis in the materials on local history is on Hong Kong��s place within the history of China as a whole.112
The position of Chinese History vis-a-vis History is discussed further in later chapters. Here it is sufficient to note that throughout the period with which this thesis is concerned, these two subjects have represented two competing and conflicting philosophies of history within the local school curriculum. Moreover, they have increasingly been forced to compete for timetable space as the introduction of new school subjects has made the curriculum steadily more crowded, and in the context of an educational culture which affords a relatively low status to ��humanities�� subjects generally. The squeeze on timetable space gave rise in 2000 to a controversial proposal to merge the two history subjects at junior level. (See Chapter 7)
History as a school subject in Hong Kong has therefore been one element in a school curriculum whose dominant values have been antithetical to the teaching of history as a critical, ��skills-oriented�� discipline. The highly examination-driven local educational culture, serious language problems, and the savagely competitive market for school places have reinforced a tendency to rely on rote-learning and memorisation.113 The training of students�� thinking skills has been correspondingly neglected, while the ways in which they have been encouraged, through Chinese History, and increasingly through civic education, to relate to their own society and culture, have principally stressed feelings of togetherness, community and culture, and uncritical acceptance of a received interpretation of the past. Civic education in Hong Kong has moved from an emphasis on citizenship as ��status�� (the relationship between the individual and the state) before 1997, to a growing emphasis on citizenship as ��volition��, involving a collective sense of belonging to Chinese culture and values. Training in citizenship as a form of ��competence�� (an active, involved participation in debate and decision making), however, has been and continues to be neglected.114
Students�� ability to adopt a critical perspective in relation to their own society has probably also been hampered by the parochialism which imbues other subjects within the curriculum.115 In short, leaving aside the subject of History, there has been little provision in Hong Kong��s school curriculum for teaching students to think critically and autonomously when reflecting on the past or the present of their own society�Xor any other.
CONCLUSION
The period from the 1960s to the early years of the new century witnessed profound social, economic and political transformations in Hong Kong, such as the shift to a predominantly service economy, a massive expansion of schooling, the rise of a ��Hong Kong-born�� middle class, the re-establishment of links with the Pearl River hinterland from the late 1970s, and the transition to Chinese rule in 1997. The latter brought with it an emphatic ��re-politicisation�� of the previously ��de-politicised�� school curriculum, while increasingly public discourse in the run up to retrocession and in the years since was infused with ��patriotic�� rhetoric. The subjects of History and Chinese History in particular were inevitably destined to become sites for a conflict between this new official ��patriotism�� and more liberal-democratic visions of local identity.
No less important than these changes, however, though perhaps less obvious, are the elements of the local context which remained relatively constant throughout this period. Hong Kong remained ultimately subject to the outcomes of political decisions reached in distant capitals behind closed doors, while its ��colonial�� structure of government remained, essentially the same in 2002 as it had been in 1970, notwithstanding the introduction of an elected element into the Legislative Council (and despite the brief pseudo-democratic interlude under Governor Patten between 1995 and 1997). At the same time, the collaborative foundations of this structure remained essentially unaltered, with the local business elite continuing to function to a large extent as a parallel government whose support or co-operation was seen as essential to the smooth running of the administration. The business elite proved adept at trimming its sails to the prevailing political winds, and the names of many who had sat on British-appointed consultative bodies in the 1980s were to be found among the members of Beijing��s various ��consultative committees�� in the 1990s. The appointment by Beijing of a prominent businessman to the post of Chief Executive signified the hope of the Communist authorities that this elitist, non-con-frontational, business-oriented mode of governance could be strengthened and perpetuated in the post-1997 era.
One of the features of the non-confrontational, consensual administrative system that had emerged under British colonial rule, and was inherited by the post-retrocession regime, was the enormous power it granted to various vested interest groups. The non-elected nature of the government seriously weakened it in its dealings with any well-organised local pressure group such as the Professional Teachers�� Union. This was something that the civil service during the period of British administration had appreciated all too well, causing it to hold off from attempts to enforce educational reforms in the face of resistance from schools and teachers. By contrast, the low level of its legitimacy was something that the post-1997 administration of Tung Chee Hwa appeared unable or unwilling to acknowledge, let alone remedy. The outcome has been the ��disarticulation�� of the political system noted by Scott, whereby senior administration officials, government departments, and the partly-elected legislature have operated according to their own, often discrepant, policy agendas.
The agenda of the administration itself has thus consisted of an adherence to the forms of the ��colonial�� government�Xthe elitist, benevolent 1970s Maclehose variety rather than the more inclusive, democratic Patten brand of the 1990s. At the same time, it has sought to promote and inculcate�Xprincipally through changes to the school curriculum, and especially the syllabuses for Civics and Chinese History�Xa highly traditionalist, homogenising vision of Chinese national identity, aimed at restoring the affective bonds between Hongkongers and their ��motherland��. In both respects, this agenda can be seen as an attempt to put the clock back, politically and culturally, to the Hong Kong of the 1960s or early 1970s. In order to appreciate what is at stake in this ��nation-building�� endeavour, and to assess the implications for the teaching of history, it is necessary to understand the development of Hong Kong��s distinctive culture and identity over the past thirty or forty years.

Chapter 3 History, Culture and the Politics of Identity in Hong Kong
THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER SURVEYED THE POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE context of change in late twentieth century Hong Kong, both in general terms and more specifically in relation to the education system. The present chapter draws on work by anthropologists, sociologists, cultural theorists and others to examine ways in which Hong Kong people have imagined their collective identity over the past three decades. It concludes with a section analysing the establishment of the new Hong Kong Museum of History, the principal forum (other than the school curriculum) for presenting an officially-sanctioned view of local cultural and historical identity. The discussion here will provide the context for inferences drawn in subsequent chapters concerning the relationship between approaches to history inside and outside Hong Kong��s secondary school classrooms.
HONG KONG ETHNICITY
In Chapter 1, David Brown��s categorisation of most conceptions of ethnicity as either ��primordialist�� or ��situationalist�� was discussed, and contrasted with his view of ethnicity as a more complex form of ��ideological consciousness��. The following analysis of popular culture in Hong Kong suggests that, though the powerful ��kinship myth�� of Chinese nationalism has gained widespread currency, this has not translated into popular support for the Chinese state authorities. Alongside a ��primordialist�� conception of Chineseness, the experience of living in Hong Kong has created amongst local people what amounts to a strong ��ideological consciousness�� of their distinctiveness.
Many observers have been struck by the apparent homogeneity of Hong Kong society. For example, Matthew Turner writes that
��Hong Kong is a remarkably homogenous society�Xethnically,
linguistically and culturally�Xfar more so than the city-state of
Singapore.��1
To see this ethnic homogeneity simply in terms of a common ��Chineseness�� would, however, be misleading since, as one locally-based anthropologist has noted, ��there is no simple and ever-lasting Chinese ethnicity��.2 In Hong Kong, perhaps even more than in mainland China or Taiwan, ��an equivalence of ��Chinese�� and ��Han�� identities is assumed��3, but the definition of ��Han�� ethnicity is itself problematic. Turner��s statement alludes to the overwhelmingly Cantonese character of Hong Kong��s population, but he and others have noted that this in itself has not enabled Hongkongers to imagine a distinctive cultural and historical identity for themselves. Ethnically, most Hong Kong people are not distinct from the population of most of Guangdong Province.4
Anthropologists, political scientists, and specialists in ��cultural studies�� agree in seeing the evolution of a distinctive sense of ��Hongkongeseness�� as a relatively recent and fragile phenomenon.5 They see the social and economic changes discussed above as having partly accounted for the strengthening sense of a separate Hong Kong identity. The importance of the June 4th incident in reinforcing this sense is also commonly recognised.6 Thus, by the 1990s there existed a kind of ��Hongkongese�� consciousness much more powerful than any common sense of local identity that had existed thirty years before, when many people still identified more strongly with their native places on the mainland. Nonetheless, Guldin predicts that after 1997, ��a more integral role [for Hong Kong] in the Cantonese world of the Pearl Delta will recast old loyalties, boundaries and identities.�� Drawing a comparison with the former Portuguese colony of Goa in India, he writes:
��Perhaps the decolonisation process will mean that Hong Kong��s high profile sense of identity will begin to fade in the next generation as its citizens live their lives as Chinese subjects in a south Chinese province and region.��7
This would depend in part on whether local people came to feel a closer sense of identification with the Chinese state than with the Hong Kong S.A.R., thus observing the priority implicit in the slogan of the post-handover People��s Liberation Army Garrison, ��Love the Motherland, love Hong Kong�� (Ai zuguo, ai xianggang).8 It is clearly the wish of the Beijing government and its local supporters that such a shift in affective loyalty should take place. Chinese government propaganda has sought to promote a view of history that portrays the ��Han�� nationality as ethnically and culturally homogenous�Xin Brown��s terms, a ��primordialist�� view of ethnicity. At the same time, the Communist government, like its Nationalist prede-cessor (but with greater efficiency), has sought to create or invent cultural and linguistic homogeneity on the mainland, principally through promoting putonghua as the single national language and medium of instruction in educational institutions. The signs that similar measures may be being planned for Hong Kong were alluded to in the previous chapter. The remainder of the present chapter analyses the nature and strength of the sense of local identity that has already evolved.
THE HONG KONG ��LIFESTYLE��
Hong Kong people��s sense of local distinctiveness has, according to Turner, definitely not been based on a ��simple and everlasting�� ethnicity. Rather, he sees the sense of local identity that Hong Kong has acquired as centred on the slippery and shifting concept of a Hong Kong ��life-style��, which, he argues, formed the basis of a local sense of identity from the late 1960s onwards. This sense of identity ��was not the civic loyalty of the citizen, nor an identity of community interest, which in any case was denied by the philosophy of laissez-faire.��9 It was rather an identity built around the habits and fashions of consumerism, increasingly detached both from Chinese tradition and Chinese modernity (at least in its Communist form). ��Hong Kong was to become��, he argues, ��less a Chinese city with a remarkable history and more a remarkably a-historical ��Chinatown��.�� In the late sixties and early seventies,
��the most elevated vision of society was that offered by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, the soulless ��Hong Kong Inc.��, in which society was pictured as a company run by managers, a business in which all would benefit from cooperation and efficiency.��10
It is precisely this vision of Hong Kong society that is enshrined in Beijing��s model for Hong Kong��s post-retrocession administration: a society run by and in the interests of business, and presided over by a former businessman with the title of ��Chief Executive��.11 In Beijing��s eyes, Hong Kong is and should remain what the sociologist (and advisor to Beijing on Hong Kong affairs) Lau Siu-kai has termed a culture of ��utilitarianistic familism��12; in other words, a society whose people are obsessively concerned with the material betterment of themselves and their families, and have little interest in politics or community affairs so long as they do not impinge on this. Beijing does not recognise the existence of a distinct Hong Kong culture or ��people��, preferring instead to talk of ��inhabitants�� or ��residents�� who share a depoliticised ��lifestyle��.13 At the same time, many northern Chinese, as well as traditionalists within Hong Kong��s own educated elite, have long seen Hong Kong as ��a backward Chinese culture, perverted by westernisation and debased by commercialism,��14 characterised by ��excessive consumption to a backdrop of Canto-pop.��15 This attitude has been reflected in the school curriculum for Chinese subjects, since Hong Kong��s culture�Xspecifically its literature and history�Xhave not been considered worthy of inclusion in syllabuses. As noted in the previous chapter, the recent addition of a local history ��appendix�� to the Chinese History curriculum is in this respect very much the exception that proves the rule.
Until the 1990s, both Britain and China shared the view, as Turner puts it, that ��the inhabitants of this city are no more a separate people, and have no more right to self-determination, than the citizens of Shanghai or Birmingham��.16 Both governments agreed that Hong Kong people were not and had never been anything other than Chinese�X Britain, largely because it wished to avoid acknowledging Hongkongers�� claims for full British citizenship, and China because it wished to portray them as sharing ��the long-cherished common aspiration of the Chinese people for the recovery of Hong Kong.��17
Despite mounting evidence by the 1980s of a dramatic rise in Hong Kong people��s self-identification as ��Hongkongers�� in preference to simply ��Chinese��,18 Britain and China continued to hold to a view of Hong Kong society as a transitory population of economic migrants, fragmented, lacking in civic consciousness, and therefore unfit for democratic government. In this sense, Governor Patten��s expansion of the franchise in order to strengthen the ��way of life�� of Hong Kong��s ��community�� represented a radical departure from previous British policy, particularly since his formulation of ��way of life�� suggested a cultural divide from the motherland, and challenged China��s ��de-politicised, ambiguous and seemingly superficial formulation of ��life-style��.��19
The received, or ��official��, view of Hong Kong people has thus seen them as politically apathetic and characterised by ��familial traditions of obedience and loyalty to autocratic authority�� and ��a shared belief in hard work and economic gain���X characteristics which the mainland government has been anxious to reinforce. Until the late 1980s, surveys appeared to show that a concern for stability and prosperity, a sense of political powerlessness, an idiosyncratic understanding of democracy, and a demand for increased government provision of social services remained the dominant features of Hong Kong��s political culture.20 However, Patten��s reforms of the mid-1990s were based on an alternative view of Hong Kong society as a politically mature and distinctive community demanding democratic reforms. Research on popular attitudes since the late 1980s, as well as public opinion surveys and election results, appear to provide qualified support for this view. DeGolyer and Scott argue, for example, that ��the period of 1949�V 1979 was remarkable for its abnormally low level of political activity by Hong Kong people.��21 ��With dramatic changes in China and Taiwan,�� they argue, ��Hong Kong has returned to its more normal state of intense interest in politics, with considerable political activity.��22
The surveys undertaken by Lau and Kuan during the 1980s appeared to demonstrate the existence of a strong ethic of depoliticisation, sometimes seen as rooted in ��traditional Chinese values��. However, the same surveys also provided the basis for a clear differentiation of the attitudes and values of local people and those of their compatriots in mainland China. Lau and Kuan listed these as follows:
1.
��There is in Hong Kong more social and interpersonal trust, personal freedom, civil liberty and social and political tolerance,

2.
There is more tolerance of social conflict, less fatalism and less egalitarianism,

3.
Economics are distinguished from politics and are accepted as being non-egalitarian, the capitalist system being fully endorsed,

4.
Hong Kongers expect fair treatment from government and are less frightened by it,

5.
Law is respected and distinguished from politics.��23


Michael Yahuda comments that ��it will be recognised that these attributes of Hong Kongers are those normally associated with a democratic society, and they embody essentially middle-class values��.24 It was this perception of Hong Kong people��s values and aspirations that Patten claimed had informed his decision to press ahead with political reform.25 Following his departure, the Hong Kong Transition Project (HKTP) pronounced that ��strong advocacy of democratic participation has arrived in Hong Kong and no amount of wishing will make it go away.��26
This increasing attachment to liberal values was given a boost by the Joint Declaration of 1984 and, more dramatically, by the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. Increased support for democracy has also gone hand-in-hand with ��a kind of last minute search for a more definite identity.��27 Several scholars have suggested that both the sense of local identity and the support for democracy that were features of Hong Kong in the 1990s may prove to be ephemeral phenomena, as attitudes of pragmatism and instrumentalism reassert themselves, and as Hong Kong��s distinctiveness is smothered in the embrace of the ��motherland��.28 However, the 1998 and 2001 elections to the Legislative Council appeared to demonstrate that support for democracy was far more solid than had widely been supposed. Indeed, the largest of the ��pro-Beijing�� parties (the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, or DAB) differed from the ��pro-democracy�� camp not over the desirability of democratisation per se, but over its pace�Xrecognising that an openly ��anti-democratic�� stance would result in a loss of grassroots electoral support. It remains to be seen how resilient this political idealism and sense of local distinctiveness will prove, and the Tung administration has attempted to shift political debate away from demands for political reform and onto more bread-and-butter or ��liveli-hood�� issues it hopes will appeal to Hongkongers�� pragmatic, ��utilitarian�� side. It has also attempted to promote a depoliticised vision of Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan ��world�� city and tourist hub. This has brought accusations from some quarters that the administration��s preferred vision of Hong Kong is of a ��Mickey Mouse city�� (an allusion to the Disneyland theme park currently under construction) rather than a distinct and mature political community.29
HISTORY, IDENTITY AND POPULAR CULTURE IN HONG KONG
One local academic has contrasted what he sees as Hong Kong��s studiously identity-neutral ��colonial�� history curriculum with an increasingly assertive sense of local identity in the popular media:
��Concerned primarily with sustaining economic and social order, the colonial administration sought to distance itself from identity politics. Schools and other government institutions did not narrate a history of national or political identification. There was no coherent historical narrative for the younger generation to make sense of their socio-historical world. Popular media then easily took up this cultural space. Without any state-imposed shackles, popular media, film and television culture in particular, had evolved to become a cradle of indigenous cultural identity.��30
The coherence�Xor lack of it�Xof the officially-sanctioned historical narrative presented to local students is examined in subsequent chapters. However, the colonial government��s desire to avoid the issue of ��national and political identification�� has not resulted in a school curriculum devoid of any discourse on identity. It is arguably impossible to avoid taking a position of some kind on the issue of identity, since identity is defined as much by what one is not as by what one is�Xor by what postmodernists like to call ��a discourse of the Other��. As we have seen, the colonial government��s educational policies may have been directed at preventing the development of a sense of political identification with Communist or Nationalist China, but they nonetheless permitted and even encouraged the promotion of a strong sense of cultural Chineseness.31 Moreover, colonial governments from the seventies onwards sponsored campaigns to build a sense of community, albeit a depoliticised one, at the same time as the government in London was denying the right of local people to British citizenship. The colonial administration��s position on the issue of identity was thus characterised by cautious ambivalence rather than by complete avoidance. This has perhaps reinforced, as well as reflecting, a similar confusion in the popular media over the historical and political identity of Hong Kong and its people.
Turning first to the closely connected media of film, television and popular music, by the 1960s, Mandarin-language films and popular music, often produced by immigrant artists from Shanghai, were enjoying greater popularity than their Cantonese-medium rivals. At the same time, British and American music and cinema, for example the James Bond films, Elvis Presley and the Beatles, came to eclipse in popularity both Mandarin and Cantonese variants. It was not until the 1970s that a truly indigenous popular culture really took hold in Hong Kong. This period saw the introduction by the television channel TVB Jade of locally produced Cantonese-language programmes, the most successful of which were drama serials that took the local life-style as their subject matter. Similarly, it was during the 1970s that Cantonese-language popular music and films came to dominate the local scene. Eric Kit-wai Ma has identified this as a period of ��de-sinicisation�� of the local media, during which ��the essentially Chinese references that dominated the post-war media gradually gave way to a purely local frame of reference, thus enhancing people��s sense of belonging to the Territory��.32
Several other writers have seen this local popular culture as being distinguished by the ��conspicuous absence of the element of social protest and criticism, and the homogeneity and convergence in the production and consumption of cultural products.��33 According to one such writer, the majority of the products of local popular culture have reflected ��ideologies of affluence, of glamour and style��, and have shared in a ��celebration of individualism and wealth��.34 Television drama and local cinema have been characterised by what Leung calls ��standardisation and mediocrity��, and in the late 1990s remained ��depoliticized and geared overwhelmingly to mass entertainment.��35 Moreover, this style of entertainment seems to enjoy a remarkably broad appeal, reflecting the relative homogeneity of the local life-style and outlook, and ��the absence of class subcultures in Hong Kong.��36
The dominant themes of popular culture as identified above would thus appear to substantiate Turner��s argument concerning the key role of the consumerist ��life-style�� in shaping Hong Kong people��s sense of their own identity. However, stereotypes need to be treated with caution. The work of some local film-makers, such as Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui and Fruit Chan, offers both originality and a challenging social or political perspective.37 Moreover, the idea that television programmes with political content find no audience among an apathetic population is explicitly challenged by the findings of the HKTP:
��The claimed exposure to�Ksources of news and current affairs is simply remarkable�K Hong Kong is one of the most media savvy, media and information oriented societies in the world. At least one in four spend more than 10 hours a week listening to or watching news and current affairs on radio and TV.��38
This serves as another reminder of the danger of assuming the continuing validity of observations made in the early 1980s concerning Hong Kong people��s political ��apathy�� or politico-phobia.
A frequent source of subject matter in local films and television drama has been Chinese history, with favourite topics including the life and times of Cixi (the Empress Dowager), palace intrigues during the Qing dynasty, anti-Qing rebellions, kung fu heroes combating injustice,39 and the Judge Pao saga. The popularity of such topics has reflected a desire on the part of Hong Kong audiences to retain a sense of Chinese national and cultural identity, while at the same time avoiding any identification with the Chinese Communist regime. As Leung puts it,
Given Hong Kong��s peculiar political circumstances, in which there is both official and self-censorship against references in popular culture to contemporary Chinese history and politics, the popular culture industry has to resort to this apolitical approach to reinstate Chinese culture in its productions. The ensuing cultural products reflect and reinforce ambivalence in the identity of the Hong Kong Chinese: They wish to retain their Chineseness, and yet they perceive themselves as socially and politically distinct from their brethren on the mainland.40
One way in which Hong Kong popular culture has asserted this distinct identity vis-a-vis mainland Chinese is through the stereotyping of mainlanders as ��Ah Charn�� figures. In films and television dramas mainlanders have often been portrayed as ignorant but essentially harmless country bumpkins, or as psychopathic criminals. In the former case, ��Ah Charn�� is someone to be ridiculed, but also someone to be educated and assisted, and this image thus reinforces Hongkongers�� sense of their own superiority. In the latter version, the portrayal of mainlanders as objects of fear represents the threat that Hong Kong people see them as posing to their way of life. However, as Leung points out, there has been�Xparticularly in more recent years�Xanother set of ��Ah Charn�� stereotypes associated with the theme of reunification and the need to cooperate with the mainland, even occasionally holding up aspects of life on the mainland in an implicit critique of the Hong Kong life-style.41 He goes on to argue that, with the return of Hong Kong to China, ��the Hong Kong identity that rests on a dissociation from mainland China appears increasingly unrealistic and untenable.��42
Ma sees the 1990s as a period of ��resinisation�� of the local media, caused by the opening up of China and the approach of 1997, and characterised by ��the reinvention and rediscovery of forgotten historical and cul-tural links between Hong Kong and China��.43 As a result of this, ��the role of television in preserving Hong Kong identity�� has become ��more and more problematical��.44 However, he does not see this process as simply a reflection of an increased public desire to identify with the Chinese mainland. Rather, it has been the result of the fact that ��television operated in a more competitive and more regional environment and, like the print media, could not ignore either its own interests in China or those of its advertisers��.45 This appears to reinforce the observations of Steve Vines concerning the way in which the increasing clout of mainland Chinese commercial interests has helped to encourage the practice of self-censorship in Hong Kong.46
Ambivalent attitudes to the mainland and mainlanders have been evident not only in television programming, but also in the local Chinese press. Often, this ambivalence expresses itself in a sentimental attraction for pan-Chinese nationalist causes on the one hand, along with a hostility on the other hand towards those Chinese ��compatriots�� who wish to immigrate to Hong Kong. This mixture of attitudes has been characteristic both of more tabloid publications such as the Oriental Daily News, and of ��high-brow�� papers such as Ming Pao. In general, nationalist sentiment has been most fervently expressed in relation to issues that have no direct bearing on Hong Kong��s relationship with the mainland�Xand particularly those involving conflict between ��Chinese�� and ��foreigners�� of one sort or another. No issue arouses more virulent expressions of nationalist sentiment in Hong Kong�Xas on the mainland�Xthan that of Japanese atrocities during World War II, Japan��s unwillingness to adequately acknowledge or apologise for these, and the alleged persistence of militaristic nationalism in Japan. Related to this anti-Japanese feeling were the campaigns of the 1970s and late 1990s to ��recover�� the Diaoyutai islands (off the northern coast of Taiwan) from Japan, which were championed in particular by Ming Pao. Ming Pao and other papers were also quick to join the outburst of anti-American rage that followed the bombing of China��s embassy in Yugoslavia.47 The Democratic Party also attempted to boost its patriotic credentials at this time by distributing flyers denouncing the American ��invasion of our sovereignty��.48 Even before this event, however, Ming Pao had carried an editorial alleging that the Americans and Japanese, for their own nefarious purposes, were trying to ��trap�� the PRC and Taiwan into engaging in a military conflict.49 The outpouring of anger provoked by the Nato bombing seemed to draw on a deep reservoir of xenophobia both in Hong Kong and the mainland, as well as reflecting the perception, characteristic of many Chinese nationalists, of China as a ��violated innocent�� in international relations.50
The tactics adopted in recent years by Chinese state propaganda have aimed at exploiting this latent anti-foreignism. Within China, the Communist government has issued periodic calls for ��Patriotic Education��, and has concentrated on bolstering nationalism by taking every opportunity to remind the people of past humiliations at the hands of foreign powers.51 For example, the unofficial Chinese slogan for the handover of Macau in December 1999 was ��the end of humiliation��, despite the fact that the historical circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Portuguese presence in Macau were far from humiliating to China.52 Earlier in the same year, the eightieth anniversary of the May 4th movement was commemorated by the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily with the headline ��Uphold May 4th patriotism��, and a photograph showing hundreds of high school students standing with clenched fists amongst the ruins of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The palace, the paper reminded its readers, ��was burnt down by British and French troops in 1860.��53
The attempt to use the May 4th anniversary to reinforce anti-foreign sentiment did not impress Ming Pao, which pointed out that the mainland government was continuing to neglect the democratic aspects of the May 4th legacy. Indeed, the issue of democracy, more intimately associated in local people��s minds with June 4th 1989 than with May 4th 1919, came during the 1990s to symbolise the gulf between Hong Kong and mainland China. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the main local body dedicated to commemorating the pro-democracy movement of 1989 also makes a point of emphasising its patriotism.54 Ming Pao, although ostensibly a pro-democracy paper,55 has been unequivocal in its condemnation of President Lee Teng-hui��s federalist ��seven-piece China�� idea,56 and has shown no sympathy for the principle of Taiwanese or Tibetan self-determination. The Basic Law outlaws any public advocacy of separatism, but it seems that even for some ostensibly liberal and democratic elements in Hong Kong, the importance of national unity (even encompassing areas such as Taiwan, Xinjiang or Tibet whose ��Chineseness�� is complex or questionable) and of strong central government (except for Hong Kong itself), remain essential articles of nationalist faith.
The schizophrenia of many Hongkongers when it comes to the issue of their identity is perhaps best illustrated by the issue of language. As was noted above, the medium of Hong Kong��s popular culture has since the 1970s been overwhelmingly Cantonese, this being the language of the vast majority of the local population. Most locally-published comics and newspapers use many non-conventional characters or combinations to represent Cantonese colloquialisms, thus making the everyday written language, as well as the spoken language, distinct from the ��standard�� forms current in the mainland and Taiwan. However, the form of written Chinese taught in schools, and required in public examinations, is ��Modern Standard Chinese��. Educated Hongkongers are almost invariably disparaging about the use of Cantonese ��slang�� in written Chinese, and indeed many com-monly refer to Cantonese itself as a ��dialect��, even though in linguistic terms it is incontestably a distinct language.57 One of the marks of Ming Pao��s intellectual superiority over many of its rivals in the local press is its adherence to the use of ��Modern Standard Chinese��, and its general avoidance of Cantonese ��slang��. Pierson speculates that those Hongkongers who look down on Cantonese do so in order to affirm ��their Chinese ethnic identity��.58 The irony of this, he notes, is that Cantonese is ��probably the variety of Chinese most closely related to ancient Chinese, the source of all of China��s present-day varieties��.59 Thus, while the use of Cantonese has become intimately bound up with Hongkongers�� sense of their own identity, the language itself continues to bear the stigma of cultural inferiority. This may make it easier for the government to gain the support of local educators for its moves to promote the use of putonghua as the medium of instruction for teaching Chinese in local schools.60
The discussion so far has focused on the tension between Hongkongers�� Chineseness and their sense of local distinctiveness, but what of Hong Kong the ��international city��? Many locals are fond of imagining their city as a cosmopolitan metropolis, though outside a few expensive districts evidence of this cosmopolitanism is relatively sparse. Nonetheless, HKTP found in 1998 that the second most read section in local newspapers (behind Hong Kong news) was international news�Xnot China news. ��There is,�� the report commented
���Ka considerable proportion of Hong Kong people to whom the world matters more than the nation. This will be news to those whose constant drumbeat is that Hong Kong is solely, or even mainly, about China. While 45% have close relatives living overseas with right of abode, about two thirds have relatives living in China, and 30% haven��t been to the mainland in two years or more.��61
While Hong Kong is ethnically and culturally overwhelmingly Chinese, in a very broad sense, and while its economy is ever more closely wedded to that of the mainland, there is therefore also a very significant strand of internationalism in local culture and society. This is especially strong among the middle classes, and is frequently reinforced by personal experience of living or studying overseas, and by family ties.
Hong Kong��s culture and sense of its own history have grown and blossomed in recent years, but this growth is relatively recent, and the resulting bloom is a fragile hybrid. As Akbar Abbas puts it,
���Kuntil as late as the seventies, Hong Kong did not realize it could have a culture. The import mentality saw culture, like everything else, as that which came from elsewhere: from Chinese tradition, more legitimately located in mainland China and Taiwan, or from the West. As for Hong Kong, it was, in a favourite phrase, ��a cultural desert.�� �KWhat changed the largely negative attitude to Hong Kong culture was not just Hong Kong��s growing affluence; more important, it was the double trauma of the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 followed by the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989. �KThe anticipated end of Hong Kong as people knew it was the beginning of a profound concern with its historical and cultural specificity. But then the cause of this interest in Hong Kong culture�X1997�Xmay also cause its demise.��62
If Abbas is right, then the confusion and ambivalence which appear to characterise local people��s sense of their own identity may give heart to elements within the pro-Beijing establishment who are intent on strengthening Hong Kong people��s nationalism and diluting their sense of local distinctiveness.
HISTORY AND POLITICS IN TRANSITIONAL HONG KONG�XTHE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
In Chapter 1, the traditional role of history in China as a ��religion of the state�� was discussed, and it was noted that, while by no means unique to China, this approach has peculiarly deep roots in Chinese culture. The Communist regime on the mainland has been assiduous in its manipulation of history for propaganda purposes. In the year of Hong Kong��s retrocession, mainland studios released three films on historical subjects with strong patriotic themes: ��The Opium War��, ��Red River Valley�� (about Britain��s invasion of Tibet in 1904), and ��The Soong Sisters��. With varying degrees of subtlety, each of these films sought to reinforce similar messages concerning the importance of national unity, morally upright political leadership, and resistance against foreign schemes to divide, dominate and exploit China. Such themes have long been a staple of state propaganda on the mainland, as is evident on any visit to sites such as the Museum of the Chinese Revolution or the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, or the ��Anti-British Imperialism Museum�� in Gyantse, Tibet.
The post-handover government��s efforts to use education, and particularly the ��Chinese culture subjects��, to inculcate patriotism have already been discussed in Chapter
2. However, these curricular changes have taken place in the context of a broader programme of what might be termed ��patriotic re-education��, inspired by mainland examples, and directed not just at schoolchildren, but at society in general. Tung Chee Hwa made clear his belief in the need for this in his first policy address:
��For many years, Hong Kong has been set apart from the Mainland. We have lived in a society and a cultural environment very different from the Mainland. As we face the historic change of being reunited with China, for every individual there is a gradual process of getting to know Chinese history and culture, so as to achieve a sense of belonging. My Administration attaches importance to this process.��63
A full account of how these aims have been pursued since the handover would need to include a thorough survey of official and semi-official policy on arts and culture. However, the discussion here is confined to the aspect of cultural policy most directly relevant to history education: the management of the Hong Kong Museum of History.
Until the mid-1970s, Hong Kong had only a tiny history museum�Xa fact possibly attributable, like the absence of local history from school syllabuses, to a combination of colonial embarrassment and popular as well as academic indifference.64 An official view of the territory��s history was put forward in the brief historical survey contained in the annual ��Hong Kong Reports��, originally written by the British historian G.B.Endacott, which enshrined a fairly triumphalist account of Hong Kong��s progress from ��barren rock�� to capitalist utopia. However, the approach adopted by the Hong Kong History Museum at Kowloon Park, which opened in 1983, was reasonably balanced. In the words of Ilaria Maria Sala, an Italian journalist, the collection was ��relatively comprehensive�� and ��interesting and stimulating��, and included ��an interesting ethnographic survey of the various cultural groups to be found in Hong Kong (the Hakkas, the Puntis, etc.)�� and a large variety of artefacts from different periods.65 The collection also featured a photographic display and video clips of the 1966�V7 riots, as well as coverage of the Opium Wars. The permanent exhibition covered only the period up to 1984, and was therefore in need of updating by the time of Hong Kong��s reversion to Chinese rule in 1997. Limitations of space also prevented the museum��s coverage from being more comprehensive. A decision was therefore taken by the pre-handover Urban Council to build a large new museum, work on which was due to be completed by autumn 1998.
The opening of the permanent exhibition at the new museum was eventually delayed until 2001. This was principally due to demands from a number of the Beijing-appointed members of the post-handover Provisional Urban Council for last-minute revisions to be made to the exhibition content. Sala recounts how the criticisms of the project voiced during the Council debates ��were mostly so vague as to appear merely to be pretexts for loud professions of solidarity with China.�� For example, one member stated
��There are two versions of history: the British version, and the Chinese version. Now that Hong Kong has been reunited with the motherland, we should adopt the Chinese version of history to show our gratitude.��66
Other complaints were that the plans for the museum were ��too Westernised��, that ��they did not make enough of the celebrations of the handover to the mother country, or of the history of China��, and that too little space had been devoted to prominent individuals such as Sun Yat-sen and Lin Zexu. The Council finally confined itself to a suggestion that the museum consider ��how to enrich the part relating to the Reunification of Hong Kong with China��, but the political attention which the project attracted put the museum director, Dr Joseph Ting, under enormous pressure.
This pressure resulted in certain alterations to the plans for the museum. The Opium Wars, for example, naturally occupy a prominent place, but the section devoted to them has been reduced�Xperhaps as a result of the view taken by Dr Ting that there is nothing controversial about the history of the wars. ��I do not think the war was about free trade at all,�� he told Sala. ��It was about opium, there is nothing sensitive in this.�� Consequently, there is no mention of any point of view regarding the wars other than that enshrined in official Chinese historiography. The exhibit includes a video showing excerpts from Xie Jin��s 1997 film, ��The Opium War��.
As a result of the Urban Council��s intervention, a section called ��The role of Hong Kong in modern Chinese political history�� was included featuring exhibits relating to Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen and other ��patriots�� connected in some way with Hong Kong. This focuses on local involvement in such events as the 1911 revolution, the effects of developments in China on the local scene (for example, the anti-British strikes of 1925), and the aid provided by Hongkongers to China during the war with Japan in the late 1930s. By contrast, the impact of Hong Kong on the Communist revolution of 1949 (and vice versa) is not covered, despite (or because of) the fact that most of the current Hong Kong population, or their parents or grandparents, fled to the colony from the mainland during the early years of Communist rule. The impact of this ��population influx�� (the word ��refugees�� is nowhere used to refer to migrants from the mainland) on Hong Kong��s economy and society is covered in certain exhibits, especially as regards the measures, especially in the fields of housing and education, taken by the government to cater for the new migrants (for example, one display consists of a scale model of a typical classroom of the 1950s, with a recording of a lesson in progress). However, the causes of this ��influx��, namely famine and persecution on the mainland, are nowhere mentioned.
A substantial amount of space is devoted to displays that portray the cultural and material accoutrements of the ��Hong Kong lifestyle�� as this has developed over the past thirty or forty years, with cabinets containing a selection of the enormous range of goods manufactured in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s. There is also an audio-visual display devoted to the early development of the local broadcast media, particularly television, during the 1970s�Xsomething that, as noted above, was an important vehicle for the emergence of a distinctive local identity. However, there is no substantial coverage of the riots of 1966 and 1967, or the activities of local pressure groups during the 1970s, or of the abortive plans for political reform put forward by Governor Mark Young in the late 1940s. Instead, the displays portray late-twentieth century Hong Kong as a depoliticised, benevolent capitalist utopia.
Coverage of Britain��s role in Hong Kong��s history is generally patchy, with a wall-chart showing the various governors from 1843 to 1941 posted in perhaps the most remote and least frequented corner of the whole museum. A brief descriptive summary of the territory��s political institutions notes that ��the Urban Council was the only body with elected members before World War II��. The British role in the defence of Hong Kong during World War II is given considerable coverage in the section devoted to the war and the Japanese occupation, with mention also made of the involvement of Indian troops (virtually the only acknowledgement in the whole museum of the Indian presence in the colony). Conditions in the Stanley prisoner of war camp, the activities of the British Army Aid Group, along with Communist guerrillas in the New Territories, are also covered�Xthe general impression being of British and Chinese suffering together under the Japanese jackboot. However, when it comes to the postwar period, the British seem to disappear from the picture entirely until we come to the Sino-British negotiations that paved the way for the territory��s ��return to the motherland��.
A substantial area is dedicated to exhibits commemorating the 1997 handover, with a small theatre showing a film that provides an overview of local history in the run-up to this event. This consists of a series of video clips of notable events, accompanied by upbeat music and stirring slogans, but with no voice-over. This lack of any commentary allows the film to touch upon politically sensitive events without even naming them�Xlet alone analysing them or offering any interpretation. Thus images of the Cultural Revolution and the local riots of 1967 flash briefly across the screen, as do the local demonstrations in response to the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989. The latter clip appears with the caption ��Blood is Thicker than Water���Ximplicitly representing this episode, somewhat perversely, as evidence of the ties that bind Hong Kong people to their ��blood brothers�� on the mainland. This clip is immediately succeeded by pictures of local people raising money for flood victims in China, and then to preparations for the handover, Tung Chee Hwa��s ��election�� as Chief Executive and, under the slogan ��A Better Hong Kong��, images of Hongkongers celebrating as happy songs in Mandarin (not Cantonese) play in the background. There is an excerpt from Jiang Zemin��s speech at the handover ceremony emphasising the significance of this event for all Chinese people, and finally, to the backdrop of the handover fireworks display, the slogan ��Xianggang mingtian geng hao�� (Hong Kong��s tomorrow will be even better) fills the screen.
A striking feature of the museum project, and of the wider historical debate in Hong Kong in recent years, has been the amount of attention devoted to archaeology. There have been a number of important archaeological finds in Hong Kong in recent years, and these have been hailed by mainland experts and officials as evidence of ��Chinese�� occupation of the area from prehistoric times. This assertion flies in the face of international scholarly opinion, which holds that Hong Kong��s prehistoric inhabitants were probably more closely related to Malays, Vietnamese or Polynesians than to the ��Han�� peoples of northern China. In addition, dynastic chronicles from at least as late as the Sui dynasty (about 1,500 years ago) describe Guangdong as a whole as a wild frontier region, much of which was still inhabited by largely unassimilated non-Han tribal peoples.67 Ng and Baker recount how the original inhabitants of Lantau Island were effectively ��ethnically cleansed�� in the twelfth century:
��the Yao who then lived in the Hong Kong region were either absorbed or annihilated when the Chinese moved in�K. An attempt in 1197 to stop private trading in salt led to the revolt of the islanders who successfully repulsed a government invasion force by mining their harbors with wooden stakes and then fighting a sea battle. They then sailed to Guangzhou but were defeated by the navy. This action is thought to have been the end of the Yao domination of Lantau, survivors being absorbed�K��68
No mention is made anywhere in the museum of any such history of ethnic conflict in the Hong Kong region, and the ��Chinese�� ethnicity of local inhabitants from prehistoric times is therefore assumed to be unproblematic. Any suggestion that Hong Kong might possess an ancient ��pre-Chinese�� heritage was attacked in a 1997 ��China Daily�� article as ��an insult to the native Chinese who have long lived on the island.��69 To admit such a possibility is out of the question for a regime whose central dogma is the racial and cultural homogeneity of the Chinese nation, and which insists that Hong Kong has been part of China ��from time immemorial��. Hong Kong has thus acquired, according to booklet published in late 1997 by the Antiquities and Monuments Office ��A History of 6,000 years���Xone thou-sand years longer than that usually claimed for China itself. In this enthusiasm for local archaeology, Sala claims, ��one can clearly perceive the wish to reduce the British presence to ��an episode��, a passing influence, rather than to represent it as the crucial, even founding, impact that created the city we know today.��70
Patriotic themes have also figured prominently in some of the temporary exhibitions at the new museum. The first of these was devoted to Lin Zexu, the Chinese hero of the first Opium War. This was an exercise in straightforward hagiography, typical of the treatment of heroic figures in official Chinese historiography and in the ��Chinese History�� school subject. Lin was held up as an exemplary Chinese patriot and moral role model. The museum also hosted a conference, attended by scholars from across China, on Lin��s role in the Opium Wars. Another temporary exhibition, loaned from a museum in mainland China, was devoted to the great discoveries of Chinese science, a subject given nationalist overtones and treated as the occasion for a triumphalist celebration of Chinese genius.
Far more explicit and extreme in its nationalism was an exhibition shown in late 1999, entitled ��One Hundred Years of Self-Strengthening: the Rise of Modern China��.71 This was also loaned to the Hong Kong Museum by a mainland museum�Xin this case the National Museum of Modern Chinese History�Xand it was sponsored by ��The Chinese History and Chinese Educational Foundation for Youth��.72 The exhibition provided highly nationalistic accounts of events during the past one hundred years of Chinese history, including the Sino-Japanese War, the section on which contained a life-size sculpture of a Japanese soldier on the point of executing a Chinese civilian. Among the other episodes which received similarly orthodox (from a mainland point of view) treatment were the Korean War, the Communist take-over in Tibet, the handovers of Hong Kong and Macau, and developments in Taiwan (avoiding any mention of Taiwan��s then President Lee Teng-hui). The exhibition began with the Boxer Uprising, after the Opium War perhaps the incident most symbolic of China��s humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, and finished with the Macau handover�Xdubbed ��the end of humiliation�� by Beijing��s propagandists. The introduction to the final section declared that ��the current leadership, with Jiang Zemin at the core, carries on the reform programme and open policy, and will take the nation over to the next century to a new epoch of strength and prosperity.�� The tone of the exhibition as a whole was summed up in the following exhortation from Xia Yanyue, Director of the National Museum of Chinese History:
��We the children of China should commit history to memory, to express our patriotic feelings and to march with the times in confidence. Facing the new century with a sense of comradeship, we should dedicate ourselves to making the renaissance of our nation a reality.��73
Developments at the Hong Kong Museum since 1997 bear witness to a determination on the part of elements within Hong Kong��s new political establishment to give history, along with heritage and ��culture��, a crucial new role in attempts to promote an uncritical, state-centred patriotism. Museum and heritage policy have been subject to more direct governmental supervision than have the development of the History or Chinese History curricula. However, direct interference in the running of the museum has generally proved unnecessary. Beijing��s propaganda machine, along with the frequent public pronouncements by Chief Executive Tung and other pro-Beijing figures concerning the need for greater emphasis on Chinese history, culture and patriotism, have set the parameters of what is acceptable, and what is ��controversial�� and therefore taboo. If officials at the museum were uncertain prior to the handover as to where the boundaries of acceptability lay, the increased collaboration with mainland archaeologists and historians which has taken place over the past few years must have clarified this for them.
At the same time, Hong Kong��s relatively vibrant political culture, and strengthening sense of its own identity, have placed countervailing pressures on museum curators, who have been forced to perform a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, they appear to share the widespread feeling of pride in Hong Kong��s distinctiveness and success, and feel compelled to reflect this in their exhibitions. However, the application of the ��One country; two systems�� principle to official heritage policy appears to mean that while local museums may remain free of Marxist ideology, they are unable even implicitly to criticise past actions of the mainland government, and are expected above all to toe the ��one China�� line. This involves an assumption of a primordial, homogenous racial and cultural ��Chineseness��, applying equally to Hong Kong as it does to all other parts of China, and carrying with it the obligation to adopt and promote an unquestioning patriotism.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Hong Kong��s popular culture has testified to a growing and distinctive sense of local identity, but one that is full of contradictions. ��Hongkongese�� identity has largely consisted of a sense of pride in the local way of life, and the cosmopolitan sophistication of this ��international city��, constrasted with the relative backwardness and poverty of the mainland. A vibrant popular culture expressed through the medium of the Cantonese language also distinguishes Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland, as well as constituting a major cultural export. A set of values that can be characterised as typically middle class and liberal reinforces a desire to maintain Hong Kong��s separateness from the mainland, particularly amongst younger generations who have grown up here. At the same time, however, many local people hold a ��primordialist�� conception of their Chineseness that in certain circumstances gives rise to strong feelings of solidarity with other members of ��the Chinese race��. It is this consciousness of ��China�� as a homogenous and unified cultural space, and of Hong Kong��s eternal and immutable place within it, that the post-handover regime has assiduously sought to cultivate and reinforce, and this official view is reflected in the narrative of the local past�Xand especially the recent past�Xprovided in the new Hong Kong Museum of History.
Sympathisers with the official discourse on Hong Kong��s historical identity have understandably sought to take issue with arguments that emphasise Hong Kong��s distinctive historical and cultural identity by countering that the local ��lifestyle�� is unworthy of the hallowed epithet of ��culture��. Lin Yuan attacks Turner��s claim that Hongkongers constitute a distinct ��people�� under international law�Xa proposition that, if upheld, would render the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong��s future illegal, since it contravenes the right of Hong Kong ��people�� to self-determination. Pointing out that Turner (whom he describes as ��a foreign researcher��) himself admits that local culture essentially amounts to ��a way of life��, Lin asserts that
��Cultural consciousness and a sense of cultural belonging cannot be instantly manufactured like commercial goods to the demands of the market. It emerges gradually, incrementally, over a long period of time, and is the collective product of a society united by flesh and blood, and common experience. Hong Kong is a society whose population is 95 percent Chinese. Chinese culture, according to archaeological discoveries made over the past forty years, already has a history of over 10,000 years. To ignore this Chinese history and speak of the distinct cultural identity of local Chinese is, if not naive, then downright ignorant.��74
Citing an article by Bao Cuo Shi, Lin argues that Hong Kong ��culture�� is in fact ��a mongrel culture�� (zaqu wenhua), derived through a ��chaotic�� process of ��imitation�� from a variety of sources (many of them ��foreign��). One of the characteristics of such a culture, in Bao��s (and Lin��s) view, is that it leads to a ��crumbling�� of true cultural identity, a breakdown of social harmony, and a society of ��atomised individuals��. Developing this point, Lin warns that
���Kif ��Hong Kong people�� do not have a common, or a least a similar sense of cultural identity and belonging to that of Chinese people [on the mainland], and if their sense of identity instead resides, as at present, in this�K��mongrel culture��, then can social stability be preserved after 1997? If this ��mongrel culture�� becomes the source of collective cultural identity for ��Hong Kong people��, then when they gain the right to ��rule Hong Kong�� [zhi gang] after 1997, will a Hong Kong independence movement emerge, similar to the Taiwan independence movement?��75
This argument obviously assumes that independence for Hong Kong would be a ��bad thing���Xan assumption that Lin seems to expect his readers to share. However, the comparison with Taiwan is apposite, if only because it serves as a reminder of the cultural differences between these two ��regions�� claimed by Beijing. Taiwan��s history since the mid-1980s has been marked by the increasingly open and forceful expression of ��Taiwanese�� political and cultural distinctiveness, the effective political independence enjoyed by the island leaving its inhabitants far less inhibited than their ��Hong Kong compatriots�� by the need to conform to Beijing��s version of the ��one China�� orthodoxy. Whether Hongkongers, given the same level of political autonomy, would have developed a similarly strong sense of their cultural identity, must remain a hypothetical question, though Choi notes that ��being a modern city through and through, [Hong Kong] does not have the option of nativism, which, to a large extent, is open to the Taiwanese.��76 Instead, most Hongkongers have found the source of their identity in the local ��lifestyle��, as experienced by ��grassroots�� elements rather than the Chinese or expatriate elites.
The resilience of this sense of identity over the coming years, in the face of the ongoing kulturkampf conducted by the new pro-Beijing establishment, is uncertain. Hong Kong has been hailed as ��the cultural centre of Greater China���Xa reflection of the wide appeal of the local ��lifestyle��, and particularly of the popular culture it has spawned, in mainland China, Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities around the world. However, the more widely the superficial aspects of this ��lifestyle�� spread among the burgeoning Chinese middle class, the less ��local�� it may appear and, arguably, the less capable of representing Hong Kong��s distinctiveness�Xboth to Hong Kong people themselves and to outsiders. Meanwhile, the prospect of growing numbers of business-people and professionals from other parts of China moving to live and work in Hong Kong, and the possibility that local people from lower income groups may move across the border to take advantage of the lower cost of living there,77 increase the likelihood that, over time, demographics may contribute to what Turner terms the ��dissolving�� of the Hong Kong people. A sense of Hong Kong as a community possessing a shared past would help to ��bed down�� the consciousness of a distinctive identity that has emerged in Hong Kong, and, depending on how that past was constructed, might strengthen an understanding of the values and institutions that have made the local ��lifestyle�� possible, while fostering a spirit of critical citizenship, rather than mere social conformity. History education in schools must be seen as central to any such enterprise and, therefore, as potentially crucial to the long-term survival of Hong Kong as a vibrant, distinctive, autonomous community�Xsomething more than merely ��a place to do business��.


Chapter 4 The History Curriculum from the 1960s to 1982
INTRODUCTION
THIS CHAPTER PROVIDES A BROAD SURVEY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE history curriculum for Hong Kong schools in the period prior to the commencement of formal Anglo-Chinese discussions over Hong Kong��s future. The choice of 1982 as an ending date matches the periodisation suggested by Morris and Sweeting, who see the pre-1982 period as ��marked by the conscious pursuit of a depoliticised school curriculum�� that ��involved an avoidance of general political issues and of any attempt to develop a clear sense of local or Chinese national identity.��1 As was noted in the previous two chapters, the ��apoliticism�� of the school curriculum was part consequence and part cause of a general ��politico-phobia�� amongst the Hong Kong population in the period up to the 1970s. The concern of the colonial government from the 1940s onwards to limit the political influence of Communist elements sponsored or inspired by the PRC, as well as that of Kuomintang supporters, drove early efforts to centralize and bureaucratise the local education system, bringing curriculum development and textbook monitoring for all school subjects within the ambit of an expanded Education Department. Meanwhile, public demand, and international expectations, for increased educational provision led to a steady expansion of the schooling system (see Chapter 2). The shift from an elitist schooling system to one of mass provision was, however, beset with problems relating to resources, teacher recruitment, the medium of instruction issue and a curriculum that remained very academically- and examination-oriented.
The pre-1982 period witnessed the genesis of most of the major issues that were to influence the development of the history curriculum in the sub-sequent twenty years�X with the exception, that is, of the issue of the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. Perhaps the most notable development during this period was the disappearance of Hong Kong history from local syllabuses. It is a sign of how much has changed since 1970 that, at that time, this particular change should have passed off so quietly, attracting little if any comment�Xadverse or otherwise�Xin the local media. Any such move today would in all likelihood arouse intense controversy, and provoke accusations that a barefaced attempt was being made to deny or undermine Hong Kong��s distinctive identity. As we shall see, however, in 1970 there does not appear to have been any widespread sense, at least among local Chinese teachers or officials, that the removal of Hong Kong history from syllabuses was to be regretted or deplored. Indeed, the idea that the historical identity of students was, or should be, primarily rooted in the local past, does not seem to have occurred to many in the local history teaching community. However, by the end of the 1970s, this was beginning to change, as the social and cultural shifts noted in the previous chapter gave rise to a growing sense of ��Hongkongeseness��.
Official documentary sources relating to this period are remarkably scarce, but it is possible, using data from interviews, textbooks and contemporary publications, to reconstruct a general account of the processes and influences at work. This account will provide the necessary background for the discussion in subsequent chapters of curriculum changes since 1982, particularly regarding the impact of the major alterations in Hong Kong��s political landscape on History curriculum development.
CURRICULUM CONTENT AND AIMS
In the period up to the 1970s, the English influence on the content of the curriculum for History was unmistakable. English trends such as the ��New History�� movement began to have an impact on the aims and content of local history syllabuses by the mid-1970s, although their immediate effect on the way history was taught seems to have been slight. In England itself, while the suggestion that pupils of history should uses sources in ways similar to those employed by professional historians had been made as early as 1910, it was not until the 1970s that steps were taken, particularly through the Schools Council History Project, to realise this vision of history teaching as promoting ��an unceasing attitude of inquiry and of penetration to original sources��.2 Meanwhile, History as a school subject in Hong Kong remained in thrall to the ��great tradition�� of English history teaching, famously satirised by Sellars and Yeatman in 1066 and All That, in which they declared: ��History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember��.3 Thus syllabuses outlined (in chronological form), and examinations tested, a body of received historical knowledge.
Two essential features of the tradition of history teaching parodied by Sellars and Yeatman were its celebration of ��the Great British People without whose self-sacrificing determination to become top Nation there would have been no (memorable) history��,4 and its emphasis on the moral qualities, or failings, of important historical personalities. As England��s Board of Education put it in 1905,
��A�Kmost important reason for teaching history is that it is, to a certain extent, a record of the influence for good or for evil exercised by great personalities. No one would dispute that our scholars should have examples put before them, whether for imitation or the reverse, of the great men and women that have lived in the past.��5
The history that was taught in schools was not only moralising, but also extremely political in its emphasis, and by the same token extremely male�Xapart from Elizabeth I and Florence Nightingale, very few women featured in the standard narrative. 1066 and All That reflects this with its gallery of ��good kings��, ��bad kings��, ��Egg-kings��, and various other categories of monarch. This was the ��scissors-and-paste�� approach to history, informed by a conviction that the subject should be taught in such a way as to reinforce an uncritical patriotism.
A nationalistic, highly political, and moralising approach to history was not, of course, unique to England. As was pointed out in Chapter 1, this approach has prevailed in most countries most of the time. In this respect, there is also nothing uniquely ��Chinese�� about the moralising emphasis that the subject of ��Chinese History�� has retained up to the present, nor the more politicised and nationalistic bias which, as was shown in Chapter 2 (and is further discussed in Chapter 7), it has more recently acquired. In particular, the conception of history as a ��Mirror for Magistrates��6�Xa gallery of moral exemplars for the edification of future statesmen�Xis common both to the ��great tradition�� of English history teaching, and to the practice of Chinese History teaching in Hong Kong.
The predominant conception of the aims of history teaching in England until at least the early 1970s, as it still is in most other countries and for those involved in teaching the Chinese History subject in Hong Kong, revolved around the duty of getting across a received narrative of the national past. Coverage of global history has usually tended to be given secondary importance.7 The debate over the creation of a History National Curriculum for England has witnessed a heated debate between those who take a more nationalist view (whether ��British��, ��English��, ��Scottish�� or ��Welsh��) of the purposes of history teaching, and those, including advocates of a more pan-European approach, who are wary of any use of history to promote nationalism.8 However, these are, as was noted in Chapter 1, quite recent developments, and in England as in the rest of Europe, national history remains at the core of most history curricula, even if the usual approach is less chauvinist than it often has been in the past. In Asia, meanwhile, nationalism of the nineteenth-century variety continues to characterise most school history curricula.9
Therefore, it is Chinese History rather than History that has been more typical of history as a school subject internationally, in that it has always adopted an unabashedly moralising tone, and, more to the point, has passed on a state-authorised narrative of the national past. China has always been defined as ��the nation�� for Hong Kong people, for reasons that were discussed in Chapter 3, even if the emphasis of the historical narrative in Chinese History was, in the period with which this chapter is concerned, more depoliticised and more distant from the present than it has since become. Of course, Chinese History teachers in Hong Kong have differed from history teachers elsewhere in that they have been relieved of the necessity to give any attention to the world outside ��the nation�� by the existence of an entirely separate History (or ��World History��) subject. On the other hand, those involved in the planning of the curriculum for this separate History subject have, as this and subsequent chapters will demonstrate, struggled to define and to defend its distinctive role. Since their remit has not enabled them to focus primarily on national (i.e. ��Chinese��) history, their subject, when seen from an international perspective, could be viewed as a history curriculum hollow at the core.
History curriculum developers in Hong Kong in the early 1970s appear to have espoused somewhat diverse aims, with some maintaining a more conservative approach, while others were more influenced by recent innovations in history teaching in England. Amongst those tending towards a more conservative conception of the aims of history teaching was Alberto Morales, a Filipino Catholic who was principal of Raimondi College, and who in the 1970s became a best-selling author of history textbooks. Morales also served for a time on the Curriculum Development Council��s History Subject Committee, and spoke at a 1972 seminar at which the role of the CDC was explained to teachers. His vision of the ��aims of teaching history in lower secondary forms�� is striking for its affinity both with the ��great tradition�� of history teaching in England, and with the sorts of aims embraced by teachers of Chinese History then and now:
��The first [aim] is the moral motive. Through the study of the achievements of the great men and women of the past, the pupils learn to distinguish between what is good and what is bad, and to determine what makes a hero and what makes a coward. The approach would be storytelling�Xstories, for example, of Sun Yat-sen and his unselfish efforts to unify China; of Christopher Columbus and his courage in crossing the uncharted seas; of Florence Nightingale and her self-sacrifice during the Crimean War. There can be no doubt that the teaching of history as moral example is good for character formation.��10
Among the other aims he enumerated were those of introducing pupils to their heritage, demonstrating the contrasts between the past and the present, and cultivating political wisdom by profiting ��from the mistakes of the past��.
By contrast, Anthony Sweeting of the University of Hong Kong, warned in a 1974 pamphlet, that ��teachers and students should take care not to reinforce the ��personality cult�� in History��, and that they should avoid giving so much attention to the ��heroes�� of History that the lives of ��ordinary�� people were implicitly devalued.11 He inveighed against generalised value judgements�Xor what he termed the ����King John is a bad man�� approach���Xand called for pupils to be taught to ��empathise with the men and women of the past�� in such a way as to encourage attitudes of ��sympathy, tolerance and humanity��.12 With an emphasis typical of many Europeans of the post-war era,13 he pointed out that ��In the past, History has been exploited in the interests of nationalism, Fascism, Communism, racialism, and various other political and religious dogmas��.14 In his view, it was therefore essential that national bias should be avoided, and that students should be given as much opportunity as possible to work with primary sources. In this way they would be faced with ��the problem of conflicting evidence��15 and would learn to ��distinguish truth from propaganda��.16 He suggested introducing students in junior forms�Xstudying either History or of Social Studies�Xto the nature of historical methodology by having them do projects on their family history, using a mixture of oral and other evidence.17 As for students in the latter stages of their secondary school career, he suggested that
��Sixth form students might be expected to compare the popular ideas about the ��Opium War�� with the documentary evidence for the events of this period, or, perhaps even more controversially, to plan a project�X based upon both documentary and oral sources�Xabout the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Such an approach would mean that they would learn to think about human behaviour, its motives and results, instead of simply learning what people did or said.��18
Implicit in Sweeting��s vision of history teaching, therefore, was a conception of history as a ��craft��, which was shared with, and influenced by, the ��New History�� movement in England and America.19
THE 1975 ��INTERIM SYLLABUS FOR HISTORY�� AT JUNIOR SECONDARY LEVEL
The first substantial set of official teaching guidelines produced for History was the ��Interim Syllabus for History (Forms I�VIII)�� issued by the CDC in 1975. In its section on ��Aims and Methods��, the syllabus appeared to promote the sort of approach advocated by Sweeting, emphasising that
To appreciate the difference between memorizing and understanding a subject, senior pupils in particular should be given ample opportunity of discussing historical topics and of becoming aware of more than one point of view. What is not to be encouraged is the unaided provision by the teacher of facts and notes.20
However, the rest of the syllabus, which was almost fifty pages long, consisted principally of ��facts and notes�� on the various topics that it included. In a brief section on ��Approaches to History��, descriptions of three approaches to teaching: ��the chronological approach��, ��lines of development�� and ��the ��patch�� method�� were described, and teachers were told that they should use ��the one which is most appropriate to the topic in hand��.21 In some cases, the syllabus itself recommended an approach appropriate to a particular topic�Xfor example, project work on aspects of life in Ancient Greece�Xbut in most instances the recommendations did not specify particular pedagogical methods. More often, they suggested ��lines of study�� or interpretative approaches which it was felt would be appropriate to students�� abilities and interests, although the drafters occasionally emphasised their own impartiality. In the case of the topic on ��Asia��s response to the impact of the West��, which covered the Opium War, they appear to have been particularly anxious to appear impartial�Xthough they immediately contradict themselves by prescribing a particular approach:
��To elaborate on what to teach would be quite unnecessary and the teacher is advised to exercise his discretion; however, at this stage [Form 3], it is considered appropriate that pupils should be introduced to the more significant aspects of East-West contact and conflict. Topics such as the Canton Trade System, the disputes over opium and diplomatic representation, the Treaty Port System and missionary activities warrant special attention.��22
The overall aim that the syllabus most clearly embodies is that of providing ��a skeleton framework of historical knowledge�� for students in the junior forms. Thus students in Form I were to study life in the World��s ancient civilisations; those in Form II were to learn about the history of the World��s main religions, along with life in medieval Europe, ��Conflict and Contact between East and West��, and ��Great voyages of Discovery��; while those in Form III were expected to study ��Modern Times��, with an emphasis on European and East Asian history. This involved an inevitable overlap between the topics covered in Chinese History�Xan issue that was addressed in the first paragraph of the syllabus:
��It is recognised that Chinese History is taught independently in the Chinese language. However, it is desirable that pupils acquire a broad understanding of the history of East and West as a whole. At the risk of duplication, therefore, short sections on Chinese History are included in this syllabus.��23
At the risk of encroaching on the preserve of Chinese History, the syllabus thus embraced a global approach to history of the sort that several of the speakers at a 1970 History Conference had called for,24 even if Europe and East Asia were given far more attention than other regions. Though evidence as to what sort of history tended to be taught at junior level prior to the mid-1970s is hard to come by, it is likely, if the syllabuses for more senior forms are any indication, that the 1975 syllabus was considerably less Anglo-centric or Euro-centric than what had preceded it.
The members of the CDC Working Party that drafted the syllabus clearly felt somewhat ambivalent about the exercise in which they were engaged. On the one hand, they were responding to a demand for guidance on the part of history teachers, and a decision by the Education Department that this demand should be met (the History syllabus was only one of a number of CDC syllabuses issued in 1975). At the same time, however, they were anxious to stress that the syllabus was ��intended to be a curriculum guide��, and that teachers should make a selection of the topics covered, rather than attempt to plough through the entire syllabus.25 They did not want it to be treated as holy writ. However, the 1975 syllabus became the blueprint for textbooks written for junior secondary level, and thus largely determined the content of history lessons in the junior forms for the next two decades. It was not until the mid-1990s that the ��Interim Syllabus�� of 1975 was substantially revised.26
SYLLABUSES FOR HKCE LEVEL (FORMS 4 AND 5)
Curriculum developers�� reluctance to give teachers a blow-by-blow factual and interpretative guide to the syllabus, which, it was feared, would then become the basis for ��model answers�� provided to students for memorisation, may also explain the lack of any detailed syllabus or teaching guides for the senior secondary or sixth-form levels. Throughout this period, the only syllabuses that existed at these levels were examination syllabuses consisting of lists of topics arranged chronologically and according to region. During the 1960s and 1970s, there were marked shifts in the content of the syllabuses for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education (HKCE) and for A�� level, which saw the reduction or elimination of sections devoted to English history, or to ��The British Empire and Commonwealth��, and an increase in the proportion of topics relating to the Far East. Europe was consistently given a great deal of attention. Overall, the emphasis of the content at senior secondary and sixth-form levels remained very much on high politics and diplomacy, rather than economic or social history.27
The syllabus for HKCE History from 1960�V64 consisted of three ��groups��: one on Europe, one on ��The British Empire and Commonwealth and the United States��, and a third on ��The Far East��, each starting in the 1780s and ending in about 1940. Students were required to offer two groups out of three, which meant that they could ignore the British Empire paper. However, the section on Europe contained sub-sections on ��The Rise of Industrialism�� and ��Humanitarianism in the 19th century�� that were principally concerned with domestic developments in England. The syllabus thus displayed a distinctly Anglocentric, not to mention Whiggish, bias. It also reflected the particular sensitivity of modern Chinese history in Hong Kong during this period. While it stipulated that ��For the period 1922�V1941 only an outline knowledge is required��, the knowledge required of recent Chinese history was even more limited:
��Questions on Chinese history after 1911 will be mainly concerned with International relationship (sic) and not with the internal history of China. Questions involving excessive detail of Constitutional and Military issues will not be set.��
This was a roundabout way of saying that the Communist-Nationalist conflict was not to be taught. As the later 1975 junior syllabus made clear, detailed coverage of internal Chinese history, as opposed to ��East-West�� contacts, was in general to be left to the Chinese History subject. However, since the coverage of Chinese History syllabuses ended in 1911, there was, during the 1960s, no provision in any subject for teaching students about the post-1911 history of China.28
For reasons that can only be guessed at, the HKCE syllabus from 1965 to 1970 was effectively double the length of its predecessor, due to the addition of a new ��Paper I�� consisting of four sections covering East Asian, European, and English history, as well as ��The Expansion of Europe��, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. ��Paper II�� consisted of equivalent sections devoted to the period up to 1940, with a section on the United States substituted for that on ��The Expansion of Europe��. Students were required to answer five questions from ��any TWO sections of EITHER Paper I or Paper II��. The proportion of English history in this longer syl-labus was thus less than it had been before 1965, but the proportion of European and American content remained very high. The only reason that can be inferred for the decision to add the new ��Paper I�� to the HKCE syllabus is that this ostensibly brought the latter into line with the coverage of the A�� level syllabus (see below). Evidence from the 1980s (see Chapter 5) indicates that only a tiny number of students attempted questions on the early modern period at A�� level. The Hong Kong University historians who taught early modern history, and who at this time were very influential in the setting of public examinations,29 may have hoped that including this period in the HKCE syllabus would encourage more teachers to teach it, thus ensuring that more students studied it later on, both for their A�� levels and at university.
However, ��Paper I�� was abolished in 1971, and the syllabus was drastically shortened to three sections on East Asia, 1793�V1952; Europe, 1850�V1959; and the USA, 1787�V 1960. Candidates could attempt ��short-answer questions�� and essay questions from any two sections. This structure was to remain unchanged until 1987, although the process of steadily shortening the syllabus by simplifying and reducing the number of topics within each section continued. There were no longer any separate sections devoted to English or British imperial history. From 1974 onwards, the starting date for all three sections was brought forward to 1860 or 1870, as a consequence of which the Opium Wars were no longer covered.
A�� LEVEL SYLLABUSES30
The shortening and simplifying of the HKCE syllabus during the 1970s was largely a response to the changing nature of the candidature during this period, when the numbers of students progressing to the senior secondary forms was rapidly increasing, and when teachers were constantly complaining about their inability to cover longer syllabuses.31 The A�� level syllabus, by contrast, was far slower to change, reflecting the continuing elitism at sixth form level, where the universities continued to be able to pick a small minority of the best students from an expanding pool of matriculants. Until 1988, the syllabus stretched from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, although candidates could choose (as almost all did) not to study the earlier periods. Questions on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history continued to be set until the late 1980s at the insistence of the university lecturers who dominated curriculum planning at the sixth-form level.32
As with the HKCE syllabus, the trend in A�� level syllabus content was away from Anglocentrism and towards a more global approach. Until 1967, the A�� level syllabus was overwhelmingly Anglocentric, consisting of three papers: the first on European history; the second a choice between either English history or British Commonwealth history; and the third a ��Special Subject��. There were ten choices of ��Special Subject��, of which four were on English history, and two each on European and American history. The two topics relating to Asian history were ��European activities in Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries�� and ��The Far East, 1833�V1923��. In 1968, with the inclusion of a new Asian history section in Paper II, it became possible for the first time for students to opt not to study any British history what-soever. From 1971 they were offered a choice between British and European history in Paper I, and between British Colonial and Commonwealth history and Asian history in Paper II. Thereafter, the syllabus remained virtually unchanged until 1984, except that from 1973 a short gloss was provided outlining the scope of each paper, and the range of Special Subjects was gradually expanded to include more papers on Chinese and Asian history. By 1978, there were three Special Subjects on Chinese history: ��The Mid-Ching period��, ��Reform and Revolution in China��, and ��China in Transformation, 1912�V1950��. Taken together with the questions on China in the Asian history option of Paper II, this represented a considerable overlap with the content of the separate Chinese History subject.
The trend away from English history, and particularly away from British imperial history, was not in itself an indication of a decline in British influence on History curriculum development in Hong Kong. After all, in England too during this period, the Empire��s ��history and that of its creators [was] being excised from school syllabuses��.33 As a lingering remnant of that Empire, Hong Kong was by the 1970s a glaring anachronism, and some of its more blatantly colonial practices were a particular embarrassment to some of the younger expatriates, including academics and civil servants, who went to work there at that time.34 The fading of British imperial history from the curriculum was thus in keeping with the anti-colonialist climate of the contemporary world, and matched similar trends in England. However, this ��de-colonisation�� of Hong Kong��s history syllabuses also meant that they simultaneously bucked another emerging curricular trend of the seventies by deleting almost all topics relating to local history.35
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LOCAL HISTORY
The fate of local history illustrates some of the peculiar problems involved in defining the role of the school subject of History in Hong Kong. ��Hong Kong 1841�V1941�� had been included as a sub-topic in the 1960�V64 HKCE syllabus, where it came under the heading ��The impact of the Western World on China�� in the paper on ��The Far East��, rather than in the paper on ��The British Empire and Commonwealth��. From 1965�V70, at least two questions on Hong Kong history from 1841�V1941 were set every year, in a section entitled ��China and Japan, 1793�V1941, and Hong Kong, 1841�V1941��. Amongst the specified sub-topics were ��The Canton system of trade; western relations with China under the tribute system��, and ��Causes and results of the First and Second Anglo-Chinese Wars; foundation and early development of Hong Kong��. The emphasis of this section, like that of the syllabus as a whole, was very much weighted towards political and diplomatic history. However, in this respect the sub-topic on Hong Kong was exceptional for its apparent avoidance of the political aspects of the colony��s development, such as the structure of its political institutions, and relations with both Britain and China:
��The development of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1860�V1941: distribution
and composition of population; living conditions; development of trade,
education, medical services and public works.��
The emphasis here clearly seems to be on the steady progress of trade and public welfare under Britain��s benevolent colonial stewardship. More contentious aspects of local history, such as inter-racial relations (as opposed to ��distribution and composition of population��), Hong Kong��s role as a base and refuge for revolutionaries during the late Qing, the lease of the New Territories and subsequent British suppression of armed resistance by the local clans, anti-British strikes and agitation in the 1920s, and political developments (or the lack of such) within the colony, were ignored.36
From 1971, even such local history as there had been in the HKCE syllabus disappeared�Xalong with the sections on English and imperial history. At A�� level, one or two questions were occasionally set on Hong Kong history under ��British Colonial and Commonwealth history��, until this section was abolished in 1984. There is no direct evidence as to precisely why Hong Kong history was dropped from the HKCE syllabus, but it seems likely that the anti-colonialist climate of the time�Xboth internationally, and particularly in China during the Cultural Revolution, may have contributed to the discussion. With the serious riots of 1967, the Cultural Revolution had spilled over into Hong Kong, making the government more anxious to shed its colonialist image.37 1971 also saw the admission of the People��s Republic of China to the United Nations, and the removal of Hong Kong from the UN��s register of colonies at the PRC��s insistence.38 Henceforth, Hong Kong was to be defined as a ��territory��. While there may have been no direct connection between these events and the removal of local history from the school curriculum, the political atmosphere of the early 1970s clearly would have made the teaching in local schools of the history of colonial Hong Kong a highly sensitive task. The study of local history as colonial history was thus no longer considered acceptable. This begged the question of whether, if one took the ��colonial�� elements out of local history, there was anything left worth studying or teaching.
The 1970s was a time of student radicalism in Hong Kong, inspired by the Cultural Revolution in mainland China (see Chapter 2). Lee Chi-hung, who became the History Subject Officer at the CDI in 1996, remembers how, in Hong Kong��s universities during the mid-1970s, ��the pro-China student unions tried to ��recruit�� freshmen and tell them all about the wonderful achievements of Communist China from 1949, how the Chinese people were standing on their own feet�K��.39 Chung Chi-keung, an active member of History subject committees during the 1980s and 1990s, in the 1970s chose to study Chinese History at university partly out of ��national feeling��.40 Anthony Sweeting, who during those years was training history teachers at the University of Hong Kong, recalls that ��in the 1970s, the received political correctness was to be Chinese, not to be ��Hongkongese����.41 In his 1974 ESAC pamphlet, Sweeting made what was at that time the radical proposal that a new Certificate of Education syllabus should consist of three components: modern World History, post-1911 Chinese history (not covered in the ��Chinese History�� subject), and Hong Kong history (the similarity between Sweeting��s 1974 proposal and the 2002 draft syllabus for senior secondary History is remarkable�X see Chapter 7 below). He took care, however, to emphasise that local history ��would certainly not be an apologia for colonialism. Instead it would examine the achievements and problems of the people of Hong Kong.��42 He also tried to promote the study of Hong Kong��s pre-colonial (i.e. pre-1841) history. However, he remembers a Chinese friend telling him at the time,
��Well, I can understand why you should be interested in Hong Kong
history, but why should I be? I��m Chinese. Hong Kong��s history is an
irrelevance.��43
The widespread perception amongst Hong Kong Chinese in the 1970s was still that Hong Kong��s history was British colonial history�Xor, with respect to the pre-1841 period, a parochial and insignificant part of Chinese history.44
The curriculum developers interviewed in the course of this research were all at school or university in Hong Kong in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, but none of them studied any local history at school. Interestingly, only two of them recalled ever feeling at the time that this was strange, and that there was something missing from their history lessons. These two, Jane Cheng and Woo Ho-wai, were also both unusual in having family roots in Hong Kong going back several generations. For the bulk of the Chinese population of Hong Kong who lacked such roots, any sense of attachment to and interest in Hong Kong itself seems, as was observed in the previous chapter, to have been relatively weak.
Elizabeth Sinn, now one of Hong Kong��s most eminent local historians, attributed the failure of the attempt in the 1960s to promote the teaching of local history partly to social conditions and popular attitudes, but more particularly to the lack of a real ��body of literature on Hong Kong��. In her view, ��unless you have research of a certain sophistication, you really cannot even begin to think about doing anything at A�� level.��45 G.B.Endacott, who taught British history at the University of Hong Kong, produced a textbook on local history in collaboration with Arthur Hinton in the early 1960s (see the section on Political sensitivity and textbook content below), but no Hong Kong history was taught at local universities until much later. This meant that most History teachers had themselves never studied local history�Xa factor that was to prove an obstacle to the introduction of this topic in schools later on.46 At Hong Kong University, the study of the local past was pioneered in the early 1970s by Alan Birch, another British historian. He used sources on local history in his classes on historiography, and in the mid-1970s was instrumental in establishing a ��Hong Kong History Workshop�� which served primarily as ��a supply base of both primary and secondary sources on the history of Hong Kong.��47 At the same time, Hong Kong University��s Centre for Asian Studies was providing a home for foreign anthropologists and sociologists, such as Margery Topley, who wanted to study Chinese society but were prevented from doing so in China itself. James Hayes and Patrick Hase, both Chinese-literate civil servants with a deep interest in Hong Kong history, and David Faure at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, also ��suddenly discovered each-other�� in the late 1970s and early 1980s.48 A number of local Chinese graduate students, such as Steve Tsang and Eileen Wong, who were pursuing PhDs overseas found, in the words of Elizabeth Sinn, that ��Hong Kong was virgin territory��.49 All these factors contributed to what Sinn has called ��a renaissance in Hong Kong studies�� from about 1980.50 Nonetheless, Hong Kong history did not become a regular part of the undergraduate curriculum of Hong Kong University��s History Department until the early 1980s, and it was several more years before academic interest in local history was translated into concrete action to re-introduce Hong Kong history into the school curriculum.
Ineffective and isolated attempts were made during the 1970s to revive interest in the teaching of local history in schools. The History Subject Officer Louise Mok, in a speech at a 1972 CDC seminar, recommended that the history of Hong Kong should be taught. This suggestion came in the context of her discussion of ways in which the curriculum for History could be effectively integrated with those for Geography and EPA, at the same time giving students the opportunity to handle ��actual sources of his-tory, whether document or material (sic.)��.51 Mok, like Sweeting, seems to have been influenced by contemporary trends in England, where the study of local history was linked to the use of primary sources and the promotion of ��skills��.52 Three years later, in the 1975 CDC junior level History syllabus, it was urged that
��History teachers should encourage their pupils to develop a sense of curiosity and the habit of logical reasoning by training them, as far as possible, to seek information themselves. The study of local history in as practical a way as possible could be of considerable value in this task.��53
However, no practical suggestions were provided in the syllabus as to how teachers were to go about finding such materials, or integrating the teaching of local history with the other recommended topics. The low priority given to the teaching of local history was evident to any teacher reading the syllabus, by virtue of the fact that it was mentioned on the first page, but nowhere else in the almost fifty-page-long document.
Mok observed in 1972 that ��learning local history will foster a sense of belonging to Hong Kong��.54 In his 1974 pamphlet, Sweeting also observed that ��The lack of a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, is one of the most common comments made about the citizens of Hong Kong��.55 In Chapters 2 and 3, it was noted that the 1970s saw the beginning of the emergence of such a sense of belonging, for a variety of reasons: demographic, social, cultural and political, but that this process only really gathered pace in the following decade. The 1970s also saw government campaigns to promote a sense of belonging to Hong Kong, such as the ��Hong Kong is our home�� campaign. However, as was emphasized in Chapter 2, in attempting to promote such a sense of belonging the government also sought to maintain the depoliticised tone of public discourse in the ��territory��. An apparently low level of interest in local history amongst teachers and the population at large thus combined with a legacy of scholarly neglect, as well as a political climate of embarrassment concerning a Hong Kong past still widely regarded as irredeemably ��colonial��, to ensure that Hong Kong history remained consigned to the extra-curricular wilderness. D.C.Lam, one of Louise Mok��s successors at the Advisory Inspectorate, has claimed that he suggested to a superior in about 1979 that local history be reintroduced, but that the suggestion was turned down.56 The reasons for this are not known. However, given the bureaucratic culture of the Education Department,57 it is perhaps legitimate to speculate that, in the absence of any public demand for such a potentially sensitive move, any initiative to re-introduce local history at this stage might have been frowned on by senior civil servants as a needless ��rocking of the boat��.58
By the early 1980s, Hong Kong thus possessed a curriculum for History which lacked any core focus in terms of content; one which did not anchor itself in the particular region or nation with which students would most closely identify. Until the 1960s, English or British imperial history had to a large extent constituted the core of the History curriculum, but in the post-colonial world of the 1970s, and in the context of the Cultural Revolution and of a Chinese nationalist revival in Hong Kong itself,59 this was evidently felt by those responsible for the History curriculum to be no longer either desirable or prudent. Politics and language prevented the amalgamation of History and Chinese History, and a variety of factors made local history unviable as an alternative content core. Partly in default of these options, and partly out of a sense of liberal internationalism that was also largely a product of English influences, curriculum developers turned to a bifocal globalism, concentrating on recent European and East Asian history. Just as a global emphasis would, it was hoped, promote values of inter-cultural and inter-racial tolerance and empathy, so an emphasis on critical thinking skills and the analysis of sources rather than rote memorization would help to produce responsible and independent-minded citizens.60
THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The 1950s and 1960s saw the institutionalisation of the separation between the subjects of History and Chinese History within the school curriculum. While there are indications that some of those concerned with History teaching in schools were unhappy about this separation from quite early on, political sensitivities prevented any tampering with the status of Chinese History as an independent subject. The distinct subject of History, as discussed above, bore throughout the 1960s the stamp of its English ancestry. Strong influences from the History-teaching field in England continued to act upon the principal local curriculum developers for History, playing a part in calls from the early 1970s for the development of a subject of more relevance and interest to local students. However, while the advent of mass secondary education in the 1970s made such calls more urgent, the educational policy-making bureaucracy felt unable, for reasons discussed in Chapter 2, to mandate thorough-going reforms of the school curriculum. As Morris and Scott have argued, such reforms as were proposed tended to be additive or advisory�Xor ��symbolic���Xrather than compulsory. Attempts at compulsion would have invited non-compliance, which would have exposed the weak legitimacy of the colonial government.61 As it was, even the proposal to create integrated Social Studies as an optional rather than a compulsory subject aroused protests from Chinese History teachers which alarmed the ED.62
THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT BUREAUCRACY, AND TALK OF CURRICULUM REFORM
In Chapter 2, the political background to the establishment of the main organs of Hong Kong��s educational bureaucracy during the 1950s was discussed, and it was noted that one of the main objectives of the ED was the development of local curricula for the ��Chinese subjects�� that would be independent of syllabuses and examinations set either on the Communist mainland or in Taiwan. This was central to the government��s attempts to ��depoliticise�� the school curriculum by insulating it from the potentially destabilising Communist-Nationalist rivalries that in this period were causing sporadic unrest within Hong Kong itself. At the same time, a broader ��localisation�� of the curricula for other subjects was already underway. Immediately following the setting up of the STC in 1952, priority was given to preparing syllabuses for English, geography, science, civics and music, and to the preparation of textbooks for these subjects written specifically for local use.63 Up until the 1950s, most textbooks used in local schools had simply been imported from China or England, but as a result both of the expansion of local educational provision and of fears regarding political activities in schools, this was no longer considered appropriate by the Education Department.
However, there is no indication that new, locally-written History textbooks were among the earliest new textbooks prepared.64 The History syllabuses for Anglo-Chinese schools remained Anglo-centric, or at least highly Euro-centric, well into the 1960s, and many of the textbooks used continued to come from England.65 The political sensitivity of Chinese History in particular worried the government, but, perhaps partly as a consequence of such political concerns, the educational authorities were relatively slow to produce a syllabus for Chinese History equivalent to those for other subjects, at least at senior secondary level. In the elitist Anglo-Chinese schools, Chinese History and Chinese Literature were taught together as one subject until the mid-1960s, while the Chinese Middle schools were permitted to continue following Nationalist China��s 1941 History syllabus in the more junior forms. It was not until 1965 that a Certificate-level Chinese History examination was introduced, and only in 1974 that the same syllabus was followed by both the Anglo-Chinese schools and the Chinese Middle schools.66 In matters concerning changes to the curriculum for Chinese History and the other Chinese subjects, the Education Department appears to have been disposed to tread with extreme caution�Xa disposition reinforced by the controversy in 1975 over the proposal to include Chinese History in a new Social Studies course.67
By the 1970s, the distinct subject of Chinese History, despite having originated as an anachronistic by-product of Hong Kong��s colonial politics, enjoyed the backing of a powerful community of local academics, teachers and self-styled Chinese ��patriots�� in general, for whom it had become a potent symbol of the Chineseness of Hong Kong people. The level of support that the Chinese History lobby was able to mobilise contrasts markedly with the weakness of the History subject community. Indeed, there is evidence that the apathy of students towards History, and the existence and nature of the rival subject of Chinese History, was already causing frustration amongst some History teachers, as well as fears for the long-term future of their subject. As early as 1968, the Sunday Herald, an English-language newspaper, published an editorial entitled ��Education Reform��, the main proposal of which was that Chinese and World History should be combined into one subject in schools, but this call made no impact on curriculum policy.68 Two years later, W.H.Ha, the principal of St Paul��s College,69 declared that
��For a very long time, in Anglo-Chinese schools, Chinese History studied in Chinese has been treated as a completely separate subject and often runs parallel in the school curriculum with history studied in English, The day is not far when a final reckoning will come. It will be very interesting to see what form this final reckoning will take.��70
Ha was speaking at a ��History Conference�� organized in 1971 by the History Section of the Advisory Inspectorate.71 He was the only Chinese speaker at the conference, all of the other speakers, with the exception of one American, being British.72 This was a reflection of the heavy British dominance of Hong Kong University during this period, as well as the presence of a number of expatriate history teachers in the Anglo-Chinese schools. However, Ha was not alone in questioning the division between History and Chinese History. C.J.G.Lowe, the Deputy Director of Education and a former History teacher at the King George V School, criticised the existing history syllabus, asking ��how much relevance has traditional Western History and our detailed approach to it got to the present and future experience and the circumstances of our young people[?]��. All good teaching, whether of History or of anything else should, Lowe insisted ��be based on the principle of extending from the known to the unknown.�� He continued tentatively:
��I wonder whether we should not use Chinese cultural and social History as the main core of a secondary school course, not, I would hasten to add, the immensely long dynastic political History of China, though certain aspects of political development would not necessarily be excluded. There would, I think, be a case for using a Western type approach in our analysis and our presentation. I feel this suggestion is even more relevant when we think of meeting the needs of pupils in the proposed secondary exapansion programme in Classes I�VIII. The pupils in these classes, when the policy is fully implemented, will have, I would expect, quite a different
background, different educational needs and social horizons. Do we not
need to consider the possibility of teaching History in Chinese? Will the
pupils in Forms I�VIII have sufficient knowledge of English?��73
Lowe��s speech demonstrates that, as early as 1970, senior officials within the Education Department were very much aware of the problems�Xof medium of instruction, irrelevant and excessive content, and dull teaching methods�Xwhich would increasingly dog the teaching and learning of history in the coming years, especially with the move to mass provision of secondary education during the 1970s. However, the fact that very little was done for almost twenty years to address these problems reflects the force of inertia within the educational bureaucracy and the universities, as well as the high level of public sensitivity surrounding the issues of medium of instruction and the status of Chinese History. The attempt to incorporate the latter into Social Studies was a move with which Lowe might have sympathised, even if he was not responsible for its instigation. However, given that he explicitly defined his preferred approach for teaching a combined History subject as ��a Western type approach�� it is perhaps not surprising that many in the local Chinese community should have perceived the Social Studies proposal as an attempt at Western ��colonisation�� of a Chinese sphere of knowledge.
The sense of a crisis facing History and History teachers imbued many of the speeches at the 1970 conference, as well as those at a subsequent seminar organised in 1972. That year saw the establishment within the ED of a new Curriculum Development Council (CDC) replacing the STC, and taking responsibility for the development of school syllabuses for all subjects at Primary and Secondary levels (though not at Sixth Form level, where the universities retained formal control of syllabuses until 1979, and in practice until the late 1980s74). The main purpose of the seminar was to explain the function of this new body to History teachers. The CDC was to consist of a number of separate subject committees, each chaired by the respective subject officer from the Advisory Inspectorate, and including practising teachers as well as a few university academics or school heads. These committees were supposed to co-operate with each other ��both horizontally [across subjects] and vertically [at primary and secondary levels]�� to achieve better co-ordination of the school curriculum.75
The job of explaining the role of the new CDC fell to Louise Mok, the History Subject Officer. In the course of her speech at the 1972 seminar, she recognised many of the problems mentioned by speakers at the 1970 conference, identifying declining student interest as one of the main ones. ��Some people,�� she also noted, ��are beginning to doubt the value of teaching history as a school subject��.76 Speaking at the 1970 event, W.H.Ha had complained that in recent years History had been far and away the most unpopular subject amongst his Form 4 and Form 5 students. ��Increasingly,�� he lamented,
��it seems that history is being edged out of the ever-expanding school curriculum and in some schools, even girls�� schools,77 students are not obliged to take the subject up to the 4th and 5th years of the secondary course. This phenomenon is not confined to Hong Kong. In a number of developed countries, the same is happening.��78
The reference to ��a number of developed countries�� may simply be an indirect reference to Britain, where History at this time was suffering from a similar crisis of popularity. Certainly, the speeches published in the ��History Bulletin��, even those by non-British speakers, are replete with references to trends in curriculum development in Britain and to British historians or British publications. For example, Ha referred to the Nuffield scheme for teaching sciences as an example of moves towards a ��more experimental and practical approach,��79 while Mok began a discussion of ��The Purpose of History�� with a quotation from A.L.Rowse.80 For almost all of these influential local educators, Britain was clearly the automatic point of reference for discussions of History pedagogy.
Just as the problems of History teaching locally were compared to similar problems being experienced in Britain or elsewhere, so foreign models were invoked as possible solutions. Anthony Sweeting, recently arrived in Hong Kong from East Africa, was invited to speak at the 1970 conference, where he introduced ��something which could be described as ��New History����, which he associated with syllabuses for ��the CSE examination in Britain�Kwhich are, fundamentally, teacher-inspired, rather than administrator-inspired.��81 He demonstrated a number of teaching aids, including audio-visual aids, talked about the ��theme�� or ��patch�� approach to teaching and the use of group work, and referred to the ��new subject�� of Social Studies then being taught for the first time in some English schools. Although by this stage Sweeting had been in Hong Kong for little over a year, he had already singled out the ED as a baleful influence on the local educational culture:
��Let��s face it. History, as laid down by the Education Department and as taught by some Hong Kong history teachers is simply not history. Chinese History is something indescribable which is infinitely worse. And EPA [Economics and Public Affairs]�Kcomprises a non-examination for a non-subject.��82
THE LACK OF A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HISTORY TEACHERS
Sweeting used the occasion of the 1970 History Conference to issue a plea, echoing a similar call made by W.H.Ha., for ��some type of administrative machinery�� to be set up ��whereby regular conferences, regular workshops, regular in-service courses are arranged for all Hong Kong history teachers who wish to be history teachers.��83 The following year, he became President of the Hong Kong History Society. This had been founded in 1964 as a branch of the Historical Association of the United Kingdom, but broke away from the latter in 1971 since ��local members found that they received minimal advantages and were unable to enjoy facilities provided by the parent association in London.��84 The local History Society became quite active during this period, organising a number of lectures, seminars, discussions and workshops for the benefit of teachers and students. According to the ��History Bulletin��85, such events were ��well-attended��, and discussion was often lively and enthusiastic. Tours of local sites of historical or archaeological interest were also organised, indicating some interest in local history, and the trip to Macau became for several years an annual fixture, sponsored by the gambling tycoon Stanley Ho, who was the brother of the History Inspector, Louise Mok.86 The Society also sporadically issued its own publications. However, it gradually became less teacher-oriented and, as Sweeting puts it, ��more of a social than a professional organisation��.87 It seems that Sweeting, Mok and others had hoped that the Society might develop into a professional association for History teachers of the sort that existed in England, and the first ��History Bulletin�� is evidence of the active co-operation between the Society and the History Section of the Advisory Inspectorate during Mok��s tenure as Subject Officer. However, for reasons that are unclear, the History Society soon lapsed into relative obscurity,88 and the History teaching profession as a whole lacked any organisation capable of giving it a collective voice.89
Another organisation that sought to organise teachers and to promote new teaching aims and methods during this period was the Educators�� Social Action Council (ESAC), which was chaired for a time by Arthur Hinton, a history lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. Sweeting recalls that ESAC was established in early 1971 by a group of ��various prominent people in education��, many of whom had attended a conference in Japan called ��The Educators�� Social Action Group Workshop��.90 These people included a number of Jesuits (reflecting the important role played by missionaries in Hong Kong��s education system at that time), and all of them ��came back to Hong Kong imbued with [a] liberal viewpoint of education�Xthe importance of having a social programme, social action.��91 The Council remained active for several years, and published a number of pamphlets�Xprinted by a local Catholic-run printer, and distributed by a Jesuit-run school in Kowloon�Xoutlining a progressive educational programme. These pamphlets included one on ��Social Attitudes and the Teaching of History�� written by Sweeting and published in 1974.92 This was a brief but comprehensive statement of his vision of history teaching, mainly devoted to promoting and explaining teaching methods associated with the ��New History�� approach, such as student activities, projects and simulation games. There were also sections on ��Teaching and Learning Resource Material�� and ��Examinations��, in which he exhorted teachers to abandon old teaching methods, and not to use inadequate textbooks or the constraints of the examination system as excuses for inertia.
While both the History Society and ESAC appear to have enjoyed some success in the early 1970s in galvanising interest in history teaching and organising activities aimed at promoting a new vision of the nature and purpose of history teaching amongst local teachers, these efforts seem to have had little immediate impact either on education policy, or on the way in which History was taught in most Hong Kong classrooms. Essentially, both organisations appear to have been top-down affairs, organised largely by ��prominent people in education�� (such as university lecturers, teacher educators, anglicised officials such as Louise Mok,93 and teachers from the more prestigious Anglo-Chinese schools), perhaps with the passive support, but not with the active involvement of very many ordinary teachers in local schools. The tone of exhortation in Sweeting��s 1970 speech and 1974 pamphlet gives the distinct impression that he felt he was engaged in an uphill struggle in trying to convince teachers to change their methods. The demand for a professional association for History teachers appears to have come mainly from above rather than below, with ESAC and the History Society both founded largely by expatriate academics or teachers as the off-shoots of overseas organisations or initiatives.
Nonetheless, it is possible that an opportunity was missed for bolstering the status of the History Society as a professsional association in the early 1970s, just at the time when it was at its most active, and when the involvement of local Chinese on its committee was also increasing.94 This opportunity came with the setting up of the CDC, whose subject committees were to include practicing History teachers. Had the mechanism for nominating teacher members included a provision allowing subject associations to nominate their own representatives,95 one can speculate that this might have institutionalised the role of an organisation such as the History Society, giving teachers a channel through which to make their collective voice heard in discussions over curriculum policy.96 Granting teachers a share in the responsibility for syllabus development might have helped to foster greater teacher professionalism by helping to break down the ��them-and-us�� perception of the Education Department which enabled teachers to lay the blame for their own unwillingness to change entirely at the door of the government.97 As it was, the mechanism devised for nominating teachers was highly bureaucratic, with nominations received from school principals vetted centrally by means of a ��points�� system before appointments were made to subject committees. Even with a relatively energetic official such as Louise Mok in charge, the CDC subject committee was seldom to be a positive force for reform during its almost thirty years of existence.98 Like so many other aspects of educational policymaking in Hong Kong, the committees served a largely symbolic function, providing the appearance of teacher involvement in curriculum decision-making, but little more. The government��s attitude towards teachers during the 1970s alternated between, on the one hand, distrust, partly due to fears that they could become a force for inciting political instability,99 and, on the other hand, the somewhat ��nannyish�� tone which characterised some of the contributions to the five ��History Bulletins�� produced in the course of the decade.100
THE SETTING OF PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS
Teachers also seem to have played little role, at least until the late 1970s, in the process of setting public examinations. This was particularly so at sixth-form level, where the two universities�Xthe Chinese University of Hong Kong and the older, English-style, University of Hong Kong�Xeach set their own papers, which they traditionally regarded primarily as entrance examinations to their respective universities rather than as school-leaving qualifications in their own right. The Chinese University��s examination was a one-year ��Higher level��, taking its name from the final school-leaving examination in Scotland, and the university��s degree courses, like those in Scottish universities, lasted four years. By contrast, Hong Kong University��s A�� level exam, modelled on its English equivalent, was a two-year course leading on to a three-year degree course. As mentioned in the section on syllabuses above, the A�� level syllabus in particular was extremely long, catering more to the specialisms and interests of the university lecturers who set it than to the interests of the students who had to take the examination. This was in spite of the fact only a small minority of students who took the A�� level or Higher examinations would gain entry to institutions of higher education within Hong Kong. During the 1970s, many local students were still leaving Hong Kong to continue their studies overseas, in America or Britain if they could afford it, or in Taiwan. Many more simply found themselves jobs. The implications of the relatively low availability of higher education within Hong Kong for sixth-form education had troubled the Education Department as early as the 1950s, but it was not until the 1980s that any decisive attempt was made to challenge the terrritoriality of the university academics in this field.101
At the School Certificate level, control of the examination had passed by the mid-1960s from a syndicate of the elite Grant Schools (which had set the English-language School Certificate Examination during the 1950s) to the Examinations Section of the Education Department. According to Alberto Morales, the setting of the School Certificate Examination during the 1960s could be a somewhat amateurish or ad-hoc affair:102
��I got a call in 1966 from this guy who was the setter [for the School Cert.],�Kand he said he just didn��t know how to set questions about East Asia�K. I was under the impression that there were others who were asked to do it, and I was just one of them�K. He [the setter] was a lecturer in Northcote [Northcote College�Xa government-funded teacher-training institution], but he just didn��t know anything about East Asia�K. I thought, oh well, it will still be moderated in England�K. It never occurred to me that my questions and my marking scheme would be on the paper as I had written them�K. I was an assistant examiner that year! �KThere were complaints in the newspaper when the results came out, but by that time the guy [the setter] had left�K. They cut down the distinctions for my boys�Xsome of them were downgraded�K. Stokes [a teacher and textbook author, then president of the History Society] defended me at that time, He said, ��What did you expect Mr. Morales to do?����103
The unification of the syllabuses for Anglo-Chinese and Chinese Middle schools in 1974, as well as the rapid expansion of secondary education during the seventies, must have made the need for a rationalisation of the arrangements for the setting and marking of public examinations appear more urgent. The setting up of the quasi-autonomous Hong Kong Examinations Authority (HKEA) in 1977 took the responsibility for setting the School Certificate examination out of the hands of the government��s educational bureaucracy. However, since the HKEA retained a monopolistic position, its establishment did not entail any expansion in the choice of papers, subjects or modes of assessment. In practice, the shift of responsibility for setting examinations from the government bureaucracy to the HKEA made little immediate difference as far as the schools were concerned.
In theory each HKEA committee was simply responsible for devising an examination appropriate to the subject syllabus prepared by the corresponding CDC committee. In practice, however, though HKEA committees were less concerned with the ��theory�� of curriculum development, Hong Kong��s highly examination-driven educational culture meant that they had the power either to undermine CDC syllabuses by failing to produce examinations that reflected their spirit, or to use assessment to steer classroom practice in new directions. All of this potentially gave the HKEA subject officer a great deal of influence not just over the setting of examinations, but over the whole curriculum for his subject.
As will become evident in subsequent chapters, Patrick Wong, the HKEA subject officer for History from 1978 until 2000, probably exercised more influence over the History curriculum during that period than any other individual.104 In the first two years after the setting up of the HKEA, however, the inspector from the Advisory Inspectorate, who had been heavily involved in setting the School Certificate examination prior to 1978, retained the influential position of Chief Examiner. The position of the HKEA subject officer was therefore not as powerful at first as it was later to become. In addition, though the HKEA assumed formal responsibility for the setting and marking of the Higher Level and A�� Level examinations in the early 1980s, university academics continued to dominate these subject committees, which held their meetings at the campuses of the two universities rather on the Authority��s own premises.
OVERSEAS INFLUENCE
The public examinations system furnishes perhaps the clearest instance of British influence on the History curriculum, both because the examinations were largely modelled on British practice, and because they were periodically subject to moderation by the University of London��s Schools Examination Board. Not only were large parts of the syllabus�Xnamely those relating to British and European History�Xvery similar to those of contemporary British history syllabuses, but British innovations in assessment practice, such as the introduction of multiple choice questions in the early 1970s, tended to be followed in Hong Kong. Samples of local examination scripts had been routinely sent to England for external moderation long before the establishment of the HKEA, which continued the practice. However, in case the purpose of this exercise be misconstrued, it is worth pointing out that it was not a crude mechanism through which the British government in London sought to control or manipulate the colonial curriculum for political or ideological ends. Following decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s, many of Britain��s former colonies, particularly in Africa (but also including Singapore), continued to grant contracts to English examination boards�Xusually London or Cambridge�Xfor the setting or moderation of public examinations. By the 1970s Hong Kong was in this respect less reliant on British assistance than many independent excolonies. External moderation by the London Board gave Hong Kong qualifications recognition in Britain and in other Commonwealth countries, thus giving them a wider international currency than they might otherwise have enjoyed.
Overall, therefore, though the History curriculum in the period up to the early 1980s was subject to quite a large degree of British influence, this did not take the form of colonial directives requiring schools to teach a ��British version of history��. It is arguable that this might in part have been because the need for such direct interference in curriculum policy was obviated by the earlier decision to create the separate subject of ��Chinese History��. This decision in theory removed many of the most politically sensitive topics from the ambit of the History subject, leaving them to be covered, if at all, in the antiquarian, de-politicised context of Chinese History. From a professional point of view this situation did not please many local British and Chinese teachers of the History subject, but Hong Kong��s sensitive colonial politics made the division of the history curriculum, once achieved, very difficult to reverse. As far as the subject of History was concerned, the large number of British academics and teachers involved in curriculum development, at least up to the early 1970s, in addition to the close political, institutional and historical ties between Hong Kong and Britain, made reference to British teaching practice seem natural. However, most of these British or British-influenced teachers and lecturers were far from being died-in-the-wool colonialists. The preceding discussion of curricular content and aims shows that most of them espoused broadly liberal views of the purpose of teaching history, even though this in itself does not mean they were necessarily innocent of cultural or racial prejudice. Moreover, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was predominently local Chinese rather than British expatriates who were responsible for the development of the History curriculum, the most prominent and influential of them being Patrick Wong at the HKEA and D.C.Lam at the Advisory Inspectorate. Nonetheless, the development of Hong Kong��s history curriculum remained the preserve of a relatively small group of key players, whether they were Chinese, or British, or both. Within the very considerable constraints imposed on them by government policy in areas such as medium of instruction and examinations, and other factors such as low levels of teacher professionalism, the thrust of curriculum policy was largely determined by these few individuals and the relationships between them.
TEXTBOOKS, LOCAL HISTORY AND POLITICAL SENSITIVITY
Textbook publication in Hong Kong has always been an essentially commercial operation, driven primarily by market considerations rather than official priorities. Nonetheless, it is important for publishers to have their textbooks included on the ED��s list of ��recommended�� teaching materials, and in order to ensure this authors tend to rigidly follow the letter�Xif not always the spirit�Xof the official syllabuses, while also second-guessing the ED��s textbook assessors by avoiding or glossing over politically sensitive issues. This system, while depriving officials of the power to actually dictate textbook content, has effectively discouraged publishers from delving into controversial issues in their history textbooks�Xparticularly those relating to the Chinese and Hong Kong past�Xresulting in teaching materials perhaps even more politically cautious than government officials would have wished. At the same time, the shift away from elitism in secondary education, and problems with the use of English as the medium of instruction, have led to a simplification and reduction in the content of textbooks. This latter process was already evident in history textbooks during the 1970s, and was already being lamented by curriculum developers at the ED and HKEA. However, perhaps the most striking change in textbook content between the early 1960s and the late 1970s involved not merely a simplification of the historical narrative, but a shift in the perspective from which the past was narrated.
The textbooks published for use in Anglo-Chinese schools during the 1960s tended to be more ��colonial�� in tone than those published later. Woo Ho-wai, who started his teaching career in the mid-1960s, felt at that time that there were limits to the freedom he could prudently exercise in classroom discussions with his students:
��I sometimes discussed a number of sensitive topics with students in Cantonese, after school�Xat picnics. Say the Opium War�XI would say, ��This is the syllabus handed down by your colonial government.�� In those days, teachers weren��t allowed to say anything against the government. We were not allowed to criticise the government�K! discussed different points of view on the Opium War with my students�K The textbooks were quite pro-British�Xnot very, but they showed no sympathy for the Qing government, just said ��everybody was corrupt, from the top down, so the British had to come in and sort them out.����105
��Modern China and Japan: A Concise History��, by G. and J.Stokes, was published at the end of the decade, and largely bears out Woo��s comments. It was far from being a triumphalist narrative of colonial conquest. Indeed, when discussing sensitive episodes such as the Opium War, the authors give the impression of attempting to provide a balanced narrative, putting the Chinese as well as the British case. However, their sympathies clearly lie with the British, and they often adopt a tone of slightly condescending benevolence when discussing Chinese attitudes or actions. For example, the superior attitude with which Chinese traditionally regarded foreigners, ��though perhaps foolish, was��, they opine, ��less unreasonable than is sometimes thought.��106 With regard to the opium trade, the blame for its continuation is placed principally on the shoulders of corrupt Chinese officials:
��Every year notices forbidding the import of Foreign Mud were posted up in Canton by the Viceroy��s officers [the Viceroy was the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi]. Such notices often ended: ��Feel a cold shiver when you read this.�� But no one felt a cold shiver�Xeveryone knew that the Chinese officials themselves were unofficially engaged in the trade. The Viceroy himself owned a fast crab [an oared boat used for smuggling opium].��107
The Stokes do point out that British behaviour could on occasion be less than gentlemanly. After the Treaty of Nanjing, for example, they describe how the opium trade expanded massively, with Hong Kong as its main base, and they explain why the British felt it was not their responsibility to help end opium smuggling. They go on to observe that
���Kfor various reasons the people of Canton were hostile to the British. From time to time attacks were made upon British subjects, whose lives were less secure than in the pre-treaty days. But it must be remembered that the British themselves were sometimes rude and difficult.��108
It is also noteworthy that in the Stokes�� book, as in every other English-language history textbook approved for use in Hong Kong schools until the late 1990s, the term ��The Opium War�� never appears, unless it is within inverted commas. According to Alberto Morales, no one ever told the publishers that they must not call the war ��The Opium War��, but is hard not to conclude that there must, at least initially, have been an official ��line��, by which the Education Department tacitly or explicity made it understood that the term ��Anglo-Chinese War�� should be used in preference to ��Opium War��.109 In Britain itself during the same period, the war was almost invariably described as ��The Opium War��, as it is for example in a virulently anti-imperialist school textbook entitled ��Foreign Devils��, published by Penguin in 1970.110
The way in which local textbooks of the 1960s dealt with Hong Kong history helps to illustrate why it was widely regarded at this time as ��colonial�� history. Hong Kong history was invariably assumed to begin in or around 1841, as it is in ��Hong Kong: The Formative Years, 1842�V1912��, published, with the co-operation of the Hong Kong Government, by the Shell Company of Hong Kong to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary of operations in the colony in 1963.111 This picture book, a bilingual publication probably aimed at children of primary or junior secondary age, was a celebration of the early development of Hong Kong from a thoroughly British perspective. It contained many pictures of governors of the colony, of the public works initiatives over which they presided, and images of foreigners and Chinese harmoniously going about their business.
��Fragrant Harbour��, by the British historians G.B.Endacott and Arthur Hinton, and published in 1962, ends its first chapter with the following quotation from Sun Yat-sen��s address to the students of Hong Kong University in 1923:
��My fellow students; you and I have studied in this English Colony and in
an English University and we must learn by English examples. We must
carry this English example of good government to every part of China.��112
However, Endacott and Hinton��s approach is less blatantly ��colonial�� than that adopted in the Shell book (although Endacott had also been consulted over the latter). ��Hong Kong��, they concede, ��was not deserted when the Europeans came and so its history goes back beyond their coming, but its importance in history really begins only with their arrival.��113 Endacott and Hinton do not confine themselves to a narrative of British governors and their exploits, instead adopting a thematic approach and including a number of extracts from original sources. They place considerable emphasis on social and economic developments, devoting chapters to ��The Trade and Industry of Hong Kong��, ��The Growth of Population��, ��The Fight Against Crime�� and ��Schools in Hong Kong��. In a chapter entitled ��Chinese and Foreigners in Hong Kong�� they draw attention to the ways in which Chinese had been discriminated against in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ��Nevertheless,�� they assert, ��prejudices were slowly disappearing�� by the inter-war period, and this progress towards greater tolerance and harmony continued after World War II:
��In Hong Kong there are huge economic differences, there are various linguistic groups and there are many groups whose habits, customs and religions differ widely. Despite these differences, however, racial relationships are generally good and are improving, and certainly at no other time in the history of Hong Kong have they been better. If life in Hong Kong leads to the development of mutual respect and understanding among the races who live here, then the Colony has an importance greater than that which comes from its trade and industry.��114
There may have been much truth in this, but it is worth remembering that, at the time this book was published, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation still forbade its expatriate employees from marrying local Chinese girls.115 Chinese teachers and students in the 1960s were well aware that certain ��racial relationships�� were still frowned upon, at least in some circles.116
Imperial history�Xand local history with it�Xwas removed from the HKCE History syllabus in 1971. At around the same time, according to Woo Ho-wai, the atmosphere in Hong Kong was becoming increasingly liberal, and he felt ��free to discuss even sensitive topics�� in the classroom, though he believed that some teachers may not have shared this feeling. Textbook narration in the 1970s tended to be less Anglocentric, if only because of changes to the syllabus and because fewer of the textbook writers were British. The most popular of them all, Alberto Morales, was from the Philippines. Nonetheless, his account of ��China��s response to the West�� does not differ substantially from that of Stokes. For example, he begins the 1972 edition of ��East Meets West�� with a description of China��s ��Traditional Institutions�� that presents a somewhat stereotypical view of ��Old China��, and of the causes of Sino-Western conflict in the nineteenth century. According to Morales, China��s sense of her own superiority and the ��insular outlook�� of Chinese officials ��hampered the development of normal diplomatic relations with the non-Chinese world��.117 The immediate causes of the ��First Anglo-Chinese War�� that he emphasises are the archaic regulations governing where Western traders could live, and when and how they could trade, as well as the different ��Chinese and Western ideas of justice��.118 This approach was in stark contrast to the interpretation of the war favoured in textbooks for Chinese History, which invariably gave prominence to the iniquitous opium trade as the main cause of the war.119
CONCLUSION
Despite calls on the part of curriculum developers for a more sources-based, ��skills��-oriented approach to history teaching, the indications are that in most schools up to the early 1980s the subject continued to be treated simply as a body of established knowledge to be absorbed. Curriculum developers were aware that the approach they were advocating was generally not reflected at any level in classroom practice, where ��chalk and talk�� still predominated. Textbooks did not contain source-based exercises, since most were geared exclusively to preparing students for their all-important public examinations. Meanwhile, the assessment methods embodied in those examinations (essay and multiple-choice questions) allowed candidates to achieve considerable success purely through rote-memorization. Therefore, despite the fact that prominent figures involved with the History subject were occasionally disparaging about the philosophy and approach of the rival subject of Chinese History, in practice the difference between the ways in which the two subjects were taught and learnt in local schools was often not as great as they liked to portray it.
Of all the practical obstacles to the implementation of a more ��skills���Xoriented vision of history teaching, language was emerging by the late 1970s as perhaps the most serious. As noted in Chapter 2, this in turn was a consequence of the rapid shift during that decade from elite to mass provision of secondary education. This shift was accompanied by no general overhaul of the official school curriculum, for reasons also discussed in the earlier chapter. Attempts at radical reform which were designed to cater for the new mass student clientele, such as the proposal for a Chinese-medium, integrated Social Studies course, were undermined or watered-down by vested interests that the government was too weak to challenge. In any event, public demand was for mass access to the English-medium academic education that had previously been reserved for an elite minority. Expansion of provision without any change to medium of instruction meant, however, that a subject such as History, demanding language skills of a high order, faced particular strains. The implications of this became increasingly apparent in public examinations during the 1980s, and in changes to textbooks. Signs of a ��dumbing-down�� of content and language were already apparent before then in textbooks published for use at junior secondary level.
Besides the language issue and other problems associated with the expansion of secondary education, such as the inadequate supply of qualified teachers, another fundamental barrier to the teaching of History as a critical-rational ��craft�� was evident. This was Hong Kong��s political climate, which discouraged open debate, at least in schools and in textbooks, of controversial issues relating to the local or Chinese past. The creation of two history subjects, the avoidance of more modern periods of Chinese history, and the deletion of local history in 1970, were part of the wider effort to insulate Hong Kong, and its colonial adminstration, from the turbulent politics of contemporary China. Controversial issues that were included in some syllabuses, such as the ��Opium War��, were discussed in textbooks in a studiously bland manner, and their sensitivity was not acknowledged, let alone probed. This does not appear to have been the result of any crude attempts at censorship on the part of the government, at least by the 1970s. Nor does it necessarily mean that those who were advocating a critical approach to history teaching were insincere. However, it implies an acknowledgement on the part of curriculum developers and textbook writers that the preservation of political stability required the observance of parameters to acceptable content and interpretation in the History subject. Their liberal values were instead reflected in the promotion in syllabuses of an ethos of globalism, tolerance and international understanding, almost entirely detached from the local context.
By the early 1980s curriculum developers were therefore struggling to define for the History subject a role and purpose beyond that of simply preparing students for public examinations. By this time, the overwhelming majority of the secondary school population was Hong Kong-born, its sense of identity shaped by the territory��s increasingly vibrant and distinc-tive culture, and far more open to global cultural currents than to those emanating from the communist Chinese mainland, which few had ever visted. The free-floating post-colonial globalism of the History subject, like the musty antiquarianism of Chinese History, entirely failed to speak to this generation by providing them with narratives that would locate them in the local, regional and national past, explaining where they and their families had come from, and why.


Chapter 5 History in Crisis: 1982�V1989
INTRODUCTION
THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE 1980S AS A PERIOD OF PARTICULAR ��CRISIS�� for History as a school subject is potentially misleading, since the factors causing the crisis did not suddenly emerge during this decade, nor did their significance diminish in the years that followed. In England and America during the 1980s, ��progressive�� approaches to history teaching, such as those associated with ��New History�� or with the Schools Council History Project, came under attack from the ��New Right��, which attempted to promote a more nationalistic vision.1 In Hong Kong, however, the crisis was of a different nature. It was associated above all with problems of language arising from the transition to mass education, as well with the difficulties of promoting a critical approach to history in a political climate that discouraged the discussion of controversial issues. The problem of language in particular, though already evident by the late 1970s, began to arouse acute concern at this time, as witnessed by a new urgency in official rhetoric regarding the need to reform the school curriculum in general. Although action taken at the ��macro�� level was limited in its scope, government policy reflected growing public unease over the capacity of the local education system to cope with the new and growing demands placed upon it. In this chapter it will be argued that the nature of the History subject made it peculiarly vulnerable to the strains affecting the schooling system as a whole during these years. The vulnerability of History to these strains and tensions contrasted with the relative invulnerability of Chinese History, especially at a time when the prospect of Hong Kong��s reunification with China was fuelling local interest in all things Chinese.2
The main change to the official curriculum for History during this period was the publication of a new syllabus for HKCE level in 1983. As in the 1970s, there was much talk at an official level of new, ��skills��-based approaches to teaching. The 1980s also saw a continuation of the trend towards a more ��global�� approach to history, and an increase in the curriculum space devoted to East Asian history. However, particularly at HKCE level, the focus remained principally on the diplomatic and political history of modern Europe. An emphasis on the themes of liberalism, democracy, capitalism and nationalism reflected the interests and prejudices of the syllabus drafters, as well as the political climate in which they operated. Controversial topics, such as colonialism, socialism and the history of contemporary China continued to be neglected or ignored. Hong Kong history, perhaps the most sensitive topic of all, was also notably absent from official syllabuses. It was not until the late 1980s that the possibility of reintroducing local history into the curriculum began to be seriously discussed.
The return of local history was assisted by changes in personnel at the ED, and the eagerness with which the idea was greeted by curriculum developers was partly a reflection of Hong Kong��s changing political and social context. However, by the late 1980s the development of the curriculum for History was being increasingly overshadowed by concerns arising from the declining popularity of the subject in schools. It was this concern above all others that stimulated efforts to reform syllabus content, pedagogy and assessment. Curriculum developers continued to look primarily to British precedents for examples of how such reforms might be accomplished. They also sought to involve teachers more actively in the processes of curriculum reform and examination setting and marking. Despite these efforts, the relationships between the various official bodies responsible for examinations and curriculum development, and the way in which their powers were divided and circumscribed, tended to hinder rather than assist attempts at fundamental change.
Even more significant in hindering such attempts were the problems faced by teachers and students in the schools. Bad teaching was often blamed for encouraging rote memorisation and a reliance on ��model answers�� amongst students. This approach to teaching does indeed seem to have been widely prevalent, on the part of many teachers who were subject-trained as well as those who were not. However, while the local educational culture may have reinforced this tendency, assessment techniques employed in public examinations did little to discourage it. Even more importantly, the widely noted and apparently rapid decline in students�� command of the English language during this period made the implementation of more stimulating approaches to the subject extremely difficult. The low level of students�� linguistic skills was also reflected in the low qual-ity and sophistication of the History textbooks that came to dominate the market during this period. So long as English remained the principal medium for its delivery, changes to the official History curriculum could do little to alter the way in which all except the most gifted or privileged students studied the subject.
CURRICULUM CONTENT AND AIMS
The official syllabuses produced during the 1980s served a largely exhortatory function, insofar as they set out an idealised vision of history teaching and learning which was very imperfectly reflected in the assessment techniques embodied in public examinations, not to mention the teaching strategies and materials typically used in local schools. The CDC��s Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV) of 1983, echoing recent English thinking on the aims of history teaching, declared that ��pupils should be acquiring and practising in an elementary way the skills that a professional historian uses.��3 The syllabus went on to insist that evaluation ��should be broadly viewed as feedback in the education process rather than merely a means of determining marks and grades.��4 Among the ��skills�� which it specifically identified for teaching and ��measurement��, were ��the ability to identify relationships between events and the ability to provide rational explanation for historical events on the basis of the evidence available,�� and ��critical reasoning and empathetic thinking.��5 However, the syllabus did not attempt to define such concepts, nor did it provide any detailed practical examples of how they could be effectively taught or evaluated. In this connection, it is worth noting that the 1982 CDC Syllabus for Chinese History (Forms 1�V3) talked in similar terms of ��training students�� thinking ability��, ��cultivating objective attitudes to sources��, and exhorted teachers not to rely solely on the textbook, but to encourage students to ��discuss��, ��analyse��, and ��compare��.6 The CDC syllabuses on their own thus give the impression that the teaching of ��skills�� was a central concern of both history subjects, and not only of ��World�� History.
The highly examination-oriented nature of education in Hong Kong has meant that, in terms of their direct impact on the teaching and learning of history, in particular at senior secondary level, examination syllabuses and past papers have been of greater significance than the teaching syllabuses and guidelines produced by the Education Department.7 The later move to introduce data-based questions in public examinations, for example, was a more radical and significant attempt to change teaching methods than was the 1983 teaching syllabus, which consisted mainly of a reorganisation of the content of the curriculum. Nonetheless, the official syllabuses did create the parameters, however broad, within which the setters of examination papers were expected to work. They also provided publishers with an outline of the range and nature of the content that the Education Department expected their textbooks to contain. Official syllabuses were therefore of far more than just symbolic importance, even if their impact on classroom teaching was heavily mediated by patterns of assessment, prevailing pedagogical styles, and the types of textbooks and other materials generally used by History teachers.
THE ��SYLLABUS FOR HISTORY (FORMS I�VV)�� (1983)
The CDC��s Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV), issued in 1983, constituted a significant innovation in two major respects. To begin with, it was the first ever set of teaching guidelines produced by the CDC for teachers of History up to Form 5 level. The 1975 ��Interim Syllabus�� (see Chapter 4) had been aimed at teachers of the junior forms, possibly on the assumption that teachers at more senior levels would be trained subject specialists less in need of such guidance. Teachers at senior secondary level, and sixth-form teachers, therefore simply taught to the syllabuses for the public examinations. However, the rapid expansion of education during the 1970s led to a significant rise in the numbers of students proceeding to senior secondary level, as well as a corresponding growth in the size of the teaching profession. Many of the new teachers lacked professional training,8 and this may have contributed to a feeling amongst curriculum developers that syllabuses at senior secondary level needed to provide more specific pedagogical guidance, of the kind provided by the subject syllabuses for junior secondary level issued in the mid-1970s.
The second innovative feature of the 1983 syllabus was the way in which the content was reorganised along ��thematic�� lines. The recommended syllabus for the junior forms was not significantly altered from that of the ��Interim Syllabus�� of 1975, except that it became more concise. The syllabus for Form 3, which covered the same period as the HKCE syllabus, was reorganised along similarly ��thematic�� lines, though in terms of its chronological and geographical scope it was little changed. Comments collected from schools in 1980 on the guidelines for the junior forms had shown that many teachers felt that the Form 3 syllabus in particular, which had been designed largely as a preparation for the study of History in the senior forms, was too lengthy and detailed. The changes approved by the CDC subject committee therefore involved reducing the number of ��items��, while adopting ��a more comprehensive approach�� in the treatment of subject content to bring it more into line with the approach recommended in the syllabus guidelines for Forms 1 and 2.9
The HKCE examination syllabus in use up to the mid-1980s required students to answer questions relating to two out of the three sections�Xon Asian, European and American history�Xinto which the syllabus was divid-ed. Within each section, the topics to be included in the examination were listed chronologically. Students were not asked to compare developments across the different regions, and many questions were of a fairly predictable and descriptive nature, lending themselves to the strategy of rote memorisation of ��model answers��. By contrast, the 1983 syllabus specified the ��skills�� which teachers were expected to foster in their students, and did away with sectionalism according to region.
The HKCE Syllabus of 1983 (first examined: 1988)
The scope covers roughly the period 1760�V1970. In view of the need to cater for a wide range of interests and of the fact that an average of 4 periods per week/cycle is allocated to the subject, schools may concentrate on either one of the following options but they may also extend the scope of study backward or forward to enable students to acquire a thorough understanding.
(A)
1760�V1919 (roughly corresponding to Topics 1�V11);

(B)
1815�V1970 (roughly corresponding to Topics 4�V14).

(1)
The Agrarian Revolution and Industrial Revolution

(2)
The American War of Independence and Constitution

(3)
The French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte

(4)
The Congress of Vienna and the Congress System

(5)
The rise of nation-states in Europe

(6)
The development of parliamentary government in Britain

(7)
The opening of China and Japan

(8)
China from the Self-strengthening Movement to the May Fourth Movement

(9)
The rise of Japan as a world power

(10)
The Russian Revolutions

(11)
The First World War

(12)
Developments in major countries during the inter-war period

(13)
The Second World War

(14)
The contemporary world: international conflict and co-operation��10


The division of the syllabus into thematic topics was seen by D.C.Lam, David Faure, Kwok Siu-tong and others involved in drafting it as an attempt to move History teaching further away from the ��one-damn-thing-after-another�� approach, discussed in the previous chapter.11 However, the syllabus drafters themselves apparently found it hard to envisage how teachers would in practice strike a balance between ��enriching the pupil��s knowledge�� and ��developing his intellectual skills.�� For example, the short section devoted to ��teaching strategies and techniques�� encouraged teachers to use documents in the classroom, declaring that:
��The strongest argument for using historical documents (speeches, eyewitness accounts, official reports, letters, etc.) in history teaching is their value in involving the pupils in the skills of analysis and interpretation. In addition, such documents are free of the interpretations of historians. Also, because these materials are more concrete and closer to individual experience, they are usually more appealing to the imagination, and help to bring an air of reality into the classroom.��12
The assertion that documents were of value ��in involving the pupils in the skills of analysis and interpretation�� probably did little to enlighten teachers who were unaccustomed to using documents for this purpose. Nor were the teaching guidelines for particular topics any more helpful in this respect. Indeed, these guidelines seemed to assume a conventional, teacherled approach to the subject, as in this extract relating to ��China from the Self-strengthening Movement to the May Fourth Movement��:
��Teachers could tackle this topic with an introduction of the background to China��s desire for self-strengthening. This would involve a discussion of the internal conditions and external problems of China in the mid-19th century. Teachers could then discuss the various reform movements, namely, the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Hundred Days�� Reform and the Late Qing Reform in terms of their objectives, main features and impact on China. The roles of prominent figures such as Li Hongzhang, Kang Youwei and Cixi could be discussed�K.��13
It is difficult to see what use these guidelines would have been to any History teacher who possessed a reasonable knowledge of history. They did not present a radical new vision of how the subject should be taught, despite the fact that those who developed the syllabus felt that the ��thematic�� arrangement of content was a radical breakthrough in itself. Commenting on the new syllabus, one teacher observed that the guidelines provided ��a very thorough briefing on every page of the ground to be covered,�� but
��apart from a brief and half-hearted discussion of teaching strategies and techniques in general terms at the beginning of the pamphlet, there is precious little mention in the explanatory notes of any inspired and practical approach which may bring history teaching and learning to a higher plane than chalk, talk and essay�Ksince we have often been vilified for reducing education to merely training for public exams, we naturally expect our betters in high places to show a greater concern in the opposite direction. But do they?��14
Many of those involved in curriculum development in the early 1980s do appear to have been genuinely concerned to reform the way that History was taught in schools. However, the insistence in the the 1983 syllabus for History, as in the syllabus for Chinese History, on the role of history in teaching ��skills��, appears to have had more to do with justifying the importance of the subject in the school curriculum than with actually changing the way in which history was taught and learnt in schools. This may not have been the intention of those who drafted the History syllabus. It may simply have reflected their inability to conceive of a practical strategy for bringing the teaching of the subject more closely into line with their vague ideal of a stimulating, relevant, ��skills-based�� discipline, corresponding to the interests and capabilities of both teachers and students in an era of mass education.
THE SIXTH-FORM SYLLABUSES (HIGHER LEVEL AND A�� LEVEL)
Subject syllabuses at sixth-form level withstood for longest the winds of curricular change accompanying Hong Kong��s shift from elitist to mass educational provision, largely because of the dominant influence retained by the universities over the syllabuses for Higher level and A�� level. However, the 1980s witnessed an erosion of the control enjoyed by the two main local universities over the sixth-form curriculum. This culminated with the government��s controversial decision to create a common point of entry for all tertiary institutions, which led to the phasing out of the two separate, university-dominated A�� level and Higher level Subject Committees of the HKEA. New HKEA Sixth-form Subject Committees were created in mid-1989,15 and given the job of devising new A�� level and AS level examination syllabuses. At the same time, the Sixth Form History Subject Committee of the CDC began the task of preparing the first official teaching syllabus for sixth-form level. These new syllabuses, which are discussed in Chapter 6, were the most thorough and consistent to date in their promotion of new approaches to history teaching.
During the 1980s, the only official curricular outlines or guides for sixth-form history teachers were the examination syllabuses for A�� level and Higher level. These both maintained the practice of sectionalisation by region that was abandoned at HKCE level during this period, and their basic structure and content were similar:

Higher level (first examined: 1982)
Part I: Modern Europe (1760�V1945)
Part II: Section A�XChina (1839�V1945)
Section B�XJapan (1853�V1945)
Section C�XThe United States of America (1783�V1945)

A�� level (first examined: 1984)
Paper I: Western History (Europe, 1450�V1960; the United States of America, 1783�V1960)
Paper II: Asian History (1500�V1960) Section A: China and Japan Section B: India and Southeast Asia
These syllabuses were shorter than those that had preceded them, and this reduction in length represented a concession on the part of the academics. As was noted in the previous chapter, the separate papers dedicated to British or British imperial history (which had been taken by only a tiny number of candidates) were abolished in the early 1980s, although a small number of questions on British history continued to be set in the European papers. The new A�� level syllabus also did away with the ��Special Subject�� papers, the majority of which had been concerned with aspects of European history. Both syllabuses remained rather Euro-centric, with ��European�� or ��Western�� history being compulsory in both cases, and it remained possible in theory for candidates to entirely avoid answering any questions at all on Chinese history. In practice, however, sixth-form History syllabuses were steadily encroaching on the territory of the separate ��Chinese History�� subject.
In 1986, Alfred Lin, the Chairman of the A�� level subject committee, drew attention to teachers�� worries about the ��wide coverage of regions and nations required under the present syllabus and its undesirable consequences on the teaching and learning of the subject.��16 Under the terms of the 1984 syllabus, candidates had to answer at least one question from each of the two sections in Paper II. Lin proposed that this paper be divided into four sections�XChina, Japan, India and South-east Asia�Xwith candidates required to cover only two of these. The committee agreed that the workload for the subject needed to be lightened, but reservations to Lin��s proposal were expressed on three grounds, the first of which was that further sectionalisation by region would make it more difficult to set questions on themes or issues that concerned more than one region. Another committee member, most probably an academic, pointed out that it was likely that such a move would lead to most students concentrating on China and Japan at the expense of the other two regions, ��which was undesirable and would constitute a severe handicap when they entered university.�� Thirdly, it was objected that ��the possibility of increased weight being given to China might give an undue advantage to candidates taking both subjects of History and Chinese History.�� This last objection prompted Patrick Wong to comment that
���Kthe possibility of students concentrating on the history of China would not be regarded as a serious problem if one took the view that the aim of the study of the subject was primarily to develop intellectual skills rather than to acquire a vast amount of historical facts�K. Due to the different approaches currently adopted for History and Chinese History, it was not likely that candidates taking both subjects would gain a double benefit.��17
The committee finally agreed simply to remove the stipulation that candidates must choose at least one question from each of the two sections of Paper II, and instead allowed them complete freedom in their choice of questions in both the ��Western�� and ��Asian�� papers. This proposed change was subsequently endorsed by all but two of the 187 schools that responded to a questionnaire sent out to canvass their opinions.18 As with the introduction of the new A�� level syllabus in 1984, this was another instance in which the demands of teachers for a more manageable syllabus won a concession from the still largely university-dominated A�� level committee.
Moreover, by allowing students to concentrate more on East (rather than South or South-east) Asian history, the committee increased the overlap between ��History�� and ��Chinese History��. Some overlap had always existed, and the syllabus at A�� level mirrored the situation at Hong Kong University, where modern Chinese history, from the late Qing, was taught in English in the History Department, while ancient Chinese history was taught in Chinese in the Chinese Department (a situation that remains unchanged in 2003). However, the gradual increase in the amount of content common to both history subjects coincided with more energetic attempts, on the part of those responsible for History, to assert the distinctiveness of their subject not simply in terms of its scope but in terms of its fundamental philosophy and approach. In particular, Patrick Wong and Jane Cheng were to become increasingly vigorous in their insistence that the purpose of History was ��primarily to develop intellectual skills��, implicitly contrasting it with Chinese History, which in their view still required students simply to amass ��a vast amount of historical facts.��
AN OVERVIEW OF SYLLABUS CONTENT
The ��Euro-centrism�� of the sixth-form syllabuses, which had for long been justified by the existence of the separate subject of Chinese History, was a common feature of all history syllabuses from Form 3 upwards. Nor was it the only thing that these syllabuses had in common. A student who studied history from Form 3 through to Form 7 would in all likelihood cover almost exactly the same range of topics three times over, in successively greater degrees of depth (exactly the same was true of syllabuses for Chinese History). The syllabuses not only shared similar chronological and geographical foci; they were also overwhelmingly preoccupied with political and diplomatic history, especially at HKCE and sixth-form levels. While the syllabus revisions did represent a step towards a more truly ��global�� approach to history, the focus was still primarily on leaders, statesmen and generals�Xmost of them European and male�Xand on the impersonal forces, or ��-isms��, which were assumed to have informed their actions.19
The curriculum specialist Paul Morris, writing in 1991, claimed that recent changes to the History curriculum had made it ��more politicised, and more relevant to Hong Kong��s [post-handover] future.��20 However, the CDC History Syllabus (Forms I�VV) of 1983, to which he was referring, was not radically different from earlier examination syllabuses in having high politics as its principal focus. Where it did differ was in adopting a global and thematic approach that treated Asian history and Western history as part of the same grand narrative�Xa narrative whose main theme was the moulding of the modern world by the forces of liberalism and nationalism. Socialism was, in the words of local academic Julian Leung, ��relatively deemphasised,�� as was Western colonialism, though he did not remark upon this.21 Leung, then training History teachers at Hong Kong University, wrote a pamphlet in 1986 in which he outlined what he saw as the main ��concepts�� underlying the new HKCE syllabus:
���Kone of the important aims of history education is to give pupils a social orientation�Xto enable them to understand the fundamental forces that have shaped the contemporary world in which they live. If this is justified, then the new curriculum has its credits (sic.) in starting with the 3 great revolutions, i.e. the Industrial and Agrarian Revolution, the American Revolution and the French Revolution. These Revolutions can be perceived as [a] triumph of the ideas of [the] Enlightenment. They brought about the development of modern industrial capitalism and created the new men of the Age who made their bid for power in the name of Liberalism. In particular the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars brought an upheaval of the Ancien Regime in Europe. The ideas of democracy, liberty, fraternity, equality and humanitarianism spread across Europe first and then to the rest of the world. [These] still form the basic values of our contemporary society.��22
Most of the drafters of the new syllabus seem, like Leung, to have seen the history of the past two hundred years largely as a narrative of the progress of liberal, democratic and capitalist values. The importance that they themselves attached to these values is illustrated by their inclusion in the syllabus of the topic ��The development of parliamentary government in Britain.�� This was the subject of much discussion in the CDC History Subject Committee, with a few members evidently feeling that its inclusion as a distinct topic was unwarranted. However, the consensus, as recorded in the minutes, was that ��this topic was considered too substantial [i.e. too detailed] but essential.�� The committee agreed to delete the dates of the various Reform Acts from the teaching guide, calculating that this would help ��to avoid over-burdening students with each Reform Act in detail,�� yet would allow students ��to understand the general development of parliamentary government in Britain.��23 The guidelines also instructed teachers to make reference ��to constitutional development in other countries such as France, Germany and the United States of America in order that pupils could acquire a wider perspective of the development of representative government in the same period.��24
The new HKCE syllabus ostensibly aimed, as Leung put it, to remove ��the segregation of European and Asian history��,25 but the three Asian topics constituted relatively brief interludes in a drama whose main action took place elsewhere. Indian history, which had been included in the earliest draft of the syllabus, was entirely absent from the final version.26 There was nonetheless a greater amount of modern Chinese history in the new HKCE curriculum than there had been in the old one. In particular, the inclusion of the early nineteenth century in the new syllabus allowed the Opium War to be covered once again. In the syllabus guidelines, advice was given to teachers as to how they ought to approach the war and the consequent ��opening�� of China:
���Kteachers should first introduce the background to the coming of the Westerners to East Asia. An analysis of the motivation of the foreigners who came, especially the traders and missionaries, should be attempted.
The attitude of the Chinese towards Westerners should then be briefly discussed. Pupils should understand how the difference in conception between China and the West concerning diplomacy, jurisdiction and trade contributed to Sino-western conflict and ultimately to China��s opening. The relationship between the first Anglo-Chinese War and aspects such as the Cohong system, British efforts to negotiate trading terms and the ending of the monopoly of the East India Company, should therefore be discussed. Teachers should analyse how China was opened to foreign trade after the First Anglo-Chinese War, and the overall effect which the war had on her. The renewal of conflict between China and Britain, which resulted in the Second Anglo-Chinese War, as well as the significance of the treaties signed, should also be examined.��
The drafters of the 1983 syllabus thus adhered to basically the same interpretation of nineteenth-century Anglo-Chinese relations as that put forward by the Stokes in their 1960s textbook, with the emphasis very much on the role of diplomatic and cultural misunderstandings as the underlying causes of conflict. The very mention of the word ��opium�� seems to have been treated as a taboo.
��Opium�� was not the only word, or issue, which was sidestepped in the new History syllabus. The issue of European colonialism in Asia was almost entirely ignored, and the word ��colony�� or its derivatives appeared only three times in the whole document: once, in the context of the discussion of the American War of Independence,27 and again when ��the scramble for colonies�� (mainly in Africa) was identified as one of the causes of the First World War.28 No mention was made of the effect of the two world wars in stimulating anti-colonial nationalism in Asia or elsewhere. In the final topic of the syllabus, ��The contemporary world: international conflict and co-operation��, the process of post-war decolonisation was largely ignored. Instead, the focus was on ��the gradual division of the nations into communist and capitalist blocs and the involvement of the two blocs in a ��Cold War.�� The final reference to ��colonies�� was in the context of a long paragraph on the workings of the United Nations Organisation, in which it was stated that ��The effect which the rivalry of the great powers, and the admission in the 1950s of the new states which had emerged from the old colonial empires, had on the workings of the United Nations Organisation, should also be discussed.��29
At A�� level the range of topics that could be covered was far wider than at more junior levels, and even after the implementation of the new syllabus in 1984, candidates were still faced with a choice of over one hundred questions in the examination. However, while the abolition of the separate papers on British and British imperial history represented a ��decolonisation�� of the sixth form curriculum of the kind that had been undertaken for the HKCE curriculum in 1970, it also led, as that reform had done, to the exclusion from the syllabus of any Hong Kong history, and a reduction of the prominence given to the issue of European colonialism. The old paper on British imperial history had been a colonial anachronism taken by very few students. Nonetheless, it had provided more coverage of the historical relationship between Britain and Asia than did the new examination, divided as it now was into two separate papers on ��Western history�� and ��Asian history.�� The London examiner, in his remarks on the A�� level examination of 1985, wrote that
��A British examiner may feel that British history was neglected�K. Given
the prominence of Britain in world history up to 1914, there may be some
reason to comment on this imbalance.��30
The syllabus drafters may indeed have felt that the syllabus changes effected during the 1980s made the teaching of the subject, in the words of Morris, ��more relevant to Hong
Kong��s future��, particularly in the emphasis they placed on the importance of liberalism, democracy and capitalism in the development of the modern world. However, they seem to have been less concerned to devise a History curriculum relevant to Hong Kong��s colonial past, avoiding or downplaying what were from a Hong Kong perspective some of the most interesting, controversial and ��relevant�� issues in recent world history, such as colonialism, decolonisation and international socialism. It is hard to know whether their avoidance of these issues arose more from a conscious determination to steer clear of controversy, or less deliberately as a consequence of their personal interests or prejudices.
As was noted in the previous chapter, a proposal by D.C.Lam to bring local history back into the curriculum was rejected by his more cautious superior in the late 1970s, possibly because it was felt to be too politically sensitive. The early 1980s were a time of great political uncertainty in Hong Kong�Xuncertainty which reached a height in 1982 when the Chinese government declared its determination to resume sovereignty over the territory (see Chapter 2). Hong Kong��s educated elite, which included those responsible for developing the History curriculum, had benefited from life in a capitalist society increasingly embarrassed about its colonial status, yet still overwhelmingly hostile to and fearful of communism. By the early 1980s, Hong Kong was officially described as a ��territory�� rather than a colony, contacts with mainland China were rapidly increasing, and very tentative steps towards greater democratisation had begun. Nevertheless, for members of an elite anxious not to ��rock the boat��, it may still have seemed prudent to deal with concepts such as ��democracy�� in a ��global��, mainly European context, without looking too closely at the way in which European countries, and Britain in particular, had long exercised a very undemocratic dominion over large areas of the rest of the world, including Hong Kong.
LOCAL HISTORY
The absence of Hong Kong history from History syllabuses was noted with regret by at least one teacher, who observed prior to the issuing of the 1983 syllabus that this topic would ��certainly interest junior form students.��31 Like the 1975 junior form syllabus, the syllabus of 1983 ignored local history, apart from a perfunctory reference to it on the first page of the guidelines for Form I:
��Teachers should then proceed to explain the differences between archaeological and written records and their respective values in enabling us to learn about the past. Reference could be made to the archaeological finds in Hong Kong such as those from Lamma Island, as well as to primitive forms of writing such as those on oracle bones and clay tablets.��32
By the late 1980s, however, the situation in Hong Kong had altered in ways that may have given an added impetus to the drive for local history. The political atmosphere had changed, with the aftermath of the Joint Declaration and the rapid growth of local prosperity giving rise to a new interest and sense of pride in both China and Hong Kong�Xwhat the curriculum developer Lee Chi-hung termed the ��big Hong Kong mentality��.33 In addition, the increasing body of scholarship on local anthropology and history both helped to increase awareness of and interest in the local past, and put a growing amount of material on local history at the disposal of teachers and curriculum developers.
Most of those interviewed during the course of this research acknowledged that the person who did most to push for the introduction of local history in the late 1980s and early 1990s was Jane Cheng, who became a History Inspector at the Advisory Inspectorate in 1988. She had previously trained History teachers at Grantham College, where she had developed a programme in local history for her students, though according to her it was ��not that well-planned yet��.34 At a seminar in September 1986, teachers had already approved a proposal for introducing a local history component at A�� level, but this proposal was temporarily shelved in late 1987 due to
���Kthe many problems and complications involved, e.g. what number of questions on Hong Kong history should be set so that the option would be sufficiently attractive to students without sacrificing the concept and understanding of ��Asian�� history, and whether suitable teachers and reference material would be easily available.��35
The Working Party on the A�� level syllabus therefore recommended that it would be ��more opportune�� to consider the local history proposal again when the Government had announced its decisions on the future of sixth-form education. However, when Cheng joined the Inspectorate the following year, she found herself faced with a situation in which the subject of History was in crisis, with the numbers of students taking it falling rapidly at all levels (see below). She felt that the introduction of local history, besides being worthwhile in itself, might help to boost the subject��s flagging popularity.
The Education Department did not at that time control the syllabuses for sixth-form History, but by 1988 the ��CDC History Syllabus (Forms I�V V)�� was up for a five-yearly review. Cheng recalled that local history was already on the agenda. Not only had her immediate superior, D.C.Lam, long been keen on the idea, but he told Cheng that the Director of Education had recently phoned him and said, ��Shouldn��t we think about local history?��36 Lam and Cheng felt that this was nothing more than a personal suggestion on the part of the Director, Lee Yuet-ting, who took a particular interest in the subject since he himself (like Lam and Cheng) was a graduate of Hong Kong University��s History Department. Even if this was so, the fact that Lee clearly felt that local history was no longer ��off limits�� reflects a significant relaxation in the political atmosphere as compared with the 1970s, and a greater confidence in Hong Kong��s status in the period following the Joint Declaration of 1984. In any case, Cheng was assured from the very beginning of the support of her superiors in her efforts to promote the teaching of local history. Her situation was thus very different from that in which Lam had found himself ten years earlier.37
Though in retrospect Cheng herself saw the introduction of local history essentially as a consequence of having had the right people in the right place at the right time, the manner in which she attempted to ��sell�� the idea in the late 1980s reflected some of the cultural and political changes underway in contemporary Hong Kong society. For example, she referred to the search for a local identity as one justification for the move. She also attempted to justify it with reference to the importance of civic education, elements of which, according to the civic education guidelines of 1985, were expected to be taught in all subjects (although, as noted in Chapter 2, these guidelines served a mainly symbolic purpose and had little impact on teaching in schools). Local history would also, Cheng argued, provide plentiful opportunities for the teaching and exercise of the ��skills�� in which it was the main object of History to train students. In the first History Newsletter of 1989, she put the case in these terms:
��As education aims more at cultivation of good citizenship through the promotion of an awareness of the environment and society at large, the study of local history ought to be given more weight in the school curriculum. Appropriate elaboration and discussion on the development of Hong Kong in the context of global issues can enhance pupils�� understanding of the local setting, enforce (sic.) their sense of identity to the local community and activate (sic.) the search for and interest in cultural heritage. The growing emphasis on local history can be seen as a major breakthrough that history teachers can achieve in the current school curriculum. Field studies, visits to museum[s] and historical sites can be organised either within the existing timetable arrangement or as extra-curricular activities run by History Clubs. Preparation of observation guidelines, follow-up discussion of findings and subsequent research work can promote the use of primary sources available in Hong Kong and stimulate the spirit of enquiry amongst pupils. It is through activities like these that the study of History can be made more relevant and interesting, and the nature of the discipline better understood by pupils.��38
For Cheng, as for Lam, Sweeting and others who strongly supported the introduction of local history, it was seen as key to ��making History a stimulating, interesting and relevant subject in the school curriculum.��39 The introduction of local history also threatened to move the History subject into precisely the sort of controversial territory which it had for so long avoided. Nonetheless, such a change was felt to be essential if the subject was to stem the decline in its popularity and survive as an integral component of the school curriculum. The controversy that did in fact surround the local history project, and the nature of the syllabus that eventually emerged, are examined in the following chapter.
THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The key role played by university academics in curriculum development up to and during the 1970s has already been noted. By the 1980s their influence was waning, though they remained very influential. Their priorities were reflected in the new syllabuses of the early 1980s both for the HKCE and, more particularly, for sixth-form level. Later in the decade, ��macro-policy�� initiatives played a major role in loosening the grip of the universities over the sixth form curriculum (see Chapter 2 and below), although new syllabuses and examinations did not emerge until the early 1990s. However, only a little of the influence formerly exercised by the universities passed to school-teachers. From the late 1970s, the expansion of the education system and greater bureaucratisation of the curriculum development and examinations systems meant that more and more influence was gathered into the hands of officials at the ED and HKEA. Several of the officials responsible for History during the 1980s, particularly Jane Cheng, Patrick Wong and DC Lam, were intent on pursuing curriculum reform. Inspired by developments in History teaching overseas, they took the lead in searching for ways to bolster History��s status within the school curriculum by refining its pedagogical objectives, changing syllabus content and reforming assessment practices.
THE CDC, THE HKEA AND CURRICULUM CHANGE IN THE EARLY 1980s
Changes to assessment techniques were in theory a matter purely for the HKEA, while the CDC was responsible for drafting syllabuses, even though cross-membership meant that the CDC subject officer also served on the HKEA committee and vice-versa (the HKEA/CDC split is a confusing and inefficient arrangement that has done nothing to facilitate the process of curriculum reform40). Thus, in his capacity as a member of the CDC History subject committee, Patrick Wong was a member of the working party which drew up the teaching guidelines for the 1983 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV). Likewise, D.C.Lam of the Advisory Inspectorate was later nominated to serve on the HKEA��s DBQ Working Party. By 1987, when this working party was established, co-ordination between the HKEA and CDC was improving, and would improve still further when Jane Cheng took over from Lam in 1988. However, in the years immediately following the establishment of the HKEA the late 1970s, co-ordination between its committees and those of the CDC appears to have been less than ideal.
This was particularly evident in the drafting of the Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV), issued in 1983. The working party that produced the teaching guidelines for this syllabus was set up solely under the auspices of the CDC History Subject Committee. However, the CDC syllabus was based on a draft which had emerged from the HKEA subject committee soon after its establishment in 1977, and which seems to have been the brainchild of the historian David Faure of CUHK (then the only academic sitting on that committee).41 A CDC working party was set up in early 1978 to ��work jointly�� with a parallel HKEA working party to review the syllabus for Forms 4 and 5. In the meantime, Patrick Wong had taken over as History Subject Officer at the HKEA from Au Cheuk-fai. Au had moved there in 1977 from the old Examinations Section of the ED, and returned to the ED in 1978 as Senior Inspector for History.
Although the 1983 HKCE syllabus had originated from an HKEA initiative, those who drafted it did not accord the same priority to reform of assessment practices as was to be the case later in the 1980s. The syllabus altered the scope and arrangement of the content prescribed for the HKCE examination (to be taken first in 1988), but left the mode of assessment essentially unchanged. The changes seem to have reflected the personal preferences of ED officials such as Au Cheuk-fai and D.C.Lam, and of academic historians such as David Faure, Kwok Siu-tong and K.C.Fok, more than they reflected those of most practising teachers. The HKEA committee, and Patrick Wong in particular, were less assertive at this time than they were later to become. This may have been largely due to the fact that Wong was relatively new to the HKEA job, and the HKEA itself was a new institution, still in the process of defining its role vis-a-vis the CDC. By 1987, when he set out his agenda for reform of the History curriculum before the HKEA subject committees (see below), Wong had been at the HKEA for almost ten years. The subject was then facing a crisis of popularity that it had not faced at the time when the 1983 CDC syllabus was being drafted. Moreover, in the interim Wong had visited the U.K. and seen the way in which the history curriculum there was changing. These factors helped to provide him with the authority, the occasion and the inspiration to propose radical changes to assessment practices.
The influence of ED officials and university academics was evident in the way in which the CDC syllabus of 1983 reversed the trend of the previous decade by lengthening the chronological scope to include topics from eighteenth century history such as the French and Industrial Revolutions.42 The adoption of a thematic approach was seen by the members of the CDC subject committee as a progressive move, intended to wean teachers away from their habit of, in D.C.Lam��s words, ��rushing through the syllabus�� chronologically. The stated aim of these changes was to cater for ��a wider range of interests�� and to create a syllabus which could ��be more justifiably called ��World�� History��. Although David Faure seems to have been largely responsible for the earliest draft of the syllabus, Kwok Siu-tong, also of CUHK, claimed personal credit for ��pushing the curriculum back to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution��, while D.C.Lam attributed this to his own efforts, which he justified with the assertion that ��the eighteenth century has a very important impact on modern Europe.��43
It is impossible to be certain on the evidence of the CDC minutes alone who deserves most of the credit�Xor the blame�Xfor devising the 1983 syllabus. David Faure ceased to be a member of the HKEA committee in 1981, and Kwok Siu-tong seldom attended meetings of the CDC committee, though he was usually quite vocal when he did so. However, membership, or attendance at meetings, of the CDC or HKEA committees did not necessarily define or determine who was able to influence the curriculum development process. Much depended on whom the subject officer chose to consult or listen to, so that it is quite possible, for example, that D.C. Lam may have telephoned Kwok Siu-tong to ask him for his opinion when he failed to turn up for committee meetings.44 What is clear from the minutes is that, particularly in the case of the CDC committee, it was the subject officer who controlled the agenda and who tended to dominate the discussion.
When the proposed new syllabus was circulated to schools for comment in 1981, the accompanying ��Explanatory Notes�� explained that the changes were intended, amongst other things, to ��broaden the scope of study��, ��provide a general historical background of major events and trends which have shaped the modern world��, and ��help lay a foundation for studying history at more advanced levels.��45 However, despite the thematic approach of the new syllabus, one teacher (quoted above) rejected the claim that it was any more varied in its thematic scope than the existing syllabus, pointing out that all of the themes outlined in the new version related primarily to political history.46 Moreover, of the six detailed responses which were received from teachers, five complained that the new syllabus was ��too long��, ��prescribing an overdose of history��, ��too long and too broad��, or ��too lengthy and burdensome.��47 These complaints were ignored by the CDC committee, but were echoed by most teachers when in 1984 the HKEA circulated a draft of its examination syllabus to schools for teachers�� comments.
When the subject committee came to discuss the comments from schools, the chairman, Chan Pui-sum, pointed out that
���Ksince the draft syllabus had been circulated to all secondary schools, amendments must be based on the comments received, which the committee had the right to accept or reject after deliberation, and that the format of the syllabus must be kept to its original.��48
The insistence that the ��format�� be retained unaltered might seem to suggest that the soliciting of school comments was disingenuously undertaken. However, a previous draft of the new syllabus had been circulated to schools a year earlier, and comments then had been generally favourable, though this earlier draft had consisted simply of a list of topics.49 At least one significant change had been made to the draft syllabus between mid-1979 and mid-1980, reflecting some awareness of the likely response of teachers. The 1979 draft had envisaged two non-overlapping options: 1760�V1870 and 1870�V1970. By 1980, this had been altered to two overlapping periods (1760�V1919 and 1815�V1970), as in the final version. Those drafting the syllabus had evidently realised that if they had presented teachers with the original options, the vast majority would have chosen the 1870�V1970 period, which was identical in chronological scope to the existing HKCE syllabus. This would have defeated their aim of compelling teachers to broaden their coverage of topics.
History teachers as a group seem to have played a predominantly passive role in the drafting of the 1983 CDC syllabus. As was noted in the previous chapter, the absence of a professional association for History teachers denied them a means of making their collective voice heard, and helped to ensure that curriculum development for History remained a predominantly top-down process. Unlike teachers of Chinese History, History teachers did not possess, or at least did not articulate, a militant sense of their collective mission. Teachers of ��World History��, after all, could scarcely follow the example of their ��Chinese History�� colleagues, and rally local ��patriotic�� elements to resist syllabus changes to which they objected�Xand it was ��patriotism�� more than anything else that provided Chinese History practitioners with their fundamental raison d��etre. Nonetheless, an awareness of the growing difficulties facing History teachers in secondary schools helped to make the HKEA in particular more responsive to their demands.
THE HKEA AND THE RESPONSE TO FALLING CANDIDATURES
The falling popularity of History was particularly striking at sixth-form level, and deeply worrying to those involved in curriculum development. Although the candidature for A�� level History rose slightly in 1984 relative to the overall figure for A�� level subjects, in every subsequent year during the 1980s the candidature for History dropped significantly in relative terms. Meanwhile, the number of students sitting the Higher Level History examination�Xalways far fewer than those sitting the A�� level�Xshrank by seventy-one percent between 1984 and 1987.50 Changes to the admissions procedure for the Chinese University of Hong Kong led to a large fall in the overall candidature for the Higher Level examination, but History suffered more than most.
History��s unpopularity may have been partly due to the increasing popularity of other, newer subjects, particularly ��commercial�� subjects such as Accounting and Economics. The minutes of a Higher Level History Subject Committee meeting in 1987 illustrate the concern prompted by the declining candidature for History, and the potential remedies that were contemplated:
��The secretary [Patrick Wong] drew members�� attention to the table�K which showed that the subject of History consistently attracted fewer candidates than Chinese History throughout those four years [1984�V7], and even lost out to other humanities subjects like Geography and Economics. He remarked that although the unpopularity of the subject was caused by a wide range of factors, some of which were related to the nature of the subject and social trends/prejudices, the situation could possibly be improved by reforming the examination format and syllabus content so that the examination became more oriented towards skills and the course content was made socially more relevant.��51
The twin emphasis on ��skills�� and on content that was ��socially more relevant���X specifically local history and more contemporary history�Xwas to become central to efforts to revive the fortunes of History as a school subject at all levels. Wong��s suggestion was supported by the other committee members, but action was delayed pending the Government��s decision on the future of sixth form education. Even so, the HKEA��s A�� level History subject committee agreed to set up a working party to consider introducing data-based questions as soon as the uncertainties concerning the fate of A�� level examinations were removed.52
At HKCE level too, there was a slide in the candidature for History from a peak of around 38,000 in 1982�V3. In relative terms, History caught up slightly with Chinese History during the 1980s, although the number of students studying the latter remained far larger (in 1983, the figure for Chinese History was 61,650, as compared with 38,799 for History). The falling candidature was seen by Patrick Wong as symptomatic of a deep malaise in the state of History teaching in Hong Kong schools. His diagnosis, as recorded in the minutes of the HKCE History Subject Committee, summarised all the principal concerns of curriculum developers:
(A)
���K[the examination] fell far short of testing/promoting skills beyond the factual recall level, and far too often�Kdegenerated into question-spotting and rote-memorisation of model answers, presumably because this style of questioning [essay questions] demanded a high level of language proficiency which was beyond an average candidate.

(B)
The continued drop in the number of candidates taking CE History, and the consistently poor performance in the conventional [essay] paper, probably reflected that the subject was generally viewed as being of little social relevance and practical use, as well as failing to cater for the interest and capabilities of students of a widening range of ability.

(C)
There was little in the existing syllabus that was oriented towards the testing/promoting of the ability to evaluate and interpret historical


evidence (which is meant in a broad sense and includes both primary and secondary written sources and statistical and visual material), a skill on which the UK boards place such a high premium.��53
The response of this committee, like that of the A�� level committee (which met ten days later), was to agree to the setting up of an HKEA Working Party to consider the introduction of documents-based questioning (DBQ) at HKCE level. The members of the Working Party included Anthony Sweeting, Patrick Wong, D.C.Lam, and Kwok Siu-tong of CUHK. It was hoped that a reform of assessment techniques would effectively compel teachers to change their approach to teaching the subject. The new approach which was envisaged, at HKCE as at sixth-form level, was heavily influenced by UK models and consisted of a new focus on the training of students�� analytical ��skills��
THE HKEA, THE UNIVERSITIES, AND THE SIXTH-FORM CURRICULUM
Signs of such a radically new approach were not much in evidence in changes made to History syllabuses in the early 1980s. However, as the influence of universities over the curriculum at all levels declined, and was largely superseded by that of energetic young officials at the HKEA and the ED, the pace and scope of curriculum reform increased. This was especially evident in changes made by the HKEA during the 1980s to the A�� level syllabus. For Patrick Wong, the gradual ��freeing�� of the sixth-form History syllabus from the domination of the universities was one of the most significant positive achievements in the development of the subject during his career.54
The first step in this process came with the new A�� level syllabus of 1984. As was noted in the previous chapter, this had changed little from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Before 1984, the examination consisted of about 400 questions in all, which meant that ��almost every member of staff [at the History Department of Hong Kong University] had to be involved�Xfrom the tutors to Professor Young.��55 The level of expertise required for setting and marking questions on such a wide range of topics meant that there was very little room for schoolteachers to be involved. Wong recalls that it was impossible to find teachers knowledgeable enough to serve on the moderation committees that were supposed to vet the standard of the question papers. He himself, as the subject officer at the Examinations Authority, could not effectively control the standard of the papers, because ��each setter was an expert.�� As he saw it, the pre-1984 syllabus was designed principally to recruit students for the various History courses offered at Hong Kong University, ��Or, looking at it even more sceptically, to keep the lecturers in their jobs.��56
The reduction of the length of the syllabus in 1984�Xto ten sections with a total of 108 questions�Xwas seen by Wong as a first step to prising control of the sixth-form curriculum out of the hands of the universities. However, the starting date of the syllabus remained at 1450, despite the fact that almost no students attempted questions on the Early Modern period. According to Wong, ��We had to compromise somehow, because at that time there were still four university teachers on the A�� level subject committee�Kand the teacher members, most of them were their students.��57 Wong was supported by Anthony Sweeting, but the lecturers from the History Department of HKU held out for a more ��comprehensive�� A�� level paper. Chung Chi-keung, a teacher-member of the subject committee at this time, felt that many of the academics ��wanted to be famous, they wanted to shape the curriculum in their own way. They didn��t have much contact with the secondary schools, They just wanted to participate and voice their own vision here.�� Alfred Lin of Hong Kong University, who became Chairman of the A�� level subject committee in 1985, was an exception. Chung saw Lin as ��one of the prime petitioners (sic.) in this field, promoting A�� level syllabus change, and changes to exam structures. But I would say he was in the minority.��58 In 1985 the committee again blocked an attempt by Wong to have the section on ��Europe: 1450�V1610�� dropped from the syllabus.59
A more radical overhaul of the syllabus was only made possible early in the 1990s as a result of the Government��s implementation of the 1988 EC report on the structure of tertiary education, which involved abolishing the Higher Level examination.60 This led to the merging of the H�� level and A�� level subject committees into one HKEA Sixth Form History Subject Committee. The representation of Hong Kong University academics on the new committee was cut from four to two, with one from the History Department and one from the Department of Curriculum Studies, and was matched by two representatives from the Chinese University.61 However, until the government��s policy on sixth-form education was made public in mid-1989, uncertainty as to what the final details of the proposals would be had the effect of temporarily delaying the syllabus revision process.62
THE INVOLVEMENT OF TEACHERS IN THE WORK OF THE HKEA
The reforms of the late 1980s helped to boost the influence enjoyed by teachers on the sixth-form committees. Patrick Wong certainly sought to deploy teachers possessing what he saw as a more ��enlightened�� disposition as a counter-balance to the sometimes reactionary influence of academics on the HKEA committees. However, perhaps more significant in terms of enhancing the involvement of teachers in the broader curriculum development process was the way in which they were actively courted by the HKEA from the early 1980s onwards. Through the organisation of seminars, along with efforts to include more of them in the work of setting and marking examinations, the History subject committees of the HKEA also gradually, albeit in a minor way, assumed the function of providing in-service training to teachers. To a far greater extent than the CDC committees, those of the HKEA actively cultivated their constituency in the schools.
As was noted in the previous chapter, Patrick Wong as subject officer at the HKEA enjoyed far more control than his opposite number at the CDC over the selection of teacher members for subject committees. While both the CDC and the HKEA operated a system whereby school principals nominated teachers to serve on the committees, at the HKEA it was Wong, as committee secretary, and the Chairman and Vice-chairman, who decided who was actually invited onto the committee. If Wong knew nothing about a particular teacher�Xif, for example, he had not previously served as an examination marker�Xhe would sometimes telephone the Advisory Inspectorate to ask the subject officer there if he or she knew anything about that individual.63 The principals�� recommendations were, according to Wong, not always very reliable, since sometimes they wanted to nominate every teacher, and sometimes they didn��t want to nominate their best teachers because they wanted them to spend more time teaching. Occasionally, if he did not have enough nominations which he felt were suitable, and he knew good people who had worked as markers, or who came to seminars he had arranged, he would give them a nomination form and say, ��Ask your principal to nominate you!�� Thus, while technically the procedures prevented him from nominating teachers personally, he was able to circumvent the rules to some extent.64 Teacher members were appointed for three years, with the possibility of re-appointment for another three. Again, it was the subject officer, in consultation with Chairman and Vice-chairman, who decided who was to be reappointed.
In this way Wong over the years managed to secure the services of a number of fairly active and like-minded teachers. In the 1980s these included Jora Ma, Chung Chi-keung, Li Ki-cheung, and Woo Ho-wai. A number of these individuals also served on the CDC subject committee, of which Chung Chi-keung was for many years the chairman. However, according to Chung, while ��the changing force should be provided by members of the CDC,�Kthis was not so in the majority of cases.�� The CDC tended to be very ��official���Xit was, he claimed, the HKEA that was ��where the action was.��65 This impression is borne out by a comparison of the minuted discussions of the different committees, those that took place in the HKEA committees in general appearing to be more lively and substantial than the proceedings of CDC meetings. It was from the HKEA that the initiative came for several of the most significant curricular changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s: the introduction of DBQs, the ��streamlining�� of the content of the sixth-form curriculum, and the proposal to include an option on Hong Kong history in the A�� level syllabus.
By the late-1980s, the mechanisms for consulting teachers on curriculum policy had also become more elaborate than they appear to have been when the 1983 CDC syllabus was being drafted. Henceforth, teacher seminars organised by the HKEA, the CDC, or both together, became a major means by which teachers�� opinions were solicited, or through which they were persuaded to support reform. Patrick Wong was particularly keen on the use of seminars. There was, he claims, no HKEA policy requiring subject officers to organise them, but he and several other subject officers did so because, as he put it, ��I don��t like to waste my time writing out a syllabus only to see it fail�� due to opposition from teachers.66 At the HKEA, says Wong, the subject officers and committees have always felt ��more exposed to their client base�� than the ED, particularly since examinations are such a high-stakes business in Hong Kong:
��If anyone isn��t happy, student or teacher, they can always write to the HKEA or the mass media and complain. We do assume our clients are out there and we have to serve them�Xbut by serving them, it doesn��t just mean that we give them what they want. Sometimes we have to tell them or educate them [as to] what they need.��67
One of the first seminars organised by Wong was held in 1980 or 1981, as part of the process of drafting a new A�� level examination syllabus. With the support of the then Chairman of the A�� level History Subject Committee, Professor Turnbull of HKU, Wong persuaded all the members of the committee to attend and to lead separate groups of teachers, each discussing one section of the existing syllabus. The principal aim of the seminar was to reach a consensus on which of the less popular sections of the syllabus should be dropped. The preference of most teachers for a shortening of the syllabus assisted Wong and others in achieving a ��compromise�� with some of the more recalcitrant academics on the committee, whereby many of the redundant sections were abandoned in the syllabus for the 1984 examination.68
In 1986, another seminar was held under the auspices of the HKU History Department. This was intended to provide an opportunity for an ��exchange of views between A�� level History teachers and to update teachers on current developments in the History Department.��69 It was thus partly conceived as an indirect exercise in enhancing recruitment of students to the department. However, it was also seen by Alfred Lin, Chairman of the A�� level History Subject Committee, and by Patrick Wong as ��a better way of identifying problems and gathering suggestions for improving the syllabus than the circulation of a questionnaire.��70 Wong also made the suggestion, which met with the approval of the A�� level subject committee, that
��it would add to the usefulness of the seminar if teachers would be updated on the latest developments in other countries (say, the UK and the USA) in the area of syllabus aims and exam objectives, the technique of examining and course content, because this might point to the possible direction for the change of the local syllabus.��71
At the seminar itself, Anthony Sweeting assisted Wong in presenting some of these recent overseas developments in history teaching to the three hundred teachers who attended. Only seventy-three of these teachers returned the questionnaires that were distributed, but more than two-thirds of these endorsed a revision of the local syllabus ��in the light of the latest developments for the subject in the UK and the USA.�� Sixty percent of respondents supported the introduction of DBQs, though only forty-four percent supported the introduction of a teacher-based assessment component. In addition, three-quarters backed a proposal to include an option on Hong Kong history.72 In a sense, therefore, the seminar did ��point the direction�� for the future of the History syllabus, by giving Patrick Wong and the subject committee a clear mandate to pursue most of the reforms they were already contemplating.
THE ROLE OF OVERSEAS INFLUENCES IN THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
These curricular reforms were largely inspired by developments in history teaching overseas, particularly in Britain though also, to a lesser extent, in America. By the 1980s, the practice of looking to British precedents had become largely institutionalised, although Anthony Sweeting was the only British expatriate who remained actively involved in the curriculum development process. The reference to British example by no means implied slavish imitation. On the contrary, local curriculum developers were selective in their adoption of British practices, as well as in their acceptance of advice from the London Examining Board. The British connection was essentially treated as a useful resource and inspiration for local attempts to improve History teaching and to shore up the subject��s threatened status.
The early 1980s were a period of intense anxiety for the history-teaching profession in Britain over the future of their subject. In 1982, an organisation called the ��History at the Universities Defence Group�� was established, with the aim of working with the Historical Association (the professional association of historians and history teachers) ��to defend the scope of history in British universities.��73 At the same time, there was ��a flood of articles�� in Teaching History re-iterating warnings, first voiced in the previous decade, of the dangers facing history in schools. Some of the concerns expressed were similar to those felt by curriculum developers in Hong Kong, such as the fear that social change was making history appear less ��relevant��, and that newer subjects, particularly inter-disciplinary ones such as Social Studies, were eroding the status of history in schools.74
It was Britain��s Conservative government that rode to the rescue of history in schools there. Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Education, gave a major speech in 1984 in which he emphasised the ��unique role�� of history in the school curriculum, recognising that history was ��vital for developing skills such as analysis and criticism, sometimes in situations ��in which there cannot be a right answer��.�� However, the government��s main aim in shoring up the status of history was to give a boost to the teaching of British history in schools. Insisting that he was advocating ��national�� rather than ��nationalist�� history, Joseph stressed that the teaching of predominantly British history was vital because of the ��shared values distinctive of British society.��75
In Britain, therefore, the politics of national identity were central to government-led efforts to re-establish the importance of history teaching in schools. In Hong Kong, however, the government played no such role. Indeed, as was noted in previous chapters, the subject of History, in contrast to Chinese History, lacked any clear relevance to students�� sense of identity, and it suited the purposes of both the colonial and mainland governments that this should be so. Nonetheless, despite this crucial difference in the roles of History as a school subject in Britain and Hong Kong, curriculum developers in the territory continued to look to Britain for precedents that might suggest a way out of the crisis faced by the subject in local schools.
That those involved in the development of Hong Kong��s History curriculum should look to Britain in this way was largely a consequence of habit and education. While British personnel no longer dominated curriculum development as they had done in the 1960s, individuals such as Lam Ding-chung, Patrick Wong, Jane Cheng and Elizabeth Sinn had all been taught history by British teachers, and were all products of a school and university system which bore a close institutional resemblance to its English counterpart. Their own educational experience, and the English character of the education system which Hong Kong had acquired under colonial rule, made it natural that they should continue to refer to British practice in their efforts to reform the local curriculum.
Reference to British practice was also institutionalised through the exercise of sending examination papers to the Schools Examinations Board of the University of London for vetting and moderation. This was linked to the recognition by the London Board of Hong Kong��s HKCE and A�� level qualifications, which ensured that these qualifications retained a certain international currency. In 1986, the HKEA��s own Schools Examinations Board decided to standardise the procedure for sending papers to London for moderation from 1988 onwards, dropping the practice, which it had inherited in 1980 from Hong Kong University, of sending A�� level papers for overseas moderation every year. Henceforth the English-medium versions of all A�� level papers, like those for the HKCE, would be sent for overseas moderation every three years, in rotation. Thus in 1988 it would be the turn of the papers for History to be sent to London, along with those for Physics, Chemistry and Music. The change also meant that the moderation of each subject would be undertaken at the same time as the vetting exercise, the latter being ��the crucial part of the recognition process.��76
The process of sending examination papers to London for vetting does not appear to have occasioned any great trepidation on the part of the History subject committees. On the contrary, in no case does there appear to have been any question of an examination paper being rejected after veting by the London examiners. The criticisms that the London examiners did make of local marking techniques and standards were typically treated rather dismissively by the subject committee. For example, in 1985 the London moderators criticised the lack of any question-specific marking schemes at A�� level, while noting that the marking schemes for HKCE level were actually far more detailed and content-specific than those used in London.77 The London examiner looking at the A�� level paper commented on the apparently unsystematic nature of the marking conventions used in Hong Kong, and with reference to one local examiner remarked that ��such sloppy marking would not be tolerated in London.��78 The A�� level subject committee responded by complaining that the London examiners did not understand the local practice of marking papers question by question, and did not appreciate the thoroughness with which chief examiners monitored the work of the individual markers. They also drew attention to the lack of familiarity of the London examiners with Asian history, commenting that ��this lack of familiarity with what constituted Paper II must have seriously impaired the validity of the London marks and grades.��79
The Schools Examination Board of the HKEA took up London��s suggestion that ��simple question-specific marking schemes�� be provided to A�� level markers (as was done in Chinese History). However, the A�� level subject committee successfully argued against such a move, claiming that it would not help markers significantly, given the open-ended nature of the questions, the fact that each marker marked only one question, and the existing procedure allowing for ��exchanges of views between examiners and markers as and when required�� which, according to the committee, ��had the advantage of being flexible, realistic and thorough.��80 As was noted in the previous chapter, the committee was also concerned that the production of detailed marking schemes would encourage teachers and students to treat them as ��model answers��, and would therefore have a detrimental effect on learning habits.
Besides making criticisms, most of which tended to be rejected, the London examiners also offered suggestions. In the 1988 A�� level ��Comparability Study��, the London examiner, in a tone far less acerbic than that of his 1985 predecessor, drew attention to what he saw as the two main differences between the Hong Kong and London papers. The first was the fact that whereas ��the Hong Kong exam requires outline knowledge on both papers��, ��most candidates in London take one paper which tests knowledge and understanding of a particular theme in some depth, and one in which a more outline knowledge of a historical period is tested.�� His second observation related to data-based questions:
��London papers now set compulsory ��documents�� questions on both their papers. These questions test comprehension and evaluation of
documentary sources and do so by means of sub-questions testing dif-ferent skills. It is the experience of the London examiners that these questions usually attract rather higher marks than essay questions and thus aid differentiation in a subject where marks notoriously ��bunch��. Hong Kong examiners might like to consider a greater variety of question types, both in order to help the spread of marks and, perhaps more important, to test a wider range of historical skills more directly than is possible by means of timed essays.��81
This advice was not responsible for precipitating any change of policy on the part of the HKEA. For largely similar reasons, and in the hope of boosting the popularity of the subject, the HKCE and A�� level subject committees had already resolved to consider the introduction of DBQs before this suggestion came from London. At the seminar held at HKU in September 1986, a number of A�� level teachers had already endorsed the introduction of DBQs. However, while the move to adopt DBQs may not have come in response to the promptings of the London examiners, the example of London��s implementation of this new question type did play an important part in persuading Hong Kong teachers and examiners that such an innovation was practicable. In particular, the English precedent had a strong influence on Patrick Wong.
In 1984, Wong was sent by the HKEA to London for one month��s training. While in England, he visited various examination boards: Cambridge, the Associated Examinations Board, and a number of smaller ones, as well as the London Board. This was at precisely the time when many of these boards were developing DBQs. He talked to teachers and examiners, visited a number of schools, and brought back many examples of the sorts of materials that they were producing. He recalls that he had seen English examination papers that used DBQs before he visited England, but ��it was different to actually get involved in the process, in the markers�� meetings, in the moderation meetings.�� His visit to England also enabled him on his return to Hong Kong to claim, with greater authority, that introducing DBQs was ��nothing new�XUK boards are doing it already, so one of the obstacles at least should be gone.��82
At the seminar in 1986, and again at a seminar organised in July 1989 partly for the purpose of ��selling�� the proposal to introduce DBQs at HKCE level,83 Wong distributed examples of English syllabuses and examination papers to participating teachers. At the 1986 seminar he also gave out copies of an American article which, he later claimed, had really ��inspired�� him to push for the adoption of DBQs in Hong Kong.84 This was an account, by Michael S.Henry, of the ��intellectual origins and impact of the document-based question�� in the US, and described how, during the 1970s, sceptics among American history teachers were gradually won over to the idea. ��Through discussions, sample questions and pre-testing,�� Henry wrote, ��a consensus developed that the question should be included as part of the essay section of the�K American History examination.��85 Wong set about building a similar consensus in favour of DBQs amongst Hong Kong��s history teachers.
He was not alone in this. Anthony Sweeting assisted in the drafting of sample DBQs, which were largely based on those contained in the 1988 History Syllabus of the Cambridge International Certificate of Secondary Education. On the A�� level committee, Alfred Lin was also strongly supportive, and a ��consensus�� in favour of introducing DBQs rapidly appears to have developed among members of all History subject committees, sixth-form and secondary, HKEA and CDC. In the late 1980s, the Advisory Inspectorate also became more pro-active, with D.C.Lam assuming overall charge of the History subject area from the more bureaucratic and conservative Chan Pui-sum.86 According to Lam, the Advisory Inspectorate was not so involved with the devising and implementation of DBQs, since this ��had more to do with exams��, though he nonetheless insisted that it had been ��a joint initiative��.��87
Particularly active in the promotion of new approaches to history teaching was Lam��s new subordinate, Jane Cheng, who became History subject officer at the Advisory Inspectorate in 1988 (having lectured at Grantham College of Education for the previous six years and, prior to that, worked with Anthony Sweeting as a teaching consultant in the School of Education at HKU). One of Cheng��s earliest initiatives was to publish a History Newsletter in which she and others wrote articles aimed at introducing teachers to new teaching methods and historical topics.88 The first issue of the newsletter, published in 1989, contained an article by Cheng herself which began by acknowledging ��apprehension about the declining popularity of History in Hong Kong secondary schools��,89 and went on to expound ��a new perspective�� on history teaching, rehearsing what were by now very familiar themes for curriculum developers, if not for teachers. She called for greater use of Chinese to teach History, more attention to the teaching of skills, greater use of sources, and the teaching of local history. The newsletter itself was bilingual, and contained articles on Chinese History in Chinese, in addition to a number of articles on History�Xmost of them written by teachers, such as Jora Ma and Luther Li, or academics, such as Elizabeth Sinn, who had been or were still involved in one or other of the History subject committees.
The sort of approach that Cheng was advocating, along with Wong, Sweeting and others, corresponded to the sorts of approaches then becoming increasingly fashionable in the UK and in America. Indeed, just as Wong had acknowledged his debt of ��inspiration�� to the UK examination boards and to the article by Henry, so Cheng included in her ��History Newsletter�� a reprint of an article by Mildred Alpern, a New York school teacher, outlining ways to ��develop your own tests in world history.��90 Condemning traditional testing techniques as ��exercises in banality��, the article went on to demonstrate how to set DBQs, giving elaborate examples. Like Sweeting��s 1974 ESAC pamphlet, and similarly inspired by overseas practice, the ��History Newsletter�� was thus a tract aimed at bringing the gospel of ��new�� history to the shores of Hong Kong. The difference between 1974 and 1989, however, was that by the latter date imminent changes to the assessment techniques adopted for public examinations appeared to offer some prospect that this preaching might finally have a significant impact on classroom practice.91
THE MONITORING OF TEACHING MATERIALS
One of the main concerns of Education Ministries in countries or regions such as mainland China, Taiwan and Japan has been the production of standardized school textbooks.92 In Hong Kong, by contrast, the Education Department (ED) has not assumed the role of commissioning textbooks for use in schools.93 In theory, the ED has long possessed sweeping powers entitling it to vet all materials used in local schools�Xpowers enshrined in ordinances dating back to the politically turbulent 1950s, when the Syllabuses and Textbooks Committee (the predecessor of the Advisory Inspectorate) was first established. In practice, however, it has confined itself to issuing lists of ��recommended textbooks��, from which most schools choose their main textbooks. Publishers have therefore seen it as imperative to ensure that their books appear on these lists.
When they were drafting the new HKCE syllabus in the early 1980s, one factor that the CDC History Subject Committee considered was the amount of time that publishers would require in order to produce textbooks. In 1980, D.C.Lam suggested that the implementation of the proposed new Form I�VV syllabus (i.e. the date of the first examinations under the new syllabus) be postponed to 1987 ��to give publishers more time to prepare textbooks.�� Implementation was in fact subsequently postponed to 1988,94 ��as a result of the time the CDC has taken to write the teaching syllabus.��95 Nonetheless, the process of production and review of textbooks was typically rather rushed.96 Lee Chi-hung later described what has been the long-standing procedure for reviewing textbooks:
��When we have a new syllabus, we will convene a publishers�� meeting to explain to them the spirit or the main idea behind our new syllabus. They will have 18 months to prepare their first submission,97 and altogether they will have to submit three copies�Xone colour copy to the officer in the Education Department, then two photocopies to be read or reviewed by the teacher members of the textbook committee. After this exercise we would collect feedback from the ��outside members��, we call them�X sometimes they aren��t teachers, they could be university lec-turers or members of the Institute of Education [or, in the 1980s, the colleges of education]. When all these are collected, we will hold a meeting with the publishers to share the feedback with them. Then we suggest to them to make further amendments, and then they have another three months to make changes before their second submission. Then the officer in the ED will review it a second time and decide whether it should be put on the recommended textbook list.��98
Commenting in 1997 on the operation of this system, Julian Leung�Xby then head of the Curriculum Development Institute (CDI), but during the 1980s a teacher educator and textbook author�Xreflected on its various drawbacks:
��Unfortunately, [the external reviewers] are not paid for the job, so they usually just glance through the textbooks, and spot several mistakes. �KIt is mainly our officers who seriously look at the textbooks page by page, line by line. To some extent, we always grumble and complain that we have been abused by the publishers. They just submit very lousy drafts, full of typos which could have been corrected. So they use us as free labour to do proof-reading. Of course, we can classify the book as ��B�� to punish them, but we have been quite lenient on this issue. I think the present system is not working well because of these constraints. Firstly, we have just one or two officers reading not just one book but all the books within a very short period of time�Xand this process happens four times a year. So our officers are always working under great stress, burning their midnight oil, rushing for the deadline for returning the books to the publishers�K. I have written textbooks as well, and I also experienced this kind of short notice�Xshort time-span for writing the book.��99
The rationale behind this was, in Leung��s words, ��fairness��, since the government was ��very sensitive that if information about the change is leaked to certain publishers or the agents of the publishers, then that publisher would take earlier action in preparing the book��. The syllabus drafting process was thus shrouded in secrecy; as far as the publishers were concerned, it was ��a black box��. In this respect, the situation which obtained during the 1980s and 1990s differed greatly from that of the 1960s and 1970s, when the syllabus drafters and textbook writers, such as the two Stokes or Alberto Morales, were often the same people. As was noted in the previous chapter, Morales was able to make very considerable amounts of money from his textbooks. However, the late 1970s saw a series of corruption scandals in Hong Kong, which led to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The new sensitivity to corruption, and the bad publicity which it could bring to a colonial government of weak legitimacy, may have played a part in prompting the abandonment of some of the cosily informal practices which had previously typified the educational policy-making process. Acutely conscious of the opportunities for corruption�Xthe curricular equivalent of ��insider trading���Xthat the close involvement of publishers in the syllabus-drafting process might create, the Education Department took strict measures to ensure that publishers were kept equally ignorant of syllabus changes until the latter stages of the drafting process.100 This may have reduced the opportunities for committee members to profit personally from their inside knowledge, though Kwok Siu-tong did write a set of textbooks for the new HKCE syllabus. However, the secrecy in which curriculum developers were obliged to work did not make it any easier for them to ensure that their vision of how history should be taught was reflected in the teaching materials used in History classrooms.
In the event, the advent of the new HKCE syllabus witnessed the arrival on the market of new textbooks that sought to challenge the dominance of Macmillan��s ��East Meets West�� series, written by Alberto Morales. The most successful of these was Nelson Y.Y.Kan��s ��Journey through History�� series, published by Aristo, a local educational publisher. Kan��s books were essentially ��Morales lite��, in that they followed basically the same narrative framework as the Macmillan books, but used far simpler language.101 They were designed to cater for the examination needs of students whose command of the English language was far from secure, providing them with gobbets of information and received interpretation that could be easily memorised and regurgitated. The popularity of the Kan books in schools showed that an emphasis on communicating simple ��facts��, at the expense of promoting a ��skills��-based approach, was good for business even if it was bad for education. Market pressures also seem to have prompted Morales to simplify his textbooks, though not to the extent of his Aristo rival.102 Neither the Macmillan nor the Aristo books deviated in any way from the outline provided in the 1983 syllabus, or attempted to confront students with problems of evidence or with conflicting interpretations of the same event or issue. A prime candidate for such treatment was the provocative and controversial topic of the Opium Wars, but here the approach remained as timidly pro-British as it had been in the 1970s. This, for example, is Kan��s verdict on the causes of ��The Second Anglo-Chinese War��:
��It has been said that the Second Anglo-Chinese War was still brought about by opium since a war with China would make it easier to sell more. This argument might have an element of truth. However, it seems that the war was caused more by the failure of China to carry out her treaty obligations and less by the question of opium.��103
The system for reviewing textbooks to ensure that they reflected the aims of the syllabus was thus even more ��disarticulated��104 than were the mechanisms for co-ordinating syllabus and assessment reform. Meanwhile, the examination-oriented workbooks that increasingly proliferated in Hong Kong, and which were widely used by teachers as sources of supplementary exercises for their students, were subject to no official control at all. In March 1987, the Advisory Inspectorate, concerned at the setting of excessive amounts of ��mechanical and meaningless�� homework by many teachers, produced a ��Discussion Paper on the Use of Workbooks in Schools��. This called on the members of the various CDC subject committees to provide ��guidance�� for publishers and teachers on the appropriate production and use of workbooks. The following year, the History Subject Committee approved a set of ��Suggested Guidelines for History Teachers in Setting Exercises for Pupils��, encouraging teachers to be more creative, reflective and imaginative in their setting of exercises, with the aim of developing the same qualities in their students. Exhortation was thus the main recourse of the ED as it sought to influence the nature of workbooks and the way these were used by teachers and students. However, their knowledge of the way in which History was being taught in schools made curriculum developers increasingly aware that exhortation was proving ineffective.
CONCERNS OVER LANGUAGE, AND THE INTRODUCTION OF DATA-BASED QUESTIONS (DBQs)
Official perceptions of a steady decline in candidates�� standard of English following the broadening of access to senior secondary education was a key factor spurring the drive to reform the assessment practices adopted for public examinations. In the History Newsletter of 1989, Jane Cheng observed that
��The general decline in pupils�� language ability constitutes a major concern amongst teachers. History teachers, in particular, find this vexatious because while having to draw on historical terms which pupils may not be familiar with, they also need to convey ideas and explanations to pupils in a language which they find difficult to comprehend because of their inadequate exposure to the language in their daily experience.��105
D.C.Lam took the view that ��teaching in Chinese makes it far easier to impart [critical and analytical] skills,��106 but the medium of instruction problem remained intractable, as schools found that they could not switch from English to Chinese without deterring applications from academically more able students (see Chapter 2). Meanwhile, examination reports reflected a growing exasperation with the poor standard of candidate��s English; this, from the 1989 A�� level report, was typical:
��Too many candidates were handicapped by an inability to get their ideas across to the examiners. In general, the standard of written English was appalling and this certainly affected performance irrespective of the efforts spent in preparing for the examination.��107
The poor standard of students�� English was seen as a major factor contributing to their inability to cope with essay-type questions, the answers to which, complained Patrick Wong in 1987, ��often degenerated into rote-learning of facts or model answers prepared in advance.��108 The following year, the London examiner noted in his A�� level Comparability Study that, while many problems, such as an over-reliance on narrative, were common to students in both Hong Kong and England, ��Hong Kong candidates, particularly in the lower ability ranges, clearly find the writing of timed essays in fluent English very difficult��. He suggested that the introduction of DBQs would enable ��a wider range of skills to be tested and to be tested more specifically��.109 Wong was already thinking along precisely these lines. He had told the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) that the introduction of DBQs
��would focus on training and testing pupils�� ability to analyse historical
evidence and [to think logically], and�Kwould help to increase pupils��
interest in the subject.��110
There were those who felt that responding to the problem of declining English standards in this way amounted to a ��dumbing down�� of the examinations to cater for sub-standard candidates. Woo Ho-wai, though he did not disagree with the philosophy behind DBQs, nonetheless felt that the reduction in the number of essay questions expected of HKCE candidates, from four in the 1960s to two in 1988, then to one under Wong��s latest proposal, had gone too far: ��For God��s sake!�� he exclaimed. ��They spend two years studying History, and then they have to answer only one essay question!��111 However, Woo was in the minority, and most committee members accepted Wong��s argument that DBQs would ��have a desirable and healthy influence on both the teaching and learning of the subject�� and at the same time would help to boost History��s flagging popularity.112
Others, such as Kwok Siu-tong and D.C.Lam, while welcoming the introduction of DBQs, were more ambivalent concerning the use of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) in the HKCE examination. Lam even claimed that he saw the introduction of DBQs as an opportunity ��to eradicate multiple choice��.113 While Wong and Sweeting both became persuaded that MCQs, if set properly, could test far more than mere memorisation, Lam, Kwok and Woo all felt that this style of questioning ��encouraged cramming.�� According to Lam,
��Multiple choice was said to be necessary because there were not enough
good markers, but I think this was just an excuse. It was just an expedient
measure, it saved manpower [and] seemed to be objective.��114
Lam and Kwok, who had been closely involved in drafting the 1983 HKCE syllabus, also objected to the HKEA��s decision to restrict MCQs to the ��common core�� of topics covered under both of the options (��A�� and ��B��) stipulated in that syllabus. This decision had been taken in 1984, when the original draft of the examination syllabus had been circulated to schools for comment, and many teachers ��expressed worries about the heavy workload involved��.115 Consequently, the School Examinations Board proposed to the HKCE History Subject Committee that the multiple choice questions be confined, at least on a trial basis, to the overlapping part of options ��A�� and ��B��. This had the unintended (from the point of view of the committee)116 effect of causing most candidates to concentrate on those topics (4�V11) that constituted the ��common core��, while neglecting the others.117 Thus, whereas those who had drafted the 1983 syllabus had hoped that it would ��broaden�� the range of themes and topics that were studied, the way in which the examination was set had the opposite effect of narrowing the scope of the content studied by most candidates.
Meanwhile, Patrick Wong faced continued pressure from teachers to further limit the range of examinable content and make the questions more straightforward. These pressures were alluded to by Anthony Sweeting in a memorandum he sent to Wong early in 1989, in which he commented on the set of sample DBQs that had been prepared for the purpose of introducing this new style of assessment to local teachers:
��In its utilization of a range of evidence, I thought the sample was exemplary. My only reservation was about the level (and the number) of the questions. Because there were so many ��small�� questions, none was very taxing and all required a relatively low level of thinking. Personally, I��d prefer at least one of the sub-questions to be more demanding, to call for a higher level of thinking and, consequently, to be accorded more marks�K. A realistic counter-argument focussing on tactics, however, is that your (��our��) version is not likely to scare anyone��118
To a greater extent than the CDC committees, Wong and his associates at the HKEA were obliged to ensure that any innovation they attempted was both understood and supported by the majority of local teachers. This involved the HKEA committees in compromises between the often conflicting demands of academics, officials, and schoolteachers, and meant that they were forced to consider not simply what was desirable in terms of teaching practice, but what was possible in the context of Hong Kong��s schools. Inevitably, the issue of medium of instruction was central to all such considerations.
CONCLUSION
In the previous chapter it was noted that, in practice, the approach to the teaching and learning of History and Chinese History was more similar than some of those developing the curriculum for History liked to acknowledge. In both cases, students often memorised model answers word for word, the main differences being that in the case of Chinese History they were required to memorise a greater amount of text, and were more likely to understand what they memorised. History was not an unusual subject in this respect, since memorsation of model answers was standard practice across the school curriculum. It was the developers of the History curriculum who were unusual in their determination to radically change the pedagogy of the subject and introduce a new emphasis on skills rather than on content�Xnot merely in terms of syllabus rhetoric, but through reform of the methods of assessment used for public examinations.
Informing these efforts, particularly by the late 1980s, was an increasingly acute sense of the crisis confronting their subject. The promotion of a more activities-oriented approach, of which the move to introduce DBQs was the most ambitious example, and the renewed push for the teaching of local history, were both part of an attempt to revive interest in History by emphasising its relevance and utility. Elizabeth Sinn remembered an early discussion she had with Jane Cheng concerning the local history project:
��A point Jane and I used to talk about is that History is so difficult and the students find it so boring, and the teachers actually kill the subject. So we thought of bringing Hong Kong history into the syllabus as a way of saving History�K We were hoping that by teaching Hong Kong history�X by teaching students something that is part of their life, something that they could relate to, and think that they can have fun by doing activities, or activity-based learning, that they could actually find it interesting.��119
In England, early moves to re-invent History as a skills-oriented subject originated with initiatives by teachers themselves, albeit sometimes sponsored by agencies or departments of the government.120 In Hong Kong, by contrast, these innovations were led primarily by the members of official committees and, in particular, by the committees of the Examinations Authority. Patrick Wong, for example, returned from England convinced of the utility of DBQs, and then sought, with the assistance of Anthony Sweeting, Jane Cheng, and other academic or teacher members of the various committees, to persuade teachers at large of the benefits of this new style of assessment. However, while much of their inspiration came from overseas, those individuals who were responsible for promoting DBQs and local history believed passionately that these changes were worthwhile in their own right, rather than seeing them simply as a means of preserving History as a school subject. These reforms were aimed at promoting the sorts of approaches to History teaching which curriculum developers had been advocating, with only limited effect, from at least the early 1970s. In addition, changes by the late 1980s to the political and social context in Hong Kong (see Chapter 2) meant that an increase in local content, as well as a greater emphasis on the promotion of critical thinking and values associated with democratic citizenship, were more likely to be received favourably both by the British authorities and by the local community than might have been the case fifteen or twenty years earlier.
Nevertheless, those who sought to promote curricular change of such a fundamental nature continued to face formidable obstacles. One problem was the dominance by the universities of the sixth-form curriculum, although this had been greatly eroded by the end of the decade. Another, more intractable, problem was the ��disarticulation�� of the educational policymaking bureaucracy. The division of responsibility between the CDC and the HKEA made little administrative sense, and could contribute, as it did in the case of the syllabus of 1983, to a lack of co-ordination between the drafting of official teaching syllabuses and the production of examinations. By the late 1980s, this problem was to some extent overcome by the close working relationship established between Patrick Wong at the HKEA, and Jane Cheng at the Advisory Inspectorate. The way in which Wong increasingly took the initiative in reforming the senior secondary curriculum reflected a growing belief that real pedagogical change could be more effectively pursued through reform of assessment than through the issuing of exhortatory teaching guidelines.
However, there remained other, arguably more serious, obstacles to change over which the developers of the History curriculum had little control. D.C.Lam observed that ��teaching in Hong Kong is very much text-bound, so one of the most convenient ways to bring about reform is to reform the textbooks��, but this was something which the rushed process of ED textbook vetting procedures effectively denied him and his colleagues the power to do. The more fundamental problem, which contributed greatly to problems with textbooks and with the teaching and learning process in general, arose from the continued use of English as the main medium of instruction following the transition to mass provision of secondary educa-tion. The fact that most teachers and students were compelled to teach and study in a foreign language, of which most had an imperfect command,121 was particularly critical in undermining the effectiveness with which History was taught and learnt in most schools. Any hope of attaining the ambitious teaching objectives cherished by the syllabus drafters depended on teachers and students being able to write and communicate effectively. As long as most students studied the subject through the medium of English, this was unlikely to be the case in the majority of Hong Kong��s History classrooms.




Chapter 6 Curriculum Change in a Climate of Uncertainty: 1989�V1997
INTRODUCTION
THE MID- TO LATE-1980s PERHAPS MARKED A HIGH-POINT IN TERMS OF the level of autonomy enjoyed�Xor at least exercised�Xby the developers of Hong Kong��s History curriculum. The political climate in which they operated during this period was far more relaxed and optimistic than it had earlier been or was later to become. In the previous chapter it was argued that, while this political context did not in itself determine the direction of curriculum change, it nonetheless made conditions more propitious for innovations, such as the re-introduction of local history, which earlier might have been regarded as dangerously controversial.
The political climate in Hong Kong after 1989, and particularly during the Patten Governorship between 1992 and 1997, was far more tense. Curriculum developers during these years were subject to considerable, if generally informal, pressure to play safe by refraining from any forays into controversial territory. The by now familiar problems of language, teacher professionalism and low-quality textbooks remained in any case formidable obstacles to the use of History to foster ��independence of thought��.1 However, avoidance of controversy was more fundamentally at odds with this and other stated aims of official syllabuses; it threatened to compromise the freedom of officials and educators to pursue their vision of History as a vehicle for the promotion of critical, independent thought, and the broadly liberal values that implied. The present chapter, while analysing the continuing interplay of factors such as language of instruction, resource provision and assessment reform, therefore focuses primarily on the impact of political tensions on curriculum development in the uncertain atmosphere of pre-handover Hong Kong.
The role of political considerations in curriculum development was more obvious during this period than it had been at any time in the previous thirty years�Xparticularly in relation to the moves to re-introduce local history as an integral component of History syllabuses. In developing this local history content, syllabus drafters had to decide what vision of the Hong Kong past they would present to students. Would they offer an elitist vision, focusing on the policies of the government and the business establishment, and their ��benevolent�� role in bringing prosperity and progress to the territory? Would they highlight the ��colonial��, sometimes racist and inegalitarian nature of British rule, adopt a more ��pro-British�� stance, or simply downplay British involvement in the development of Hong Kong? Would they focus more on ��grassroots�� history, adopting the perspective of working-class Hongkongers, and examining their stories of flight from the mainland, sweat-shop labour, poverty in the shanty-towns, and the gradual emergence of a distinctive local identity? Above all, perhaps, how would they deal with the issue of Hong Kong��s relationship with the Chinese mainland? Would the curriculum encourage students to explore the history of the deeply ambivalent Hong Kong-mainland relationship, and to study this in a manner consistent with the ��critical�� spirit that the History subject was supposed to foster? Or would the more sensitive issues be ignored or glossed over in favour of a narrative more congenial to the territory��s prospective sovereigns? In short, whose vision of Hong Kong��s history would the new syllabuses embody?
CURRICULUM CONTENT AND AIMS
AN OVERVIEW OF SYLLABUS CHANGES
Officially-sponsored curricular reforms during this period generally followed the trends identified in the previous chapter: syllabuses concentrated on increasingly modern periods of history, and adopted a more thoroughly global rather than a regionalised approach to world history, while an ever-greater emphasis was placed on the cultivation of critical thinking skills as one of the main aims of the subject. A CDC paper of 1989 on the ��Aims of Education in Hong Kong�� linked the cultivation of such skills with Hong Kong��s ��political circumstances��:
��With the development of democracy in Hong Kong, individuals are enjoying greater freedom, more rights, and assuming more public responsibilities than ever. All this, however, has to be supported by education which should be committed to helping our students to develop their power of analytical thinking, ability of making reasoned decisions, civic awareness and sense of civic responsibility, sensible judgement and all other associated qualities. The development of the representative Government (sic.), the drafting of the Basic Law and the final return of the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997 also demand that education in Hong Kong heighten students�� political awareness and expand their knowledge of China.��2
This was the most explicit official acknowledgement yet of the role of education in Hong Kong��s democratic development. It was accompanied by references to the ��cosmopolitan�� nature of local culture, and the importance of cultivating ��tolerance towards people of other races and beliefs�� along with a consciousness of ��world citizenship and international interdependence��.3 Coming as it did at a time when Hong Kong was still traumatised by the events of June 4, 1989, this official affirmation of the ��democratic�� direction of the territory��s political evolution also reflected government concerns to promote a ��business as usual�� atmosphere, and bolster shaky confidence in the possibility of a smooth transition to Chinese rule. Seen in this light, the references to the need to ��heighten students�� political awareness and expand their knowledge of China�� assume a particular significance.
At senior levels, History syllabuses during this period continued to emphasise political history, although the new junior syllabus included more social, economic and cultural history. There was also a growing enthusiasm among curriculum developers for the reintroduction of local history at all levels. These reforms were influenced by international trends in history teaching, but they also reflected the increasingly liberal, middle-class values of Hong Kong society,4 particularly with regard to the enthusiasm for local content and the emphasis on the role of History in training students to think independently. However, the promotion of local history highlighted the anomalous nature of the relationship between History and the separate subject of Chinese History. In addition, the selection of topics to be covered in local history illustrated the way in which, despite their advocacy of critical thinking, curriculum developers seem to have been deterred by political considerations from including in official syllabuses those issues in Hong Kong��s past which were most controversial, and therefore most likely to stimulate the exercise of critical thought.
THE JUNIOR SECONDARY SYLLABUS
The main change in the junior syllabus during this period concerns the reintroduction of local history. As noted in the previous chapter, this move was envisaged as part of an attempt to revitalise the teaching of history in the junior forms, at a time when the popularity of the subject was perceived to be in decline.5 In September 1989, a working party was formed to prepare curriculum packages for use in a local history pilot project.6 This project involved 15 schools, and began in Form 1 in the autumn of 1990, progressing to Forms 2 and 3 in the following two years. In May 1993, an evaluation seminar held by the CDC witnessed largely favourable responses from the participating schools, and later that year work began on a revision of the entire junior form syllabus.7 This new syllabus, incorporating local history, was endorsed late in 1995, and its implementation was scheduled for 1998.
The Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) of 1995 emphasised the need for a global perspective. It also stressed the importance of making the subject relevant to students�� needs and interests, stating that one of its main aims was ��to help pupils understand the present in the context of the past��.8 Pupils�� minds were to be trained by ��introducing them to distinctive skills employed by historians��, but content was still to be presented according to a broadly chronological framework. The acquisition of ��knowledge and understanding of their own community and culture, as well as other major cultures of the world�� was identified as a central aim, as was the preparation of pupils ��for adult life and citizenship��.9
The nature of the local history content included in the syllabus, and the process by which the syllabus itself was devised, are examined in greater depth below. Local history was not the only novel element of the new junior syllabus, though it was perhaps the most significant and certainly the most controversial. The syllabus was more detailed than its predecessors, and was designed to be more teacher-friendly. A summary of the topics to be covered was provided in tabular form, and teaching points and ��key concepts�� were enumerated. This style of presentation, and in particular the stage-by-stage elaboration of learning objectives, showed the influence on syllabus drafters of the practice of defining specific learning objectives for particular ��key stages�� in England��s National Curriculum History Syllabus, to which reference had been made during the drafting process.10 Hong Kong��s new junior syllabus began with an ��Introduction to Historical Study�� which sought to give students some idea of the nature of the subject. Key concepts to be taught included ��Time, Evidence, Cause and Effect, and Change and Continuity��, as well as the nature of primary sources and secondary sources. One of the teaching points listed was the question ��Why do we study history?��, to which the following answers were suggested:
a)
to understand the present in the context of the past

b)
to cultivate a sense of cultural identity

c)
to develop the skills employed by historians11


This was the only place in the syllabus where any relationship between history and identity was acknowledged. Significantly, the concept of ��identity�� was qualified by the term ��cultural��. As noted in earlier chapters, the promotion of ��cultural�� identity had traditionally been seen by ED officials and by elements within the local Chinese elite as a safer alternative to engagement with the sensitive question of Hong Kong people��s political identity.
Much of the remaining content was similar to that of the existing junior syllabus. However, the themes were generally somewhat broader, and for some topics ��core�� and ��extended�� modules were specified. In Form 1, for example, the topic on ancient civilisations began with a broad survey of what were identified as the four main centres of ancient civilization (China, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley), before giving students the option of studying either Ancient Greece, or Ancient Rome, or both, in greater depth. The term ��colonialism��, formerly largely taboo, made its appearance in the Form 2 topic on ��East-West encounters��, under the heading of ��effects of western expansion to Asia��, and ��reform and revolution�� were identified as the ��responses of Asian countries to western penetration��. The emphasis of the syllabus was far more on modern history than had previously been the case, and the entire syllabus for Form 3 was devoted to the twentieth century. The Form 3 syllabus was thus similar in its coverage to the new syllabus then under consideration for Forms 4 and 5 (see Chapter 7). Finally, at the end of Form 3, it was suggested that students be required to undertake ��mini-research on an aspect of twentieth century history�� in order to provide them with an opportunity ��to integrate the skills they have acquired in history study��.12
The 1995 junior syllabus was thus more thoroughly global, contemporary, thematic and skills-oriented in its content and approach than any previous History syllabus for this level. The inclusion of local history was also designed to boost the relevance and importance of the subject. However, curriculum developers remained unable to resolve the anomalies inherent in the separation between the two history subjects. Therefore, while acknowledging the role of history in cultivating ��a sense of cultural identity��, they were forced to implicitly acknowledge that this was not a role which their own subject existed to fulfil. ��Cultural identity�� was a commodity which it had always been the function of Chinese History to purvey, and the teachers of that subject, backed by elements of the local media, were highly sensitive to any hint of an encroachment by the History curriculum onto their turf.13 The fact that the new junior syllabus required students to study ancient civilizations primarily through the examples of Greece and Rome rather than of China was due not to the Euro-centrism of the syllabus drafters, but to the need to ensure that Chinese content be limited to avoid too much of an overlap with Chinese History.14 When the history of China was covered, it was in general with reference mainly to China��s relations with foreign powers. The modules on Hong Kong history thus occupied an incongruous position in the new syllabus: the history of what was about to become a Special Administrative Region of the People��s Republic of China was to be studied largely in isolation from that of the mainland and ��motherland�� whose upheavals had always critically influenced its development.
THE HKCE SYLLABUS (FORMS 4�V5)
The HKCE syllabus for History during these years was in a state of almost constant flux. The reasons for this related mainly to the continuing difficulties presented by candidates�� problems with the English language, teachers�� complaints about the length of the syllabus, and persistent concerns about declining candidatures. As was discussed in the previous chapter, the introduction of data-based questions, scheduled for 1993, had been conceived partly as a means of testing ��skills�� in such a way as to minimise the strain on students�� limited linguistic abilities in English. However, though the introduction of DBQs went ahead in 1993, in the same year it was decided that revisions to syllabus content would also be required.15 The process by which this and subsequent decisions were arrived at is examined in the second section of this chapter. The focus here is on the nature of the syllabus changes themselves.
The changes finally agreed upon in 1994 were of an ��interim�� nature, ��aimed at providing immediate redress to an urgent problem��,16 namely that of an excessive (in the view of most teachers) volume of content, and did not involve any rewriting of the existing syllabus, since this would have been a longer process, necessitating the publication of new textbooks.17 Instead, the joint CDC-HKEA Working Group that considered the matter decided to reorganise the current syllabus into ��compulsory�� and ��optional�� topics. DBQs and MCQs would then be set only on the ��compulsory�� topics, which, in order to ��enhance the relevance and appeal of the subject��, would consist of those that concerned the more recent period. The weighting of DBQs would also be increased from 30% to 40% of the subject mark, and that of MCQs correspondingly decreased from 40% to 30%.18 This decision testified to curriculum developers�� growing faith in DBQs as a method of fostering and testing historical ��skills��, but it was a compromise measure which failed to satisfy ED inspectors, who had become convinced that MCQs were having a detrimental effect on teaching and learning.19 Essay questions would continue to be set on ��compulsory�� and ��optional�� topics alike. Other changes which the Working Group was invited to consider were the inclusion of local history in the syllabus, a greater balance between Asian and European content, and a reduction in the emphasis placed on political developments at the expense of social, economic and cultural history. However, such alterations, aimed at bringing the HKCE syllabus more into line with current developments in the junior and sixth-form curricula, would have constituted a ��fundamental�� revision, and were therefore temporarily deferred.20
Those topics designated ��compulsory�� by the Working Group were topic 5 and topics 8�V14 (see previous chapter). Topic 5 concerned ��The rise of nation-states in Europe��, one of the most popular topics with teachers and with examination candidates. By contrast, topic 6, on ��the development of parliamentary government in Britain��, had been one of the least popular topics in the syllabus.21 The choice of ��compulsory�� topics had the effect of increasing the emphasis placed on the theme of nationalism in Europe and in China, while decreasing the amount of attention devoted to the development of representative government and to the sensitive but, with the approach of Hong Kong��s retrocession, highly relevant issue of early Anglo-Chinese relations. There is no evidence that, in this case, the choice was dictated by political considerations, although objections were raised in both CDC and HKEA committees to the effect that the exclusion from the ��compulsory�� list of topics on representative government and ��the opening of China and Japan�� might ��in the present political climate, be subject to misleading interpretations��.22
In the HKCE Subject Committee, Patrick Wong countered criticisms of the restructuring exercise by once again taking the radical line that choice of content was largely irrelevant to the main aims of the subject:
��If it is accepted that the acquisition of skills is more important than the
amassing of historical facts, then students would have little to lose if they
skipped some or even all of the optional topics.��23
However, Wong��s position on the primacy of ��skills�� was somewhat more extreme than the general view of members of the various curriculum or examination committees.24 While all agreed on the central importance of ��skills��, the arrangement and selection of content was seen as crucial not only to the perceived popularity and relevance of the subject, but also to its use for the promotion of certain civic values. This viewpoint had been evident in the 1983 syllabus, with its content organised around themes related to democracy, liberalism and nationalism. It was articulated explicitly in early arguments for the reintroduction of Hong Kong history, which emphasised the role this would play in developing students�� sense of identity, and in fostering in them a sense of citizenship that was historically grounded and critically aware. Moreover, it was apparent in the growing calls for a syllabus that was more modern in content, more thematic in its organisation, and which emphasised the links between local, national and global history.
This, broadly speaking, was the philosophy that informed the drafting of an entirely new syllabus for HKCE History (see Chapter 7); a process which began in 1995 after the publication of the new junior syllabus. The new HKCE syllabus would, it was hoped, bring the teaching of History in Forms 4 and 5 into closer co-ordination with the new curriculum both at junior and sixth form levels. Like the other History syllabuses drafted during the 1990s, the prospective syllabus for Forms 4 and 5 would have a more modern focus and include local history, while adopting a more thoroughly thematic and global approach than its predecessors.
THE NEW SIXTH-FORM SYLLABUS (A/AS LEVEL) OF 1991/92 (FIRST EXAMINED IN 1994)
The ��interim�� change to the HKCE syllabus for 1997 was similar to that made to the A�� level examination syllabus for 1991 (see previous chapter), in that both involved changes to the rubric of an existing syllabus, with the objective of reducing the scope of the content that teachers and students were required to cover. In both cases, this also meant in practice that the chronological focus of the syllabuses became more modern, and that options on remoter periods, and on less popular topics such as South-East Asian, American or British history, were sidelined. As was discussed in Chapter 5, this relatively minor alteration to the A�� level syllabus was the prelude to a more major revision occasioned by the government��s decision in the late 1980s to implement the recommendations of ECR 2.
This report, and the subsequent Report of the Working Group on Sixth Form Education (1989),25 called for a common point of entry for all local tertiary institutions, which was, controversially, located at the end of Form 7 rather than Form 6 (see Chapter 2). The changes would necessarily involve the abolition of the Higher level examination, taken by Form 6 students applying for admission to CUHK. Both reports called for the introduction of a new category of sixth-form course, which would be worth half of an A�� level and would require approximately half of the time and effort demanded by the latter. The introduction of such an ��AS level�� for History was taken by the two Sixth-form Subject Committees (CDC and HKEA) as an opportunity for a radical revision of the entire sixth-form History curriculum. This was the intention behind the guidelines agreed for the Joint Working Group of the CDC and HKEA committees at the first meeting of the HKEA Sixth Form History Subject Committee (1989�V90). It was decided that, in order to make the task of setting and marking the examinations easier, and ��to ensure a comparable grading system for the AS and AL��, the AS paper should be a subset of the AL paper�Xin other words, the two AS options would, taken together, constitute the A�� level.26 It was also decided that ��content coverage should be streamlined by deleting sections for which there has been a low level of demand from schools���Xmeaning the sections on early-modern Asian and European history.27 ��The possibility�Kof incorporating US History into Western History, in the same way as British History was ��absorbed�� into European History�� would also be considered. The guidelines went on to stipulate the inclusion of an option on local history in the new syllabus, a move which had been under discussion at least since 1986.28
The new AS and A�� level syllabuses were published by the CDC in 1991 and 1992 respectively, the drafting process being somewhat rushed due to the need to follow the government��s schedule for the reform of the whole sixth-form curriculum. However, since the new History syllabuses incorporated changes that had been under consideration by members of the A�� level History Subject Committee since the mid-1980s, the syllabus drafters were already fairly well prepared. The guidelines cited above reflected the consensus that had emerged amongst members of the committee over several years.
Both of the new AS level syllabuses, which in combination made up the A�� level syllabus, were considerably streamlined. Each covered the period ��circa 1800�V1980��, and the unpopular papers on the earlier periods were finally deleted. In other respects the two syllabuses, on ��Western�� and ��Asian�� history, differed considerably. That for ��Western History�� was organised thematically as follows:
AS/AL Syllabus A: Modern Western History Circa 1800�V1980
��
The development and growth of liberalism and nationalism

��
The quest for international harmony and co-operation

��
Major threats to peace and democracy

��
Economic, social and cultural developments


The first two sub-topics listed under the first theme were ��The United States�� democratic experience�� and ��Liberalism in Britain��, but the main focus of the syllabus was on continental European history. ��Colonialism and imperialism�� was another sub-topic, though interestingly this was related to ��liberalism and nationalism�� rather than to ��economic, social and cultural developments��. ��The ending of European colonial empires after World War II�� was seen as part of ��the quest for international harmony and cooperation��, and the ��explanatory notes�� suggested that ��the making of the Commonwealth�� should also be covered under this topic. Hong Kong at this stage was of course still part of the Commonwealth, but the brief mention that this body rated in the new syllabus contrasted starkly with the presence in A�� level syllabuses prior to 1984 of a whole paper on the History of the British Empire and Commonwealth.29
Like the 1983 syllabus for Forms 4�V5, this ��Western History�� syllabus was mainly concerned with political history, and the emphasis was on the progress of liberalism, nationalism, democracy, capitalism and ��international co-operation��. Somewhat more attention was given to the controversial issue of colonialism, and the theme of ��economic, social and cultur-al developments�� added a new dimension to the syllabus, although the latter innovation apparently aroused little enthusiasm amongst teachers. Overall, the syllabus reflected similar values to those that informed the HKCE syllabus: a faith in progress, a commitment to liberal democracy, and a distaste for totalitarianism in any form.
The drafting of the syllabus for ��Asian History�� posed more problems for the Working Group. Firstly, they found it difficult to organise the content thematically, given what they saw as the varied histories of the countries or regions to be covered. They therefore maintained the sectionalisation of the syllabus by region, along with a fairly conventional chronologicial approach, even though some attempt was made to identify ��themes�� within each section:

AS/AL Syllabus B: Modern Asian History, Circa 1800�V1980
Section A: China
��
The decline of Imperial rule (1800�V1912)

��
The Republican Experience (1912�V1949)

��
Socialist revolution and modernization (1949�V1980)


Section B: Japan
��
The decline and fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1800�V1868)

��
The Meiji Restoration and modernization (1868�V1912)

��
Democracy, militarism and war (1912�V1945)

��
Postwar reconstruction and re-emergence as a world power (1945�V1980)


Section C: India
��
Background to India circa 1800

��
The consolidation of British power and the Indian response (1800�V1858)

��
The making of modern India (1858�V1947)

��
India as a nation-state (1947�V1980)


Section D: Southeast Asia
��
Background to Southeast Asia circa 1800

��
Western expansion and dominance (1800�V1914)

��
The growth of nationalism (1914�V1945)

��
The making of modern Southeast Asia (1945�V1980)


Section E: Hong Kong
��
Background and society (1800�V1841)

��
The establishment and growth of a colony (1841�V1941)

��
Hong Kong under the Japanese (1941�V1945)

��
Reconstruction and modernization (1945�V1980)30


The two Sixth-form History Subject Committees recognised their inconsistency in sectionalising Syllabus B by region, while adopting a thematic arrangement for Syllabus
A. They defended this approach by arguing that ��the countries/regions covered in Syllabus B did not have the same degree of commonality as those covered in Syllabus A with respect to their historical developments��.31 However, they went on to assert that ��teachers should be trusted to be professionally capable of working out some general themes in accordance with their students�� needs, interests and level of ability��. This declaration of faith in teachers�� professionalism contrasted with the lack of confidence in teachers�� abilities that curriculum developers frequently expressed on other occasions. Indeed, this statement was reminiscent of the approach adopted towards local history in the junior syllabuses of 1975 and 1983, when teachers were exhorted to teach it, but given no guidance as to how they might go about doing so.
The difficulties of the Working Group in conceptualising a set of ��themes�� around which the Asian history syllabus could be organised may have owed something to the traditional phobia concerning the issue of imperialism or ��colonialism��; for if any theme could have provided an organising principle for the study of modern Asian history as a whole, then ��imperialism��, and its varied political, economic, social and cultural effects, was one obvious choice. Adopting a thematic approach might have meant the loss of some sense of the variety of the experiences of different countries or peoples, but this was arguably no less the case with the ��Western History�� syllabus, which covered the history of areas as diverse as Russia, Britain, Italy and the Ottoman Empire from the perspective of the spread of liberalism, nationalism and democracy. ��Colonialism��, ��imperialism�� and ��decolonisation�� also found a place within the thematic structure of the syllabus on ��Western History��. In the ��Asian History�� syllabus, these themes, along with nationalism�Ximperialist, anti-imperialist or post-colonial�Xand the impact of communism or the Cold War were included to some degree within all of the separate regional sections. The maintenance of a section-alised approach to Asian history may indeed have been the result of the syllabus drafters�� perception of a greater variety in the experiences of Asian as opposed to European countries or regions. However, this perception was perhaps less a reflection of Asian reality than of their particular perspective on it.32
The new syllabus for Asian history continued the trend at A�� level of giving more and more space to the history of China. The focus here was not primarily on China��s external relations, as it was in the syllabuses for more junior levels, but on both internal developments and foreign relations. At A�� level there was therefore a steady encroachment by the History subject onto the territory of Chinese History, with the former providing far more comprehensive coverage of the modern history of China. Moreover, the choice of ��nominated topic�� for DBQs in the Asian paper�Xreform and revolution in late Qing dynasty China�Xeffectively increased the proportion of the syllabus devoted to Chinese history. This choice was itself influenced by the popularity of the section on modern China amongst teachers and examination candidates.
The reform of the entire sixth-form curriculum meant that new AS and A�� level syllabuses also had to be produced for Chinese History. The new A�� level Chinese History syllabus, which duly appeared in 1992, brought the coverage of the subject up to the year 1976.33 The content was also organised thematically, with sections on ��periods of order and disorder, their causes and effects��, administrative systems, thought and the arts, economic development, foreign relations, religion, and ��important historians�� in the classical tradition of dynastic historiography. In addition, DBQs were introduced, in a move perhaps designed to show that Chinese History, no less than History, was concerned with the cultivation of analytical skills. The impression that the introduction of DBQs served, at least initially, a largely symbolic function, is reinforced by the first examination paper set under the new syllabus. The DBQ section consisted simply of two excerpts from ��The Book of Han��, with one other brief passage, and a single question which required students to comment on the wisdom of a particular policy discussed in these texts.34 However, the main focus of the syllabus was still on the more ancient periods, and on the acts and policies of the central government. The choice of themes reflected essentially the same conservative vision of culture and history that had always characterised the Chinese History curriculum. Considerable space was given in the Chinese History syllabus to explanations of pedagogical methods or examples of implementation, but more was devoted to fairly detailed descriptions of content.
At sixth-form level there was thus, in theory and in practice, both an increasing overlap in content between the two history subjects, but also still a considerable difference in approaches to teaching and learning. So long as Chinese History remained principally concerned with ancient periods, and the transmission of received knowledge, while History adopted a very different focus and range of objectives, the two subjects might continue, at least at A�� level, to co-exist without undue friction. The introduction of DBQs in A�� level Chinese History, and the new availability of Chinese-language versions of the History A�� and AS level examinations, indicated a gradual crumbling of the rationale for maintaining the separation between the two subjects. However, it was the introduction of local history, both at A�� level and, more especially, at junior level, which more than anything else highlighted the awkwardness of the distinction between ��History�� and ��Chinese History��, and in the process placed curriculum developers in an extremely invidious political position.
LOCAL HISTORY�XCONTENT AND AIMS
The selection of local history content, and the ways in which its introduction was justified, illustrate the extent to which political considerations influenced one of the most significant curricular innovations of the 1990s. The curriculum development process itself is the subject of the following section of the present chapter. Here, the content of official syllabuses, and official statements concerning the aims of teaching local history, are analysed to determine the extent to which they were influenced by political factors.
Politics did not figure prominently in the arguments used by Jane Cheng in the 1989 History Newsletter to promote the teaching of local history.35 Cheng��s case for local history concentrated upon the opportunities which teaching it would provide for using a variety of learning and teaching strategies, such as field trips, museum visits, oral history, and the use of primary sources. This ��methodological�� argument for local history was one that Cheng consistently pressed from the late 1980s onwards. However, Sweeting has drawn attention to another set of arguments, related to ��civic, social, and, in the broadest possible sense, political factors��, which also figured in official documents promoting or justifying the inclusion of local history in the History curriculum.36
As was noted in Chapter 6, the history curriculum in Hong Kong had long been unique, in international terms, in its studied avoidance of the issue of local and national identity. This was reflected not only in the exclusion of local content from history syllabuses, but also in the existence and nature of the separate subject of Chinese History, which sought to foster in students a cultural nationalism divorced from the Hong Kong context. The reintroduction of local history seemed at first to promise an end to this traditional coyness about local identity. In 1989, Jane Cheng referred to the need to ��enforce�� students�� sense of identity as one justification for the introduction of local history.37 Two years later, the Deputy Chief Inspector (Currriculum Development), argued that:
��The introduction of local history in the secondary history curriculum comes at a time when the search for the past has grown stronger each day in Hong Kong. Such a demand for an understanding of the past, in part promoted by man��s emotional and aesthetic needs to establish a link with the past, undoubtedly establishes a greater sense of commitment and identity to the community and gives greater impetus to its future development. It is in the light of this that teachers should not perceive the inclusion of local history as a mere attempt to revitalize the learning of History. They should see the inclusion in the wider eco-nomic, social and cultural context and as a channel for the promotion of civic awareness��.38
The emphasis in this 1991 statement was thus on the importance of using local history to strengthen students�� identification with and commitment to the Hong Kong community, though it is noticeable that the reference to ��the wider economic, social and cultural context�� omits any mention of the crucial ��political�� context�Xdoubtless because any hint here at a ��political�� agenda would have set off alarm bells in various quarters, not least in Beijing. In a 1994 draft of the junior syllabus, the aim of helping ��to give students a sense of identity�� was also included in a list of syllabus objectives, though the nature�X��local�� or ��national��, ��political�� or ��cultural���Xof the ��identity�� to be fostered was not specified.39
Despite the cautious language used to promote local history, its reintroduction in the subject of ��World�� History, rather than Chinese History, prompted the pro-Beijing press to voice suspicions of a conspiracy to ��internationalise�� Hong Kong.40 Subsequently, in September 1994, a CDC document justified the inclusion of local history in terms that studiously avoided the issue of identity, while stressing the distinctiveness of the Chinese History subject:
IV. Local History and history of China
11.
Local history, which is conducive to the study of history, especially of historiography, is to be introduced into the syllabus as a core element.

12.
History of China is not to be emphasized as there is a separate subject on it. Moreover, overlapping in the two subjects is not encouraged.41


In a 1995 article supplied by the ED to a pro-Beijing newspaper, the stress was more on the methodological benefits of local history, while its social relevance was defined as an attempt to foster an implicitly uncritical ��appreciation�� of the ��achievements�� of previous generations, along with an equally uncritical Chinese patriotism:
��Since the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, local educators believe that students of Hong Kong should have a more comprehensive understanding of the history of Hong Kong and her development. On the one hand, through teaching the developmental process and factors of success of Hong Kong, teachers can help students appreciate the efforts of the predecessors and value their achievements, and thus cultivate a sense of sentiment and responsibility towards Hong Kong; on the other hand, when they realise the close linkage between Hong Kong and China in history, the students would strengthen their sense of identity with their mother country, nation and culture. These two aspects could facilitate the return of Hong Kong to China and the implementation of ��one country, two systems��.��42
By 1995, therefore, the inclusion of local history was officially being justified to the press in terms of its effectiveness in promoting not only a consciousness of local belonging but, above all, a sense of Chinese patriotism. Sweeting has suggested that the change in emphasis may have been partly due to ��the atmosphere created by confrontation between Governor Patten and authorities in PRC�� after 1992, which made many people in Hong Kong ��anxious to assert their Chinese-ness��.43 The processes by which this ��atmosphere�� influenced curriculum development and textbook production are discussed further below.
LOCAL HISTORY AT A�� LEVEL
At A�� level, the section in Syllabus B (Asian History) on the History of Hong Kong went through more alternative drafts than any other section. Anthony Sweeting was the convener of the group responsible for drafting it, with Elizabeth Sinn amongst those playing an important advisory role.44 One of the first issues they had to tackle was that of chronological scope. An early proposal for the design of this section, probably prepared by someone within the ED,45 begins in 1841 with the arrival of the British, and ends in 1984 with the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which provided for the return of Hong Kong to China.46 However, Sweeting had long advocated an approach that did not begin with British colonisation, perhaps in part because his experience in trying to promote local history in the early 1970s had made him particularly sensitive to allegations that Hong Kong history was essentially ��colonial��.47 The group agreed that 1800 would be selected as the starting date for the Hong Kong section, as it was for all the other sections of the syllabus. This move was supported by Professor Maurice Craft of HKUST in a letter to Patrick Wong, in which he also called for the coverage to end at the ��present day�� rather than 1984.48 Sweeting recalls that he too favoured this approach, but that Patrick Wong in particular was concerned that the syllabus as a whole should adopt a clear, uniform end date, since a more flexible policy would complicate the work of setting examinations.49 The end date was thus set at ��circa 1980��, bringing the chronological scope of the Hong Kong option into line with that of the rest of the syllabus, but also ensuring that all references to the ��1997 issue�� and to recent constitutional developments, which had featured in the original draft, were omitted.
In his letter, Craft also criticised the original draft of the syllabus for its emphasis on ��political and economic developments��, and called for more reference to be made to ��factory regulation, working conditions, labour relations and social welfare considerations more broadly��. The later drafts of the syllabus did have less of a political and more of a social and economic emphasis. This did not, however, necessarily imply avoidance of topics that could be seen as politically sensitive from the point of view of the Hong Kong or mainland governments. On the contrary, the final draft of the syllabus made specific reference to, for example, the 1922 Seamen��s Strike, the 1925�V26 Canton-Hong Kong General Strike and Boycott, the riots of 1948, 1956, 1966 and 1967, and the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee School dispute of 1978.50 None of these incidents, some of which involved direct confrontation between elements in the Chinese community and the colonial government, had been mentioned in the original draft of the syllabus. This had instead restricted itself to vague phrases such as ��origin of social unrest and remedial measures taken��. Indeed, the original ED draft was reminiscent of the local history syllabuses of the 1960s in its repeated references to individual colonial governors and their policies, and the way in which it implied a narrative of Hong Kong history as a happy story of economic and social progress under British tutelage.51 The far more ��daring�� outline that eventually emerged clearly reflected the influence of Sweeting, and it is possible that having a senior British academic as convener of the Hong Kong history group actually made it easier to sanction a selection of topics that only twenty years earlier would have appeared ��subversive��.
The new A�� level syllabus was required to contain ��examples of implementation�� to demonstrate to teachers how they might employ more stimulating and varied methods in their teaching. Sweeting provided an example relating to Hong Kong history, under the broad theme of ��Reconstruction and modernization (1945�V1980)��.52 The earliest syllabus draft had identified ��Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan city�� as the ��underlying theme�� of the period ��1950�V1984��, but this designation had been dropped by the Working Group, perhaps because they felt that ��cosmopolitanism�� was not in reality the most distinctive feature of this period. However, the topic chosen by Sweeting as an example of implementation was related to Hong Kong��s demographic development, and to a highly controversial aspect of it. This was ��the issue of population influx�� during the post-war period.
The principal purpose of this and other examples was to show how the official aims of the A�� level course could be realised in practice through the teaching of particular topics. These aims were, briefly, to stimulate interest in history; to equip students with a certain amount of historical knowledge; to ��enhance the understanding of history as a discipline based on the critical study of evidence��; ��to develop a range of skills which can foster critical thinking, the making of sound judgements, and effective communication��; and ��to promote�Kpersonal and social values through encouraging an awareness and appreciation of the past��.53 The objectives identified for the course on ��the issue of population influx�� closely reflected the last four of these aims, in emphasising the importance of helping students to
��1. recognise the impact of the influx of population on the reconstruction and modernisation of Hong Kong in the period specified; 2. engage in independent enquiry and employ appropriate historical information in tackling and resolving problems at stake;
3.
make critical use of sources and resources available in support of arguments and judgements;

4.
develop awareness of regional and world issues and appreciate the need for community involvement.��54


It was stressed that students should be encouraged ��to see developments in Hong Kong in the broader context of China, S.E. Asia, and the world��, and it was noted that ��the hot issue of Vietnamese Boat People�� could be alluded to in order to bring home to students the relevance and importance of the topic.55 After pointing out that ��mini-research projects�� could be set, some examples of questions that might guide students in their project work were suggested:
��1. What has brought about an acceleration of population influx since the
end of the Second World War?
2.
How far did this phenonmenon bring about demographic, social and economic changes within the territory during the period 1950�V1980?

3.
To what extent can the growth of Hong Kong in the post-war years be attributed to the influx of population?

4.
What problems have been brought about by the influx of Vietnamese refugees that took place in the late 1970s?56

5.
What plausible measures can the government adopt to resolve such problems?��57


This topic, and the above questions in particular, touched upon a number of controversial issues which could have been expected to stimulate lively classroom discussions. Nonetheless, one inconsistency in the wording of these questions betrays the effects of political caution on the syllabus drafting process. Question 4 refers to ��the influx of Vietnamese refugees��, but nowhere is the word ��refugees�� used to refer to people fleeing to Hong Kong from mainland China. In fact, the original draft produced by Sweeting had been entitled ��The Issue of Refugees��, and the term ��refugees�� had been used freely throughout. However, at some time before early October 1990, an ED official had gone through the draft systematically replacing every use of the word ��refugees�� with the word ��population�� or ��population influx��.58 This change in wording brought the syllabus into conformity with the official PRC government line that those entering Hong Kong from China could not have been ��refugees��, since Hong Kong has always been part of China, and because the term highlights the uncomfortable fact that much of Hong Kong��s population had themselves originally fled famine or persecution on the mainland.59 This alteration of terminology may appear relatively minor, and it was the only change made to the original draft. However, what was involved was a tacit denial of the fact that, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, Hong Kong had been a ��refugee�� society, and indeed cannot accurately be described otherwise than by the use of this term.60
The emphasis in the Hong Kong section of the Asian History paper was on social and economic rather than political developments, and in this respect it differed markedly from the other sections of that paper, which all focused predominantly on political developments. The decision to organise the Asian paper on a regional rather than a thematic basis enabled syllabus drafters to adopt a different emphasis in the Hong Kong section. Curriculum developers had long been dissatisfied with the general slant of History syllabuses towards political history, and saw the introduction of Hong Kong history as an opportunity to redress the balance somewhat.61 This emphasis was also related to the ��methodological�� considerations that provided much of the rationale for reintroducing local history, both at sixth form and junior level.62 However, while the concentration on social and economic development did not preclude the inclusion in the A�� level syllabus of a number of quite controversial issues, it did involve the neglect of some of the most sensitive and topical aspects of local history. For example, the nature of the British colonial presence and its role in shaping Hong Kong��s development�Xfor better or for worse�Xseems to have been consciously downplayed. Progressively fewer references were made to the British administration in each of the three successive drafts of the syllabus, until in the final version the word ��British�� (or ��Britain��) appeared only twice. In addition, the development of representative government, or the lack of it, was not specifically mentioned, despite the emphasis given to the issues of democracy and liberalism elsewhere in both the Asian and European papers. The decision to end the syllabus in 1980 made this omission almost inevitable, if also convenient for those, particularly within the ED, who tended to be anxious not to ��rock the boat��.63
It was also perhaps symbolic of the ambivalent political status of Hong Kong, past and present, that the issues of identity, nationalism and self-determination were addressed most directly in relation not to the local context, but to Europe. The first ��example of implementation�� provided in the A�� level syllabus was on the topic of ��Nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries��, which had long been a favourite with examiners, teachers and candidates.64 In an effort to relate this topic somehow to ��personal and social values��, as stipulated in the syllabus aims, the writer hit upon the objective of helping students to ��develop sensitivity towards current national issues and an awareness of one��s own national identity and the need for racial tolerance��.65 However, the only contemporary manifestations of nationalism specifically alluded to were ��current developments in the Baltics, Azerbaijan, and Germany��.66 This syllabus was being drafted at a time when a mass exodus of Hong Kong professionals seeking foreign nationality was underway, and while the government was petitioning Britain to grant full British nationality to over three million local residents. The Hong Kong community had begun to leave behind its refugee roots and to discover a sense of its own distinctive identity, just as it was preparing to be received back into the embrace of the Chinese ��motherland��.67 The move to reintroduce local history into the History syllabus was consciously associated both with the growing awareness of a local identity, and with the imminent prospect of reunification with China. Nonetheless, the possibility that the issue of identity might be complicated for many local people by multiple sources or types of identity�Xwith Hong Kong, with a cultural or racial ��Chineseness��, with political Chinese nationalism in some form, and increasingly also with another country where a potential refuge had been secured�X68 was something which it does not appear to have occurred to curriculum developers to acknowledge by inclusion in their syllabuses.
LOCAL HISTORY IN THE JUNIOR SYLLABUS
At junior level, the coverage of local history was, as at A�� level, very much from a socio-economic rather than a political perspective, but the avoidance of controversial issues of whatever kind was far more marked. Other parts of the 1995 junior syllabus dealt with the themes of nationalism, revolution, and democracy that figured so prominently in syllabuses at more senior levels. For example, in Form 2 students were to be taught about the American and French Revolutions, and in Form 3 they were expected to study the Cold War. However, whereas at A�� level the syllabus also drew attention to the impact of the Cold War and other international developments on local history, the junior syllabus made no such connections. While in other respects the junior syllabus, like other syllabuses, adopted a ��global�� approach to history, the vision put across of Hong Kong��s past was extremely parochial. Indeed, the only external influence on Hong Kong��s development that was explicitly and repeatedly acknowledged was that of mainland China.
The content of the local history sections in the 1995 syllabus was ostensibly similar to that of the package produced for the local history pilot project, though on closer inspection certain significant alterations become apparent. In Form 1, the topics for study were the pre-history of Hong Kong, the major ethnic groups and ��the great clans�� of the New Territories, rural life and the ��traditional customs and festivals of the rural community��.69 The content of the 1995 syllabus was altered in only one respect from that of the earlier local history package for Form 1: the subtopics of ��early settlers of Hong Kong�� and the ��origin of settlement��, which had appeared in the pilot project, were omitted from the syllabus.70 It is unclear exactly why this change in wording was made, but the removal of the term ��settlement�� from the syllabus avoided any implication that there might have been a time at which Hong Kong was inhabited by people who were not ethnically Chinese. The analysis in Chapter 3 of museum politics in the context of the handover to China reveals that this issue was a sensitive one, the orthodox PRC view being that Hong Kong had been ethnically as well as territorially Chinese ��from time immemorial��.71
The description of recommended content for Form 2 was also broadly similar to that of the original package, and covered the period from 1842 to 1941.72 The first subtopic was ��British administration since 1842��, which was altered from ��British administration in the early colonial period��. Indeed, the words ��colony�� or ��colonial�� were nowhere used in the syllabus to refer to Hong Kong. Students were expected to know about the institutional structure of the government during this period, but ��the role played by the Chinese�� was to be emphasised, as well as ��social conditions��, such as ��diseases and natural disasters, education, law and order, and population growth��.73 Opium was not mentioned, either as a social problem or as a major commodity in the local economy, and nor were concubinage, the ��mui tsai system��, gambling or prostitution.74 The second subtopic on local history in the 1995 syllabus concerned the ��growth of Hong Kong into an entrepot��, with reference to progress made in areas such as ��reclamation and urban development��, the ��development of transport��, and ��new industries��. However, the major focus in the Form 2 local history section was on ��the study of local history through buildings, organizations and streets��, which was a particular enthusiasm of Jane Cheng and D.C.Lam.75 In addition to her ED job, Cheng served on the Antiquities Advisory Board, which was just beginning to address the task of saving Hong Kong��s few remaining notable old buildings from the wrecker��s ball. The syllabus stressed that ��an understanding of our heritage should be developed and an awareness of protection of historical buildings should be cultivated��.
��The growth and development of Hong Kong in the twentieth century�� was the focus of the local history component for Form 3. The guidelines specified that ��the focus should be on life under the Japanese occupation, post-war development from an entrepot to an international financial centre, and relations with China��. Although the original local history package had included a sub-topic (��Part III��) entitled ��The Refugee Problem��, this did not appear in the syllabus.76 The first sub-topic in the package had been entitled ��Japanese occupation and restoration of British rule�� (my emphasis), but in the 1995 syllabus the undeniably controversial issue of the restoration of British rule was not mentioned.77 Indeed no explicit allusion whatsoever was made to the existence, let alone the nature or role, of the British presence in twentieth-century Hong Kong.78 On the other hand, an entire sub-topic was devoted to ��relations with China��.
The suggestion to include such a topic appears to have come from a teacher responding to the survey on the original local history package for Form 3. The teacher suggested the following three themes:
How China influenced Hong Kong and vice versa Hong Kong��s role in the modernization of China Hong Kong��s contribution to China79
However, when this topic was written into the syllabus, the three themes were:
Hong Kong and the 1911 Revolution China��s contribution to the development of Hong Kong
Transition to a Special Administrative Region
The emphasis in the syllabus was therefore the reverse of that in the original suggestion, with the focus plainly on China��s ��contribution�� to Hong Kong. ��Hong Kong��s role in the modernization of China�� could have been construed as encompassing political, as well as economic ��modernization���Xan issue that was particularly sensitive following the widespread local support for the 1989 student movement on the mainland. The greater specificity of the other two themes also narrowed the scope of the topic to issues that would cast a relatively positive light on Hong Kong-mainland relations. The issue of the post-1949 influx of refugees was also excluded from the syllabus definition of this topic.
The treatment of Hong Kong history in the junior syllabus of 1995 thus in certain respects inverted the approach adopted towards local history in syllabuses of the 1960s. For example, whereas the latter had begun the history of Hong Kong with the arrival of the British in 1841, in the syllabus of 1995 fully one third of the space devoted to local history concerned the pre-1841 period. The chronological scope of the Form I syllabus meant that the local history module at this level had necessarily to concentrate on the pre-colonial period. There had also since the 1960s been an upsurge in archaeological activity and research into the history and anthropology of the New Territories, and this had helped to stimulate greater local interest in this period of Hong Kong��s history, an interest shared by Jane Cheng, Anthony Sweeting and others involved in promoting the teaching of local history. The shift in chronological emphasis was therefore partly the result of a conscious attempt to challenge the earlier prejudice that Hong Kong before the arrival of the British had been nothing but a ��barren rock��.80
However, the vision of Hong Kong��s past which emerged from the syllabus as a whole was a deeply distorted one. The focus in syllabuses of the 1960s had tended to be on the acts and personalities of colonial governors and officials. By contrast, the new junior syllabus all but ignored the role of the British, focusing instead on Hong Kong��s past, present and future relationship with the Chinese motherland. In reacting so drastically against the former ��colonial�� emphasis, the drafters of the 1995 syllabus arguably not only sacrificed historical accuracy, but also undermined some of their main objectives in re-introducing local history.
Among these objectives, as listed in the new syllabus, was that of introducing students to the ��variety of perspectives (political, economic,�Ksocial, religious�K)�� from which history could be understood, so that they could appreciate how ��the past may be interpreted in different ways��.81 It has been noted above how one of the main lines of argument in favour of the reintroduction of local history was that it would help to encourage new approaches to teaching and learning, by providing more opportunities for students to engage in project work and in the critical analysis of primary sources. The drafters of the syllabus could not help but be aware of the ��variety of perspectives�� on local history, but they ignored or downplayed the most controversial�Xand arguably the most stimulating�Xissues, such as the nature of British colonialism, the role of opium in the nineteenth-century economy, the impact of the Communist-Nationalist conflict on politics and society, the influx of refugees, and the debate surrounding (as opposed to the celebration of) the 1997 retrocession. Instead, there was almost no recognition of the existence of discord or conflict at any point in local history, with the exception of the Japanese occupation, condemnation of which was entirely uncontroversial.82 In its coverage of the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries, the period of high colonialism in Hong Kong, the syllabus avoided controversy by largely resorting to history-as-heritage tourism. The Chineseness of the territory and its people was assumed to be timeless and unproblematic, and Hong Kong��s development was portrayed one-dimensionally as a happy story of progress, the product of the hard work of the local Chinese population, presided over by a benevolent (predominantly Chinese) elite, and assisted by the mainland government.
THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The foregoing discussion of syllabuses has demonstrated that a desire to avoid political controversy was evident in official definitions of curriculum content for History between 1989 and 1997, particularly as regards the issue of local history. The nature of the process by which curriculum developers came to feel obliged to steer clear of sensitive topics or themes remains to be explored. The present section therefore focuses on this process, devoting special attention to the manner in which official control or guidance of textbook publication was exercised. It should be noted that, most of the time, curriculum developers were still primarily preoccupied with more mundane issues such as the relevance and popularity of the History subject, the language problem and assessment reform. However, the political climate during this period cast a particular shadow over their work, and detracted from their efforts to deal with these ongoing problems.
THE CDI AND THE INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISM FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
The roles played during the 1980s by the CDC and HKEA committees, by universities and by teachers in the process of curriculum development were discussed at length in Chapter 5. The period from 1989 to 1997 witnessed little change in the relationships among these various committees and stakeholders. The initiative for curricular change continued to come from the ED and HKEA, and the pressure for reform tended to flow outwards from these twin bureaucratic centres. The committees of the HKEA, and the long-serving History Subject Officer, Patrick Wong, continued to exercise great influence particularly over the curriculum for senior forms. At the same time, the minutes of subject committee meetings, and responses to syllabus evaluation exercises, showed that many teachers were becoming more assertive in voicing their opinions and grievances. However, in the absence of any institutionalised professional association, the role of teachers in debate over the curriculum was still a largely reactive one, control over the agenda for reform remaining with the officials and ��their�� committees.
Institutional change did occur in 1992 when, following a recommendation of ECR 4, the new Curriculum Development Institute (CDI) was formed within the ED. Responsibility for syllabus production, curriculum reform and the vetting of textbooks passed to the new body from the Advisory Inspectorate, which was henceforth confined to its inspection role. The CDI subject officers also assumed the duties previously performed by their counterparts from the Advisory Inspectorate as secretaries to the CDC subject committees, as well as sitting on the HKCE and Sixth-form committees of the HKEA. However, while the CDI was intended to be a new kind of official educational think-tank, its creation had a limited impact on the process of curricular change.83 The system of parallel CDCHKEA subject committees remained in place, and changes to the curriculum at senior secondary and sixth-form levels continued to be considered jointly by the two institutions. Teachers�� opinions were canvassed, as they had been in the 1980s, by means of questionnaires and seminars.
The creation of the CDI marked a significant change in one respect, in that many of the posts within it came to be filled by staff seconded from local universities and schools rather than career civil servants.84 In the event, no rapid alteration in curriculum development policy ensued. In part, this may have been because much of the groundwork for the new junior syllabus, and in particular for the re-introduction of local history, had already been laid prior to the establishment of the CDI. While the local history content of the 1995 syllabus was significantly different from that of the original Advisory Inspectorate curriculum package, both syllabus and package followed a broadly similar pattern in their avoidance of controversial issues. New A�� level syllabuses for all subjects had been issued in 1991 and 1992, so there was no immediate scope for introducing further reforms of a major nature at sixth-form level. By contrast, the question of whether to change the curriculum for Forms 4 and 5 and, if so, how, was hotly debated on subject committees during the mid-1990s.85
Also important in determining the pace and nature of curriculum reform were the personalities of the various subject officers, who continued to exercise considerable control over the agendas of the subject committees. While the creation of the CDI stripped D.C.Lam and Jane Cheng of direct responsibility for curriculum development, the personal influence of Cheng in particular over the development of the local history curriculum remained considerable. Chan Nai-kwok, History Subject Officer at the CDI from 1993 to 1995, and the official principally responsible for the 1995 Secondary I�VIII syllabus, was said by several of those interviewed in the course of this research to have been especially conservative and bureaucratic,86 a trait which might help account for the caution evident in the selection of content for that syllabus. However, his successor, Lee Chihung, who as a teacher member chaired the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) at that time, defended Chan, pointing to the heavy workload with which he had had to cope.87 In addition to his responsibility for the History curriculum, Chan also served as secretary to other committees, including that which drafted the 1996 Civic Education Guidelines.
Those guidelines, with their depoliticised treatment of sensitive issues such as democracy and patriotism (see Chapter 2),88 reinforce the impression given by the 1995 Secondary I�VIII History syllabus of the way in which the political climate of the pre-handover years influenced the process of curriculum development. During the 1980s, curriculum developers had been mainly concerned with issues of pedogogy, assessment techniques, problems with language, and the ways in which these related to the perceived decline in the popularity of History in schools. They had looked to the introduction of DBQs and local history, and the encouragement of the use of Chinese as the medium of instruction, as means of reinvigorating the teaching and learning of their subject. In the years between 1989 and 1997 the same concerns continued to preoccupy curriculum planners and examiners, and they continued to pursue essentially the same strategies to deal with them. Nevertheless, as the above analysis of official syllabuses has indicated, they were more severely constrained in their pursuit of their educational objectives, particularly with respect to local history, as a consequence of the tense political atmosphere of pre-handover Hong Kong.
THE POLITICS OF LOCAL HISTORY, AND ��GUIDED SELF-CENSORSHIP��
The Form 1�V3 syllabus did not lead to any public examination, and therefore fell entirely under the remit of the ED rather than the HKEA. Given the cautious, bureaucratic culture of the ED, this fact in itself may have contributed to the greater caution apparent in the coverage of local history in the junior syllabus. Political developments in the period between 1991 and 1995, however, in particular the furore over Governor Patten��s reforms, had also created greater cause for caution. This was underlined in 1994, when the Director of Education, Dominic Wong, reacting to press comments about a textbook written by Julian Leung, attempted to impose a ��twenty year rule�� which would exclude from all history textbooks any content relating to events occurring within the previous twenty years.89 This was interpreted by the press as an attempt to keep the controversial ��Tiananmen Incident�� of 1989 out of the school curriculum. Wong��s view was rapidly disowned by Patten, but it was an illustration of the growing tendency at this time for many members of the Hong Kong establishment to attempt to second-guess the wishes of Beijing.90
What became known as the ��1997 factor�� came to exercise a strong influence over the process of drafting the local history component of the 1995 junior syllabus. However, the original decision to re-introduce local history predated the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, and was therefore conceived in a more optimistic period when Beijing��s promises of freedom and tolerance for post-1997 Hong Kong were given wider credence.91 Even after 1989, early justifications for the re-introduction of local history, while stressing methodological aims and the central objective of reviving the popularity of History as a subject, linked the move explicitly to the need to promote a sense of local identity and cultivate ��good citizenship��. Jane Cheng recalled that
��When we were considering the attitudes to cultivate, a sense of belonging, commitment, identity, appreciation of the achievements of predecessors were among the top priorities. It was because these were some of the most pressing needs of the society at the time [1989�V1992]�K. If they could appreciate the bright things of Hong Kong��s past, then they could have a greater sense of identity, and possibly a greater sense of civic responsibility�K. I had the implementation of the Civic Education Guidelines in my mind�K��92
In the aftermath of Tiananmen, therefore, it seems that the drafters of the local history package saw their purpose partly as one of building a sense of pride and confidence in Hong Kong. The package, though it was first conceived before 1989, appears to have reflected in its content the confidence-building priorities of the government and the local establishment as a whole during the post-1989 period.
The work of preparation did not begin in earnest until late 1989, and the implementation of the package in fifteen pilot schools took place between 1991 and 1993. As noted above, controversial issues were generally avoided. However, in an interview with Lee Chi-hung, D.C.Lam vehemently denied that curriculum development had at any time been subject to direct political interference:
��In the many years of my service in the ED, I have never received any instruction from my superiors concerning what history should be taught. No such thing as pressure from the central [Beijing] government, absolutely no. Even the Director of Education [in 1988], Y.T.Li, himself a history graduate, also said that I know best and I could go along with my proposals when I, for administrative reasons, consulted him for his opinions on the introduction of local history in the schools. Those who supposed we are under political pressure to do anything are revealing their sheer ignorance.��93
Lam��s statement here nevertheless does not entirely chime with his claim elsewhere (see Chapter 4) that the re-introduction of local history in the 1970s had proved impossible due to opposition from his superiors.
While there is little available documentary evidence of direct interference by senior local or mainland officials in curriculum policy matters, a lack of such interference would not exclude a more subtle role for political considerations in the syllabus drafting process. When interviewed by Lee Chi-hung, key members of the CDC Local History Working Party all denied that controversial issues had been deliberately avoided for political reasons. At the same time, they did not attempt to deny that such issues had indeed been omitted. D.C.Lam argued that this had been done for what Sweeting terms ��purely pedagogical and developmental/psychological reasons��:94
��The most important idea behind the package was the cultivation of interest. Controversies are difficult. They are beyond the comprehension of junior form students. They are not likely to create interest. Unless we can afford time for thorough treatment, controversial issues should not be taught. There would not be enough time. There are so many other aspects the package needs to deal with.��95
Rather than resorting to this somewhat unconvincing line of argument, another member of the Working Party admitted to having felt that the curriculum development process was subject to political constraints, though she implied that this was natural and unavoidable:
��I am not familiar with education theory. I also do not know very well what lower forms can or cannot comprehend. I believe that we are designing a package for the government. I think controversies may not be very suitable for a government curriculum. There might be restraints�K��96
In his study of the design of the local history package, Lee Chi-hung, who became a member of the Working Party in 1992, reflected with striking frankness on the way in which controversial issues had been systematically avoided or downplayed in the curriculum materials. Some of these issues, such as the Young Plan of 1947 for the introduction of a greater measure of representative government, or the riots of 1967, were referred to in passing, with footnotes giving brief, descriptive and uncritical explanations.97 Lee remarked that, while the Chineseness of Hong Kong was heavily emphasised, the role of the British administration was generally also viewed positively. The contributions made by particular governors, such as Hennessey and Maclehose, to the institutional and infrastructural development of Hong Kong, were acknowledged in the materials.98 Indeed, in the course of the evaluation exercise, one teacher criticised the package for Form 3 for giving an excessive amount of attention to the achievements of Lord Maclehose, the Governor during the 1970s.99 Lee argued that the attitudes of those who shaped the local history package were characterised by an aversion to controversy, a desire to avoid offending or embarrassing either the Hong Kong or mainland governments, and a generally pro-establishment mentality. The package, he commented, made ��the status quo seem like the natural order of things��.100 Its authors had all been educated at prestigious local Anglo-Chinese schools, and were from relatively privileged social backgrounds. Lee concluded that the almost invariably positive gloss they placed on the local past was at least in part due to their own socialisation into Hong Kong��s colonial elite.101
It has already been noted that the issue of ��colonialism��, or the British presence in Hong Kong, was given little attention in the junior syllabus of 1995. Alice Ho of the Advisory Inspectorate argued that this was the consequence of an unspoken consensus among the members of the Working Party that discussion of ��colonialism�� would simply be inappropriate in the political climate of the mid-1990s:
��When we were working on that [the syllabus] in 1994 and 1995, we hadn��t finished colonisation yet. So who would be the one to suggest that we put this topic in, and who would be the one to tell whether it was good or not? I don��t think they had the idea of putting colonisation in. I mean, if you use the term colonisation it��s not a very good word, in the sense that it��s a sort of conquest. When we were working on that syllabus, we were still working under the British government. We didn��t have anyone telling us not to include this sort of issue�K. But no-one said, ��Why don��t we put colonisation in?�� It��s interesting, because I didn��t think about that when I was involved in developing the local history syllabus. Because maybe everyone tried to avoid talking about it. And also what are you going to tell�Xbecause if you��re going to talk about colonisation it really goes back to the evaluation, whether it��s good or bad�K?��102
However, the threat of controversy was rather less vague than Ho implies here. It became apparent when even the original local history package, with its relatively bland content, was greeted with a chorus of criticism from the pro-Beijing press. This criticism came to centre on the fact that local history was to be taught under the umbrella of History, rather than that of Chinese History.103 Flora Kan of HKU felt that there was some substance to the allegations made in the pro-Beijing press that this represented an attempt to ��internationalise�� the approach to local history. She recalled that when, in 1994, she rejoined the Department of Curriculum Studies Department at HKU, she had argued strongly against the inclusion of Hong Kong history in the ��World History�� curriculum:
��It was a hot debate in 1994�Xwhere to put it [local history]. At that time, Julian Leung [by then head of the CDI], said there was no problem in putting Hong Kong history in World History, because Hong Kong is part of the World. But I don��t think this was the truth. I think that people in the community would think that after the handover, if Hong Kong history is put in the Chinese History curriculum, the teaching method would follow the pattern of Chinese History, with its very sinocentric tradition. But once it��s put in the World History curriculum, Hong Kong would appear in a very global perspective�K. And after 1997 they didn��t want Hong Kong history to be manipulated by the government. Putting it in World History makes it much more difficult for the government to manipulate it, because of the subject culture.��104
Chung Chi-keung, a teacher member and chairman of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), was also concerned about the implications of putting local history in the syllabus for History, rather than Chinese History. He told Chan Nai-kwok that the Chinese History Subject Committee ought to be involved along with the History Subject Committee in the preparation of the local history syllabus.105
The officials responsible for the preparation of the local history package and the later syllabus responded by insisting that the teaching of local history was important in itself, whichever ��history�� subject it became part of, and pointed to the fact that the Chinese History committees showed little enthusiasm for the topic. Alice Ho claimed that they ��did not want to take hold of that baby��.106 However, a desire to counter allegations of a conspiracy to ��internationalise�� local history would help to account for the care taken in the final syllabus to exclude most direct references to Hong Kong��s colonial, British-ruled status, while emphasising the Chineseness of local society and culture, and Hong Kong��s dependency on mainland China. One member of the Working Party that drafted the syllabus for Secondary I�VIII remembered a meeting at which the question of expanding the Form 3 topic on relations with China was discussed. The Working Party agreed to adopt the wording ��China��s contribution to Hong Kong�� in a deliberate decision to focus on the positive aspects of China��s role in local history. They were worried, he recalled, that if they hinted at any adverse effects China might have had on Hong Kong, ��it would create trouble��.107
Curriculum developers were not the only ones anxious about the possibility that coverage of controversial issues might ��create trouble��. Textbook publishers were also worried about attracting criticism on grounds of political ��incorrectness�� from the Beijing authorities or their local supporters. Their concerns gave rise to what was popularly termed the phenomenon of ��self-censorship��, which involved second-guessing the wishes of the mainland authorities when it came to the coverage of politically sensitive issues. As Steve Vines has described in some detail, the growing influence of mainland companies in Hong Kong meant that there were strong commercial pressures on local companies to conform to the Beijing line, in particular by supporting the official ��one China�� orthodoxy and an interpretation of ��one country, two systems�� which emphasised the ��one country�� side of the equation.108 Courting controversy could potentially ��create trouble�� for publishers in more immediate and obvious ways than for government bureaucrats.
��Guided self-censorship�� perhaps more accurately describes the behaviour of publishers, since they were aware of the guidelines issued by the Chinese government to their mainland counterparts concerning the ��correct�� terminology to be used when writing about Hong Kong. At Oxford University Press (OUP), a list of ��standards for Hong Kong-related expressions�� was circulated amongst junior editorial staff, who had already begun to make changes on the basis of these until senior editors discovered what was happening and told them to stop.109 Local publishers, by contrast, appear to have followed the mainland line more closely, and Lee Chi-hung expressed annoyance at the ��unnecessary changes�� many of them made to their books. One publisher, he recalls, submitted a History textbook in which all references to Hong Kong had been changed to ��Hong Kong SAR��. Lee charitably attributed this to the careless use of a computer spell-checker, but he admitted that the question of whether Hong Kong should be referred to as ever having been a ��colony�� had perplexed curriculum developers, since to do so might imply recognition of the legitimacy of the ��unequal treaties��.110 The official Chinese position, as stated in the list circulated at OUP, was that it was ��inaccurate�� to refer to Hong Kong as a ��colony��, or to say that ��Hong Kong��s return is a change of sovereign state��, since Britain had never legitimately exercised sovereignty over Hong Kong. The ��correct�� approach was to talk of ��British colonial rule over Hong Kong��. In view of this confusion, it is perhaps less surprising that curriculum developers chose to avoid the issues of colonialism or the British presence as much as possible when drafting the new junior syllabus.
The 1996 edition of the popular series of textbooks published by Aristo followed the OUP list to the letter. For example, the list stated that ��The Convention of Chuanbi��, which the British claimed as legitimising their occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841, ��does not exist in history. The British army invaded Hong Kong by force��. The reference to the Convention in the 1992 edition of Aristo��s book was accordingly removed from the 1996 edition.111 However, the book went even further in altering its coverage of sensitive events. In its account of the Opium War, ��The Opium Problem�� became first rather than third in the table of causes of the war, and a previous reference to the drug��s longstanding medicinal use in China was removed. In addition, mention was no longer made of the role of corrupt Chinese officials in the opium trade, of the practice of ��squeeze�� employed by the main Guangzhou merchants, the corruption of the Chinese courts, or the use of torture.112 The account of the Boxer Uprising was also revised in the Aristo book to give it a more nationalist, anti-foreign slant. ��Foreigners always [rather than ��usually��] abused extraterritoriality��, stated the textbook, while ��the building of churches by foreign missionaries upset local fengshui�� and thus ��brought suffering to the people��. A section on the role of ��natural disasters�� in causing the uprising was removed, adding to the impression that it was simply a reaction to foreign depredation.113
Both the Kan books and a new set of HKCE History textbooks published by ��The Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company�� (HKEP) adopted a tone of what might be described as ��moralistic Chinese nationalism��, of the sort traditionally associated more with the subject of Chinese History. For example, the HKEP book, in its discussion of the late Qing reforms, returned again and again to the theme of the government��s ��insincerity��, as in this paragraph:
��The long period set for preparing the constitution also annoyed many Chinese. They doubted the sincerity of the Manzus in making genuine reforms in China. It was clear that Cixi and the Qing court had no sincere desire for reform. This resulted in much disappointment among the Chinese.��114
Just as Cixi is here damned for ��insincerity��, so Sun Yat-sen is later praised for ��his great contributions to the revolutionary movement��.115 In addition, the conceptualisation of ��the people�� as a monolithic entity, apparent here in the references to ��the Chinese��, was typical of the treatment not only of Chinese nationalism, but of nationalism generally. The accounts of Italian and German national unification, like those of late nineteenth-century China, emphasised the way in which weak and divided nations were easy prey for foreign aggressors, and correspondingly stressed the importance of national unity and strength.116 ��Nationalism�� was portrayed in a generally positive light, as was ��strong leadership��, whether exercised by Cavour, Bismarck or Sun Yat-sen.117
Thorough vetting of commercial textbooks for subtle traces of ��self-censorship�� was beyond both the remit and the resources of the ED. However, concerned at the number of ��unnecessary changes�� being made to textbooks, not only for History, but even more in the cases of Chinese History and EPA,118 the CDI in early 1997 issued its own very brief interim list of changes, followed in February 1998 by a more definitive list.119 The purpose of these lists was to make clear to publishers what changes were considered necessary to comply with the spirit of ��one country; two systems��. The 1998 guidelines repeatedly emphasised that ��different authors can use different terminology��, but at the same time provided quite detailed descriptions of how key areas such as Taiwan��s status, or the 1971 accession of the PRC to the United Nations, should be discussed. The use of terminology was to be guided throughout, the guidelines stated, by adherence to ��the one China principle��.120 However, with respect to coverage of Taiwanese history, it was pointed out that in citing historical documents, ��naturally the language of the original document should be retained and should not be unnecessarily altered��.121 With respect to Hong Kong��s ��colonial�� status, the guidelines pointed out that Hong Kong had been removed from the United Nations�� register of colonies in 1970. Consequently, it was suggested, if authors wanted to use the term ��colony��, they could ��consider using quotation marks, italics, or providing the historical background��.122 The issue of how to describe migration from mainland China to Hong Kong, which had caused difficulties during the drafting of the sixth-form History syllabus, was also addressed. It was noted that, while the Chinese term ��yimin�� covered all types of migrant, the dictionary definition of the English term ��immigrant�� was ��a person who has come�Kinto a foreign countr��.123 To avoid implying that Hong Kong was, or had ever been ��foreign�� as far as China was concerned, it was therefore recommended that the terms ��new migrants�� or ��new arrivals�� be used, or that illegal immigrants should be described as ��illegal entrants��.124 The appropriateness of using the term ��refugee�� was nowhere discussed.
The textbooks for the new junior syllabus, which came into use from 1998 onwards, tended to follow such guidelines, like the syllabus itself, to the letter. The OUP textbook for Form 2, in its chapter on Hong Kong, stated that ��Britain occupied Hong Kong and set up a colonial government��.125 However, it did not discuss the political or social tensions to which the ��colonial�� situation gave rise, except to note that although, ��at the beginning, local people did not have many rights, later this situation gradually changed��.126 The sections of the chapter followed very closely the framework laid down in the syllabus, making little or no mention of the morally more dubious (and politically as well as culturally more sensitive) aspects of local history, such as the opium trade, gambling, the infamous ��mui tsai system��, or the role and status of women more generally. The illustrations included numerous pictures of old buildings, in accordance with the emphasis on ��heritage�� prescribed in the syllabus. While vetting the drafts of the Form 3 textbooks submitted by publishers to the CDI in 2000, Lee Chi-hung complained of the literal interpretation they tended to place on the syllabus. For example, in the original drafts, the sections on the topic of Hong Kong��s ��relations with China�� were ��a total blank�� between the dates of 1911 and 1984, since the syllabus mentioned no specific events in the intervening period. Lee claims to have told publishers to include issues such as the riots of the 1960s and the ��population influx�� in their final drafts.127
Lee��s insistence that such sensitive topics be included is perhaps indicative of the more relaxed, or at least less uncertain, political climate that has prevailed since 1997. Nonetheless, given the example set by curriculum developers earlier in the 1990s, with their studied avoidance of controversy and their concern for ��correct�� terminology and politically inoffensive interpretations of Chinese and local history, the continued adherence of publishers to the letter of the syllabus guidelines comes as no surprise.
While they felt compelled to minimise the controversy that the re-introduction of local history might arouse in the media, curriculum developers were also concerned to generate sufficient support for this move amongst History teachers to maintain the momentum for reform. The response of teacher members of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) when D.C.Lam first put forward the local history proposal was not encouraging.128 However, energetic efforts over the next few years on the part of Jane Cheng in particular, in arranging teacher seminars, producing the History Newsletters, and especially in organising the pilot project, appear to have aroused broad support for the teaching of local history. The project was highly popular with those teachers involved in it, and most opted to continue using it with their students after the completion of the piloting exercise.129
The pilot project appears to have succeeded in creating a sense among participating teachers of ownership of this initiative, particularly since the extensive evaluation exercise gave them considerable opportunities to comment upon and criticise the content and approach adopted. The local history scheme involved History teachers in consultation over curriculum reform at a far more detailed level, and in a far more prolonged and systematic way, than ever before.130 Lee Chi-hung��s enthusiasm for the scheme, as the History panel chair at one of the participating schools, led to the decision to co-opt him onto the Working Party.131 Many teachers responded with detailed comments, some reflecting familiar concerns with the difficulty level of some of the terms and language used, even though most schools chose to teach the materials through the medium of Chinese�Xsomething that the Advisory Inspectorate encouraged. Pupils were reported to be generally ��enthusiastic�� about the teaching of local history, an adjective seldom if ever used before in official documents to describe pupils�� response to any aspect of the History subject. In part the teachers attributed this to the way in which the materials allowed them to adopt a more varied and pupil-centred approach, but they also noted how certain topics, such as the Japanese occupation and the ��Refugee Problem�� generated particular interest among their students. While the dropping of the latter topic from the eventual syllabus had nothing to do with teachers�� comments, suggestions made by teachers for new topics on ��Relations with China�� and on local popular culture were taken up by the Working Party, even if, especially in the former case, the emphasis was significantly altered.132
The piloting exercise thus succeeded in strengthening the case for incorporating local history into the new History syllabus. However, the schools and teachers involved in the project were not randomly selected. They had previously been canvassed by the Advisory Inspectorate, and teacher members of the Subject Committee were among the participants. While the response of teachers at large, at seminars and in questionnaires, to the idea of reintroducing local history appeared to be generally positive, officials were also conscious of continuing scepticism among many teachers concerning the motives for pursuing such a reform at that particular time. Although this was seldom hinted at in committee minutes or official reports, it seems that many teachers, used to the apoliticism that had long characterised Hong Kong��s educational culture, regarded the introduction of local history with suspicion. Alice Ho saw this largely as a consequence of unfortunate timing:
��Many teachers thought that we were including local history because of 1997 [the new syllabus was implemented in 1998]. There was a very widespread perception that this was a political move. We had to tell them that we had already put it in place in 1994, but we had to give the publishers three years to come up with the textbooks. This to some extent undermined their belief in local history and the value of teaching it.��133
Concern about the reluctance of teachers to deal with controversial issues in the classroom thus also preoccupied those involved in promoting local history, and helps to account for the elimination of most such issues from the junior syllabus. At the same time, the obvious ��politically correctness�� of many aspects of the local history content, especially relating to ��China��s contribution to Hong Kong��, would inevitably fuel suspicions that it was after all a politically motivated innovation.
Another concern shared by many teachers related to the availability of a suitable variety of teaching materials, as well as a fear, as Alice Ho put it, that they would have to ��read a lot�� about local history to prepare to teach it.134 Here again, the pilot project had broken new ground in terms of History curriculum development in that it directly involved the ED in the preparation and publication of teaching materials. In 1995, a grant was made by the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust, a fund administered by the Antiquities Advisory Board, for the production of a second local history curriculum package designed to support implementation of the new junior syllabus. The Department of Curriculum Studies at HKU was commissioned to devise the package, and a working group was formed, consisting of several schoolteachers, with Anthony Sweeting as its co-ordinator. In a press interview, Sweeting announced that
��The material will encourage a critical approach to history. Students will have to analyse and have ideas, and to understand that history is more concerned with interpretation than description.��135
Sweeting intended the new package to adopt a more critical and even controversial perspective than the original version, and he and Lee Chihung in particular devoted much time and energy to its production.136 They managed to complete a draft of the materials for Form 1, many of which related to the sensitive issue of early Chinese settlement in the Hong Kong region, and the identity of the region��s earliest inhabitants. However, the fate of this new package reflected the manner in which the local history initiative as a whole had fallen prey to political considerations. As Lee Chihung put it in his 1996 M.Ed. dissertation,
��When preparatory work for the research was undertaken, and methodological issues were being looked into, news was received that after a meeting of the Antiquities Advisory Board in June 1996, some members, high ranking officials of the Recreation and Culture Branch included, expressed reservations at the idea of publishing a curriculum package on the history of Hong Kong, ��a sensitive topic at a sensitive time��. There is every likelihood that what was compiled would be shelved and never get published.��137
Lee��s prediction was fulfilled, for, as of July 2000, the materials for the new local history package had yet to be published.138
THE CURRICULUM FOR SECONDARY 4�V5�XASSESSMENT REFORM AND/OR SYLLABUS REVISION?
At senior secondary level, the main problems preoccupying curriculum developers during the early and mid-1990s were essentially the same as those they had faced during the 1980s. Worries about falling candidatures persisted, although History��s performance relative to other humanities subjects was by no means disastrous during the 1990s. Still of particular concern were students�� poor language standards, and the impact of these on teaching and learning. As noted in the previous chapter, the introduction of DBQs had in large part been conceived with the intention of testing analytical skills in a way that was less linguistically demanding than the traditional essay. However, during the early 1990s persistent complaints from teachers concerning the difficulty of examination papers put HKEA committees under growing pressure to further reform assessment methods. This in turn raised the problem of how any such reform could be reconciled with a concern to maintain standards. Meanwhile, the growing enthusiasm for local history among curriculum developers fuelled demands for a more thoroughgoing revision of the syllabus as a whole.
One quotation from the minutes of the 1992�V3 HKCE History Subject Committee typifies the kinds of concerns shared by many teachers regarding the syllabus in general, and the introduction of DBQs in particular:
��Complaints were made by some teacher members that there was too
much to cover under the existing syllabus, and that the inclusion of DBQs
in the examination meant an extra burden for teachers and students.��139
Patrick Wong, along with the CDI Subject Officer and one other member, argued that while such worries were ��understandable��, they arose from a mis-conception of the purpose and nature of DBQs, which ��should not constitute an extra burden because they were basically a technique of question-setting which had little to do with content��.140 Despite such pacifying remarks, there is evidence of growing dissension on the part of the teacher members of the HKCE committee at this time. In a letter of November 1991, Dr. Danny S.L.Paau of the Baptist College wrote to Lam Tin-chi (Patrick Wong��s temporary replacement at the HKEA), effectively accusing him of doctoring the minutes by failing to record the fact that the majority on the committee had considered the questions in the 1991 examination paper to be ��too difficult��.141 However, officials from the HKEA and the ED, supported by some other committee members, remained unwilling to compromise on the matter of question difficulty. As Chan Nai-kwok of the CDI put it in 1993, ��the essence of history as a discipline should not be sacrificed to make it easier for students��,142 though a more pragmatic reason for resisting pressure to ��dumb down�� the examination was the fear of jeopardising overseas recognition of the HKCE qualification. Officials pointed out that since the problem ultimately arose from the poor standard of students�� English, the solution open to teachers and schools was to switch to using Chinese as the medium of instruction.143