Nevertheless, while the proportion of schools choosing to teach History through the medium of Chinese steadily increased throughout the 1990s,144 concerns persisted about the overall size of the candidature for the subject.145 At the same CDC committee meeting at which Chan spoke out in defence of ��history as a discipline��, it was reluctantly agreed that a revision of the HKCE syllabus should be considered. Patrick Wong explained to the HKCE History Subject Committee that the issue of revision had arisen ��partly as a result of complaints made by some teachers about the length and coverage of the syllabus, and partly in view of the declining candidature for the subject��.146 A joint HKEA-CDC Working Party was set up to determine the nature of the changes to be made, and members of the two committees made a range of suggestions for the Working Party to consider.
These suggestions fell broadly into two categories: one set related to the restructuring of the existing examination syllabus; another to more wide-ranging changes to syllabus content. Something of a rift opened up between HKEA and ED officials as to whether one or both types of changes ought to be pursued. Patrick Wong, less interested than his ED counterparts in the nature of syllabus content, and perhaps more alive to the practical difficulties involved in rewriting a syllabus that had only been in use since 1988, favoured a more limited restructuring exercise, at least in the short term. He stressed that the Working Party should take care to distinguish between an ��interim�� change of this type, aimed at meeting the demand from teachers for a more manageable teaching load, and a more ��fundamental�� revision which would involve the production of new textbooks.147 In 1994, the Working Party accepted the case for an ��interim�� change, dividing the syllabus into ��compulsory�� and ��optional�� topics, the former relating to the more recent period.
This decision did not satisfy Alice Ho of the Advisory Inspectorate. She wanted the complete abolition of MCQs, arguing that they were having a deleterious effect on teaching and learning practices. As so often before in the development of the History curriculum, British precedent played an important role in shaping debate over this issue. The London vetting report on scripts from the 1993 HKCE History examination suggested that the Hong Kong paper gave too much weight to MCQs, and drew attention to the fact that the London Board had abandoned this method of questioning.148 However, when the vetting report was tabled for discussion at a meeting of the HKCE History Subject Committee, Patrick Wong began by firmly insisting that ��it would be altogether undesirable at this stage to follow the London example of abandoning MCQs altogether��. He gave four reasons for this:
a)
MCQs assess candidates�� basic knowledge and understanding of major historical events and trends, which is consistent with the syllabus aims and objectives.
b)
The MCQ paper has the advantage of ensuring that all topics in the syllabus are duly covered as an equal number of questions are set on each topic; this will discourage candidates from spotting topics/questions in their preparation for the examination.
c)
MCQs are objectively marked and produce statistical information which can help to detect problematic marking in Paper I.
d)
Such a drastic change was not contemplated by the subject committee or put forward to schools in the consultation process.149
Wong��s concern about ��question spotting�� at HKCE level, which he saw as reinforcing the practice of rote-memorisation of model examination answers, was also behind his rejection of a suggestion to nominate specific topics for the DBQ section of the paper, despite the fact that this was done at A�� level. While Wong did his best to ensure that MCQs, like DBQs, tested more than memorised ��facts��, the main reason for his attachment to their use at HKCE appears to have been administrative rather than pedagogical. The exercise of marking the HKCE examination was far larger and administratively more complex than that of marking the A�� level. Whereas at A�� level ��problematic marking�� could usually be dealt with by a phone call or a discussion at a markers�� meeting, the larger number of markers at HKCE level made this approach unworkable. The marking of the HKCE examination was also far more dependent on teacher examiners and markers, in contrast to the A�� level where the chief examiners were usually university academics. Wong��s unwillingness to delegate the job of ensuring consistency in HKCE marking, and his preference for MCQs, may have been related not only to the number of markers involved, but also partly to a lack confidence in their reliability.150 This would tally with the relatively low opinion held by many curriculum developers of the level of professionalism of many ordinary History teachers.
While also far from sanguine about the general state of History teaching in local schools, Advisory Inspectorate officials such as D.C.Lam had long felt that MCQs reinforced teaching and learning habits which were at odds with the declared aims of the History syllabuses.151 However, in matters relating purely to assessment policy, the HKEA was sovereign, and the outcome of this debate was a compromise whereby MCQs were retained, but their weighting relative to the DBQ section was reduced. Alice Ho continued to argue that a fundamental revision of the syllabus should be undertaken, involving the abolition of MCQs and the introduction of local history into the syllabus, as well as a consideration of the introduction of continuous assessment.152 While accepting continuous assessment as a ��longer-term objective��, Wong argued that in the short term such a move ��would only complicate things and affect the ��saleability�� of any proposed changes aimed at immediately addressing the problems caused by the long syllabus and the declining standard of the students��.153 In 1997, he was still maintaining that ��the feasibility of course-work assessment was still in doubt��, and that the views of teachers would need to be consulted before such a radical innovation was undertaken.154
Nevertheless, the approval of an ��interim�� revision of the syllabus was accompanied by a decision to proceed with a more ��fundamental�� reform. This was to involve consideration of the introduction of local history, as well as a shift in focus towards the twentieth century. Both of these moves were favoured by Sweeting, then a member of both the HKCE and CDC (Secondary) subject committees, and he touched upon them in a talk delivered at a workshop for teachers organised by Patrick Wong in March 1996.155 This workshop, like others organised by the HKEA and the ED, was aimed partly at encouraging teachers to reflect upon their teaching practice, and partly at soliciting their views on curriculum reform. Teachers were asked whether they supported making ��minor�� or ��major�� changes to the current ��interim�� syllabus, and most respondents called for only ��minor�� alterations. However, at the subsequent meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), Patrick Wong reported that written comments submitted with the returned questionnaires showed ��no clear line of demarcation�� between the definitions of what would constitute ��major�� or ��minor�� revisions. The Working Party on the revision of the Form 4�V5 syllabus therefore decided to put aside the issue of whether a ��major�� or ��minor�� revision should be undertaken, and ��contemplate directly a syllabus revision which it felt was appropriate��.156
THE MAKING OF THE NEW AL/AS-LEVEL CURRICULUM
By comparison with the process of curriculum development at more junior levels, the drafting of the new A/AS level syllabus, which was published before the Patten reforms raised the political temperature, appears to have been far less fraught with complications, political or otherwise. Media coverage of the changes was minimal, perhaps because the number of students taking the A/AS level was far lower than the numbers studying the HKCE or junior courses. Any blatant attempt to avoid controversial issues would in any case have been far more difficult to defend, since arguments claiming that such matters were ��too difficult�� for students to cope with would have carried far less weight if applied to sixth-form as well as Form One students. While inconsistencies in the structure and emphasis of the ��Western�� and ��Asian�� papers, and minor alterations made to the guidelines for local history, do suggest a sensitivity with regard to topics such as ��colonialism�� and the relationship of Hong Kong with China, the evidence of the syllabuses suggests that political anxieties influenced the development of the sixth-form curriculum far less than that of the later junior curriculum.
The new sixth-form syllabus was drafted in a great hurry, to a timetable determined by the government��s reform of sixth-form education as a whole. However, the changes made to the History curriculum reflected several years of debate within the HKEA over what could be done to stem the decline in candidatures for the subject, by focusing on content of more relevance to students, and by reforming assessment methods in such a way as to encourage more skills-oriented and stimulating pedagogical approaches. As noted in the previous chapter, the A�� level Subject Committee had been considering revisions involving a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, a more thematic presentation of syllabus content, the inclusion of a Hong Kong history option, and the introduction of DBQs. The new curriculum was thus essentially an HKEA product, despite the fact that the A�� level and AS level syllabuses were for the first time published, along with teaching guidelines, by the CDC.
The Working Party that drafted the new sixth-form syllabus consisted of Anthony Sweeting, Patrick Wong, Jane Cheng and two schoolteacher committee members, Chung Chi-keung and Li Ki-cheung.157 Kwok Siutong of the CUHK History Department was also a member but, according to Sweeting, who acted as convener of the Working Party, Kwok seldom turned up to meetings.158 The composition of the Working Party reflected the dramatic decline in the influence of university History departments over the sixth-form curriculum. In the consultation process which followed the completion of the initial draft of the syllabus, the History departments of both HKU and CUHK protested against the decision to place the starting date at 1800, though comments submitted by the Hong Kong Polytechnic and by Maurice Craft of the University of Science and Technology were strongly supportive.159 There was particular disquiet amongst certain members of the HKU History Department, which had previously controlled the A�� level examination, concerning the abolition of the papers on the pre-1800 period. Adam Lui of HKU, a member of the A�� level History Subject Committee during the early 1990s, and a specialist in early Qing history, made several futile attempts to persuade the committee to reintroduce questions on the early Qing period of Chinese history, on the grounds that concentrating on the post-1800 period ��would prevent the students from appreciating the successes and achievements of the early Qing rulers��.160
However, teachers had long demanded and generally welcomed the streamlining of the sixth-form syllabus, with a substantial number feeling that it did not go far enough.161 The A�� level History Subject Committee attributed this feeling partly to a misunderstanding on the part of some teachers that the AS level was intended, like the old Higher level, to be a one-year rather than a two-year course. Another request made by a number of respondents in the 1990 consultation exercise was that there should be more essay questions for candidates to choose from, but the fear of ��question spotting�� made the committee resistant to such demands. It was felt that a suitable balance had been struck that took into account the workload of students and teachers on the one hand, while on the other hand preventing ��over-specialisation��. Only one major alteration was made to the draft, and that related to the sections on ��social, cultural and economic history�� in the ��Western History�� paper. In response to comments from teachers, the proportion of the paper devoted to these themes was reduced from two-fifths to one quarter.162
Some teachers also expressed worries about the new DBQ section, requesting that students be provided with a choice of DBQs. The committee rejected this idea, on the grounds that if there were a large number of alternative DBQs, students might waste a lot of time during the examination reading through them. The decision to nominate specific topics on which DBQs would be set, which contrasted with the practice at HKCE level, was justified with reference to the limited resources available for teaching the subject:
���Kin view of the fact that there are no assigned textbooks for the subject, they [the committee] hold that a nominated topic for a DBQ will enable the candidates to have a clear and manageable focus in their preparation for the examination. It is not intended, however, that candidates should over-concentrate their efforts on the study area related to the nominated topic.��163
Nonetheless, in contrast to previous practice, advice to teachers on the implementation of the new sixth-form History syllabus went considerably further than exhortation. The reform of the entire sixth-form curriculum was accompanied by another innovation: the organisation of an ED-funded programme of in-service teacher training designed to help teachers adapt to the requirements of the new AS level courses. The Faculty of Education of HKU was commissioned to run a series of these ��AS-INSTEP�� courses, and the History course was co-ordinated between 1991 and 1997 by Anthony Sweeting, with the assistance at various times of Jane Cheng, Julian Leung, Patrick Wong, Alfred Lin, and Elizabeth Sinn. The course was aimed in particular at familiarising teachers with DBQs, and helping them to produce their own materials for teaching these. Teachers were also encouraged to experiment with a greater variety of teaching strategies, and to teach some of the new content areas in the syllabus, especially those on economic, social and cultural history, and on the history of Hong Kong.164
The introduction of DBQs and the trend towards a thematic, global approach exemplified the way in which the nature as well as the name of the new AS level qualification owed much to British influences. The decision to make the AS level a subset of the A�� level course, while doubtless linked to considerations of administrative convenience, was also justified with reference to the need to ensure overseas recognition for the new qualification. In the third History Newsletter, published in 1993, Jane Cheng referred to the stipulation contained in ECR 2 that ��Intermediate-level [the original name for the AS level courses] syllabuses should aim, as far as possible, at retaining depth rather than breadth to facilitate overseas recognition��.165 By making each of the two papers of the History A�� level into a separate AS level, the CDC/HKEA Working Group ensured that the ��depth�� of the AS levels would be precisely the same as the A�� level, and avoided creating extra work either for their own setters and markers or for the London examiners who would vet the new examination. This also meant that implementation of the new courses would be as simple as possible from the point of view of teachers and candidates.
The new sixth-form curriculum for History represented the realisation of Patrick Wong��s ambition, shared by Sweeting amongst others, of wresting the A�� level syllabus from the grasp of the HKU History Department.166 The changes made to content and assessment, together with the new provision for teacher training, seemed to hold out some hope that the new syllabus might stimulate a new approach at sixth-form level to the teaching and learning of history, which would make the subject more interesting, more useful, and more popular amongst students.
THE PROVISION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING MATERIALS
In Chapter 5 the inefficiency of the mechanisms for ensuring the quality and availability of resources for supporting curriculum implementation was discussed. During the 1990s, this remained a serious source of frustration to curriculum developers in their efforts to ensure that the teaching and learning of History conformed to the objectives they envisaged for the subject. Particularly at sixth-form level, where the new A and AS level exams were offered in Chinese as well as English versions,167 the lack of sufficient suitable reference materials in Chinese was a persistent problem. Other areas in which resource provision was recognised to be inadequate were materials for setting DBQs, and for teaching local history.
The least serious of these problems was probably the latter. Not only was there a rapidly growing supply of literature on local history in both English and Chinese by the 1990s, but the local history package and publications by publicly-funded bodies such as the Hong Kong Museum of History and the Antiquities Advisory Board made available to teachers a considerable amount of material on Hong Kong history specifically designed for use with students, particularly at junior level. The main difficulty with respect to local history materials, besides the impact of political controversy on their production, was not one of availability, but, according to curriculum developers, of teacher ignorance or apathy.168
The provision of Chinese-language teaching materials, on the other hand, was a very real and serious problem, especially at sixth-form level. In view of the relatively small market for A�� level subjects, the ED��s Chinese Textbooks Committee proposed a government-funded ��incentive award scheme�� to encourage local publishers to produce ��good quality Chinese reference books��.169 This suggestion was taken up by the CDC��s Sixth-form History Subject Committee, but apparently to little effect. Problems with the supply of Chinese-language reference books for senior level were still causing concern at the end of the decade.170
The introduction of DBQs created a demand for new English- and Chinese-medium resources for use with students from Form 4 upwards. Teachers, and their representatives on the subject committees, pressed for the provision by the ED and HKEA not only of extensive guidelines on this new assessment technique, but also of a greater number and variety of sample DBQs which they could use to train their students for the public examinations. Officials generally took the view that teachers ought to be able to prepare their own DBQs. The Chairman of the HKEA��s Sixth Form History Subject Committee even went so far as to argue that ��it was of little relevance whether resources on DBQs were available because DBQs were basically a technique of question-setting which had little to do with content��.171 However, despite a ��concern over teachers�� over-reliance on such work��, there was a recognition that teachers would need to set DBQs for school tests and examinations, and that most of the resources initially available on the market were published in Britain or America, and might not be suited to ��the needs, interests and ability�� of local pupils.172 It was therefore decided that teachers should at least be provided with opportunities for ��sharing of experience and pooling together of resources��.173
The AS-INSTEP courses at HKU and CUHK were run partly in order to provide such opportunities. There was also a programme of ��data-based resource building�� organised by the CDC committee for teachers of Forms 4 and 5.174 The main aim of these and other measures, such as the School-based curriculum projects, was not so much the production of teaching resources as the professional development of teachers. It was hoped that a more professional cadre of History teachers would eventually be able to produce more of their own teaching materials, and rely less on low quality, locally published textbooks and crammers. With this end in view, the Advisory Inspectorate and the CDI attempted to encourage teachers to share the materials they created, and examples of these and other resources were put on display at the Social Subjects Teaching Centre.175 However, as this centre was in Hung Hom (a location very inaccessible by public transport), and was open for only two hours on Saturday mornings, it was little visited. The involvement of the ED in producing, or facilitating the production of, teaching materials remained constrained by funding limitations, as well as by lack of manpower, bureaucratic obstacles and political timidity.176
CONCLUSION
By 1997, official History syllabuses for all levels of schooling espoused a set of very ambitious aims, ranging from the promotion of critical thinking, through the cultivation of a ��sense of belonging�� to the training of powers of ��responsible judgement��. Inspired by foreign examples, curriculum developers had sought to remodel syllabuses and revise assessment methods to create a course that would teach students not only to know, but also to analyse the past. Data from public examinations showed that the decline in candidatures had at least slowed, and that the curriculum changes were apparently having some impact on the way in which some students learnt History.177 However, the same data, and the evidence of textbooks, also demonstrated that a wide gulf remained between the intentions of the official syllabuses and the implementation of the curriculum in most classrooms.
A large part of the reason for this lay with the problems arising from the use of English as the predominant medium of instruction in local schools. As previous chapters have shown, these problems dated back to the shift in the 1970s from an elitist to a mass system of secondary education, and had been causing growing concern amongst educators and government officials throughout the 1980s. However, for reasons discussed in Chapter 2, policymakers restricted themselves to exhorting rather than compelling schools to switch to mother-tongue instruction, with very limited and gradual results. Those involved in the development of the History curriculum, as well as many teachers, were increasingly frustrated by the language problem, as evidence showed that it was having a highly damaging effect at all levels and on various aspects of History teaching and learning, from textbooks to teaching methods, from Form One to Form Seven. There was thus a growing consensus regarding the benefits of using Chinese to teach a subject that was so analytically and linguistically demanding.
The move to CMI for History, if and when it came, would call into question the rationale for the continued separation between History and Chinese History. Language was not the only factor here. History curriculum committees had gone to great lengths to differentiate their subject from Chinese History in terms of the importance they attached to the teaching of skills�Xto such an extent that their enthusiasm was regarded by the London examiners as somewhat excessive. However, Chinese History, which had also experienced declining candidatures and which was widely regarded as the dullest subject in the entire school curriculum, by the mid-1990s appeared to be undergoing reforms of a similar, if more limited, nature to those made to the History subject. Not only did Chinese History syllabuses propose aims and teaching methods in many respects similar to those promoted in History syllabuses, but the introduction of DBQs at A/AS level in 1994 seemed to demonstrate a genuine intention to change the teaching and learning of the subject. Although the first set of Chinese History DBQs were very badly set, those in subsequent papers were comparable to those in the A/AS level History papers. This represented a tectonic shift for a subject which, unlike History, had previously resisted any demands for reform by wrapping itself in the mantle of ��culture�� and ��tradition��. The Chinese History committees do not appear to have realised how such a move might undermine their case for the fundamental incom-patibility of the two history subjects, perhaps partly because they assumed that History would continue to be taught in English.
The existence of Chinese History, by excluding most Chinese content from History syllabuses, had contributed to the extreme emphasis on the importance of teaching ��skills�� and ��attitudes�� in the History subject. The reintroduction of local history and the increased coverage of the history of China within the History curriculum represented another challenge to the distinction between the two subjects, and one that, in the case of local history, became a source of considerable controversy in the press. The promotion of local history was initially motivated by a desire to provide more opportunities for the exercise of critical and analytical skills in the evaluation of sources, while also encouraging the development amongst students of an active, participative sense of citizenship. However, in their choice of local history content, curriculum developers themselves clearly felt unable to exercise the critical autonomy or democratic citizenship for which the study of History was supposed to be preparing local pupils. The curriculum materials produced for use at junior level, and particularly the junior syllabus developed during the mid-1990s, were in practice designed more to encourage the uncritical celebration than the critical investigation of Hong Kong��s past. Moreover, reports on public examinations showed that at more senior levels, where some controversial aspects of modern Chinese or local history were included in syllabuses, they were seldom taught in schools.178 The vision of the local past that was enshrined in syllabuses�Xespecially that for junior forms�Xreflected a highly pro-establishment orientation, accepting the status quo as ��the natural order of things��, avoiding any substantial coverage of the crucial issue of Hong Kong��s ��colonial�� political structures (perpetuated by the terms of the 1997 retrocession), and viewing local-mainland relations in an exclusively positive light. While curriculum development remained an official process, with the CDI firmly under the wing of the government��s Education Department, and that department in turn accountable to senior officials who were soon to owe their loyalty (and their jobs) to Beijing rather than to elected institutions either in Hong Kong or London, it was perhaps almost inevitable that this should be so.
In addition to its political sensitivity, other factors such as teacher inertia and unfamiliarity can be blamed for the general neglect of local history at sixth-form level. However, these factors do not account for the fact that, not just in the coverage of local history, but also in that of the history of post-1911 China, politically controversial issues appear to have been consistently avoided by most syllabus drafters, textbook writers and teachers. This arose from the fundamental contradictions inherent in promoting a critical, liberal approach to history in a society where public criticism of the Chinese government was widely seen as a risky enterprise, and where power and wealth remained concentrated in the hands of a small, unaccountable elite. In such a climate and such a society, it is hardly surprising that students of History were taught to exercise their critical skills, if at all, in the study of the policies of Bismarck or the Empress Dowager Cixi, rather than in the analysis of, say, the results of Chairman Mao��s Great Leap Forward, or the collaborative foundations of colonialism in Hong Kong.
Chapter 7 1997�V2002: New Hong Kong�XNew History?
INTRODUCTION
CONTRARY TO SOME PREDICTIONS, HONG KONG��S RETROCESSION TO China in 1997 did not witness a wholesale, overnight rewriting of official syllabuses and textbooks for the History subject or others. On the contrary, curriculum development proceeded, at least at first, broadly according to plans mapped out before 1997. The same officials remained in charge of curriculum policy, and continued to press for reforms�Xto syllabuses, assessment, and pedagogy�Xwith the same vision of History as a critical discipline, and as a vehicle for teaching analytical skills and liberal attitudes, even if, as the previous chapter has shown, their efforts were compromised by political constraints.
As was demonstrated in the last chapter, however, anticipation of Hong Kong��s post-handover politics had already been ��factored into�� the processes of syllabus and textbook production in the few years preceding 1997; the avoidance of controversial issues meant that there was very little in the History curriculum that was likely to cause offence to Hong Kong��s new political masters. Moreover, syllabuses and textbooks for the separate subject of Chinese History, far more intimately related to the ��patriotic�� agenda of the new administration, did undergo significant and rapid revisions in the year or two following the return to Chinese sovereignty.
The fate of the two history subjects to some extent mirrors the contradictions that have emerged in overall policy on education in the post-handover period�Xon the one hand, a continuing or even growing emphasis on the importance of thinking skills and creativity, and, on the other, an official rhetoric that promotes uncritical patriotism based on a conception of a racially and culturally homogenous ��Chineseness��. As discussed in Chapter 2, politics has compelled the Tung administration, in education as in other policy areas, to face in opposite directions at once. The advent of what is variously termed ��the IT revolution�� or ��the knowledge economy�� has fuelled a new sense of crisis regarding the widely recognised failure of the education system to foster analytical and creative ability. At the same time, aspects of the nationalist kulturkampf discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, such as calls for the inculcation of an unquestioning ��patriotism�� through civic education and Chinese History, and signs that an eventual switch to the use of putonghua as the main medium of instruction in local schools may be under consideration, suggest priorities that conflict with the promotion of critical and imaginative thinking skills.
The present chapter looks at how these conflicting pressures, and the imminent overhaul of the education system to which they have given rise, have affected the official process of curriculum development for History in the period from 1997 to 2002. The process of drafting of a new syllabus for HKCE History, which began in 1996 and continued after the handover, was halted by the prospect of the abolition of the HKCE examination under the education reform proposals, only to be resuscitated when that aspect of the proposals was sidelined. Draft versions of new curricula for both History and Chinese History were issued in 2002, and changes to the curricula for both subjects are discussed and compared here. Previous chapters treated Chinese History as a constant or ��given�� in the school curriculum, precisely because, for reasons explained in Chapter 2, it remained ossified and ��untouchable��. Since 1997, however, this has no longer been the case, as the sacrosanct status of all school subjects�XChinese History included�Xhas come under fire from reformers at the CDI. This assault on the conventional subjects has included proposals to create a ��New History�� subject, merging History and Chinese History at junior level�Xa move that has thrown into sharp relief many of the longstanding tensions between the rival subject communities of History and Chinese History, while also highlighting the conflicting nature of the administration��s educational priorities.
Besides the ��New History�� furore, controversy over reforms to the HKCE level History and Chinese History curricula has centred on two areas: the chronological scope of the syllabus, and the introduction of local history. The 2002 draft curricula for the two subjects represent very different outcomes to this controversy. In the case of Chinese History, radical proposals for reform have been largely abandoned in the face of enormous pressure from the conservative subject community, while the new History syllabus has, by contrast, passed through the ��consultation�� process relatively unscathed. Even in the case of History, however, scope for reform has continued to be limited by the parameters of ��one China�� political correctness, particularly as regards coverage of local history and the history of China.
THE REVISION OF THE HKCE HISTORY SYLLABUS�XA FALSE START: 1996�V1999
The distinctly illiberal political context of post-handover Hong Kong has rendered the predicament of the History subject, with its relatively liberal subject culture and global perspective, extremely sensitive and complex. The re-introduction of local history at junior level in the early and mid-1990s showed how curriculum developers�� attempts to promote or foster critical thinking and a sense of local identity and democratic citizenship were significantly inhibited by the political climate prior to 1997. Meanwhile, it was clear that other factors�Xassociated with language, textbooks, teachers�� skills, and an educational culture that encourages rote memorisation�Xcontinued to constitute a severe practical barrier to the realisation of the official syllabus aims.
The influence of the political climate was evident early on in the process of drafting a new syllabus for Secondary 4 and 5, the background to which was discussed in Chapter
6. In August 1996, a set of discussion documents was sent to members of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) by the committee��s secretary, Yung Li Yuk-wai of the CDI��s Humanities Unit.1 In order to elucidate the criteria for content selection, the documents began with a review of the aims and objectives of teaching history, defined in terms of ��personal��, ��social�� and ��subject�� ��needs��. The latter set of ��subject needs�� referred to the cultivation of an interest in and appreciation of history as a discipline, with aims such as ��training future historians��, and ��clarifying misconceptions about the history subject���Xa possible reference to the conception, still strongly held by teachers of Chinese History, of history as received knowledge. Also mentioned, in a significant reference to problems with implementation, was the need to raise ��the standard of history teaching and learning, especially the fulfilment of the aims and objectives of the history curriculum��. Most of the aims listed under ��personal�� and ��social�� ��needs�� corresponded with the emphasis placed by previous syllabuses on the development of critical thinking skills through the analysis of historical evidence, and the cultivation of liberal attitudes of tolerance and an appreciation of ��Hong Kong as a pluralistic society��. There were also allusions to the need to ��learn how to learn�Kin an age of ��knowledge explosion���� and the impact of ��the information revolution���Xthemes that were to become increasingly prominent in the wider discourse on education policy in the coming years.2
It was in the handling of the sensitive issues of identity and political socialisation that the influence of political factors was most apparent. The analysis in the previous chapter of the drafting of the junior syllabus during the early 1990s revealed how the issue of identity was mentioned in an early draft of that syllabus, but omitted from the final version. In the 1996 documents relating to the Secondary 4 and 5 syllabus revision, the nebulous and inoffensive concept of ��self-identity�� was invoked as one of the ��personal needs�� that history teaching should fulfil:
��historical memory can contribute to one��s self-identity, so that learners
can see their place in the stream of time, and their connectedness with all
of humankind.��3
However, in the list of ��social needs�� that followed, the first two items referred directly to Hong Kong��s impending retrocession and its implications for history teaching:
1.
Hong Kong as an SAR�Xautonomy: need independent and critical thinkers;
2.
Hong Kong reunited with China�Xunity: patriotism and nationalism�K4
There was no explicit acknowledgement of any contradiction between these two aims, nor any discussion of how history teaching could in practice foster ��united��, ��autonomous�� and ��nationalist�� ��critical thinkers��. Nevertheless, there were signs elsewhere in the documents of some ambivalence concerning the issue of ��patriotism��. In a tentative attempt to define the ��attitudes�� that the teaching of history should foster, ��civic responsibility/citizenship/patriotism�� were referred to in a way that appeared to pose these three terms as alternatives from amongst which the working party could choose.5 A further redefinition of these ��attitudes�� on the same page offered a choice between two definitions of patriotism�Xone somewhat nationalistic, and the other extremely vague and obscure:
��Attitudes�Xpatriotism: sense of attachment, sense of dignity, sense of
pride and sense of mission; or intuitive sentiment, imaginative sentiment
and rational sentiment.��6
The impression that the working party was uncomfortable with the use of the term ��patriotism�� is confirmed by the earliest draft of the proposed new Form 4 and 5 syllabus, prepared by April 1997, in which the word does not appear.7 Instead, the concept of ��citizenship�� was emphasised, and one of the five principal ��aims�� identified for the subject was ��to prepare students to become informed and rational citizens of the locality, the nation and the world��. The section on ��values and attitudes�� stipulated that students should ��acquire a sense of national (communal?) identity and responsible citizenship��, which could be interpreted as a watered-down version of the nationalistic definition of ��patriotism�� quoted in the previous paragraph.8 The word ��national�� was eventually retained in preference to ��com-munal��.9 However, it is significant that, less than three months before Hong Kong��s return to China, the working party even considered substituting ��communal�� for ��national�� in defining the sort of identity they wished to promote. Their apparent unease is consistent with their liberal, internationalist outlook, deeply at odds with the promotion of ��patriotism�� as that concept was commonly defined on the mainland. It also underlines the difference between History curriculum developers, whose enthusiasm for local history and broadly liberal values reflected a stronger attachment to Hong Kong than to any monolithic ��Great Chinese National Family��, and their Chinese History counterparts, for whom the very idea of promoting ��communal�� rather than ��national�� identity would have been rank heresy.
The liberalism of the working party��s vision of history and of its purposes was strongly evident in the draft syllabus. Their perhaps over-exhaustive definitions of the ��knowledge and understanding�� and the ��skills�� which they saw it as the role of history teaching to foster included those of demonstrating ��critical thinking skills, such as detecting bias, unstated assumptions and unwarranted claims��, providing ��rational explanations for historical events on the basis of the evidence available�� and promoting ��an appreciation of the uniqueness of the discipline of history��. Students were also to be taught to ��respect and tolerate different opinions expressed and yet remain objective and responsibly skeptical��, with the word ��responsibly�� possibly sounding a note of caution. However, the syllabus as a whole was thoroughly imbued with a spirit of critical rationalism.10
An attempt was also made in the teaching guidelines to indicate how the cultivation of various skills could be linked to particular themes or topics. The thematic structure of the syllabus integrated global, national and local history, an approach inspired, like so many previous reforms, by overseas example. For example, the topic ��World War II: causes, course and civilians at war�� was sub-divided as follows:
Causes and Effects: 1. The outbreak of war
2. Social and economic effects of the war on Europe
Evidence: Facts or Biased opinions: 1. The Nanjing Massacre�Xreal or fictious?
2. The death of Hitler
Decision-making And non-making: 1. Decisions made at Yalta Conference
2. Truman and the Atom bomb
Empathetic understanding and detached 1. The Jews and the Holocaust judgement:
2.
Life of the people of Hong Kong in 1941�V45
3.
Reflections of the intellectuals on the lessons of the war
Change/differences and 1. Changes of weapons and tactics during the war Continuity/Similarities:
2.
Changing relations between USSR and the West in 1919�V39
3.
Arrangements after the two World Wars
Individuals vs Circumstances: 1. Churchill of UK
2. Roosevelt of USA11
The syllabus was in tabular form, using the same sub-divisions throughout. Whereas the existing syllabus merely exhorted teachers to adopt a thematic and skills-based approach, the new draft attempted to show them in some detail how the content could be organised thematically, and suggested topics or issues which could be used to teach particular skills or illustrate particular concepts. When the draft was sent out to members of the working group in April 1997, their attention was drawn to the ��clear emphasis of skills and concepts�Xa change from the past where they remained implicit��. It was also pointed out that the examples of implementation were ��easy to follow��, but not, it was hoped, unduly prescriptive. ��This syllabus arrangement��, it was stated, did not ��commit the curriculum developers to any particular historical interpretation��, but allowed ��room for textbook writers and history teachers to use their professional judgement to decide how historical cases/issues should be approached��.12 All the same, the draft syllabus placed less reliance than its predecessor on teachers�� and textbook writers�� ��professional judgement���Xa commodity the short supply of which curriculum developers continued to lament.
The gloss that accompanied the initial draft also noted as one of its strengths the fact that ��the incorporation of Hong Kong history into the S4�V5 curriculum would appear natural and understandable and not as controversial as in the case of [the] S1�V3 curriculum��.13 In other words, the fact that the precedent had already been set for the inclusion of local history in the History subject meant that its inclusion in the HKCE syllabus would be unlikely to attract much notice. Another factor which may have contributed to a lessening of the drafters�� nervousness about controversy was the more relaxed political atmosphere in Hong Kong in the immediate runup to the handover, when the jitters of the early and mid-1990s were giving way to greater confidence and optimism, and the local stock-market was breaking all records. The more prominent role played by Lee Chi-hung in drafting the new S4�V5 syllabus may also help to account for its less constrained approach to local history. Lee��s involvement in the drafting of the earlier junior syllabus and in the preparation of the abortive curriculum package for the Antiquities Advisory Board, as well as his research into the development of the local history pilot project, had alerted him to the way in which fear of political controversy had hamstrung previous attempts to promote Hong Kong history.14 Finally, those who had earlier claimed, like D.C.Lam, that controversial issues were ��too difficult for junior students��, would in any case have found it more difficult to advance educational arguments for avoiding such issues in the syllabus for senior forms.
By comparison with the 1995 junior syllabus, the draft syllabus for Secondary 4�V5 embraced controversy, though it did so selectively. Many of the topics it identified were clearly chosen for their potential to stimulate argument and critical thought. For example, as noted above, students were to be invited to discuss the highly contentious theories denying the reality of the Nanjing Massacre�Xthe nearest equivalent, from a Chinese point of view, to Holocaust denial literature. They were to be asked to consider ��empathetically�� the plight of ��Vietnamese boat people and the UN refugees commission���Xan issue that had occasioned heated, and often far from empathetic, debate in Hong Kong over the previous twenty years. Particularly striking was the selection of topics in local history. Among these were ��the decision to shelve the Young Plan [the plan to introduce a limited form of representative government in post-war Hong Kong]��, ��the Golden Jubilee School Incident��, and ��Environmental protection or economic development�Xa question of priority��. The syllabus alluded to the way in which the modernisation process could create losers as well as ��beneficiaries��, and raised the obscurely-phrased issue of ��decolonisation and modernisation as the cart or the horse��. It also posed the contentious question of whether the ��success of Hong Kong�� was the ��result of the British system or the Hong Kong people��.
Beijing��s propogandists provided an answer to this latter question, which unsurprisingly emphasised the role of local people, supported by the benevolent policies of the mainland government, in building Hong Kong��s success.15 Given the currency of such propaganda, as well as the emphasis in the Secondary 3 History syllabus on ��China��s contribution to Hong Kong��,16 a similar response might have been expected from most local students. In general, however, the draft Secondary 4�V5 syllabus differed markedly from all previous History syllabuses in openly encouraging students and teachers to discuss the issue of colonialism as it related to Hong Kong. The fact that the end of British rule was only months away may well have contributed to this greater openness, though no obviously anti-British bias was evident in the guidelines. The discussion of the respective roles of ��the British system�� and ��the Hong Kong people�� offered a potential oppor-tunity for consideration of the collaborative role of Hong Kong people within the British system. Moreover, the suggestion in the guidelines that students should analyse the ��contribution of political leaders to the growth and development�� of Hong Kong implicitly invited them to assess the role of, say, Governor Maclehose in the territory��s recent history. Nonetheless, as was noted in the working party��s own discussion papers, it would be up to teachers and textbook writers to determine what slant was given to the coverage of such issues, and how or whether differing interpretations were presented. The revisions to Secondary 4�V5 textbooks shortly before the handover, the approach adopted in the new junior-form textbooks that appeared from 1998 onwards, and the apparent avoidance of controversial issues and periods in local history by A�� level candidates all suggested that the chances for a full and frank discussion of such sensitive matters might not be very high.
While critical analysis of the British role in Hong Kong��s past was now, at least officially, to be encouraged, any similar treatment of China��s role, or of the history of contemporary China in general, remained off-limits. The post-1949 history of China was referred to only twice in the draft guidelines, the two topics chosen being ��the Cold War in China�� and the ��Priority of development to China after 1949��.17 The former of these dealt with the relatively ��safe�� theme of China��s role in international affairs, while the latter clearly implied a Dengist view of recent Chinese history. The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, Guomindang rule in Taiwan, or the student movement of 1989 were nowhere mentioned, despite the fact that all fell within the chronological scope of the syllabus (1919�V90), and had had an enormously significant impact on Hong Kong��s own history. None of these episodes, or the controversial issue of mainland ��refugees�� connected particularly with the first two, fell under any of the topic headings which were included. Nor did the topic of ��decolonisation and modernisation�� make any explicit reference to the peculiar and controversial nature of Hong Kong��s own decolonisation, involving as it did a transfer of colonial authority from one state to another, rather than the establishment of a sovereign, independent government. Since the Basic Law explicitly outlaws any public advocacy of independence for Hong Kong (or for Taiwan or Tibet), it would have been considered risky for the officials involved to have encouraged the critical analysis of this particular issue, or for teachers to have allowed it to be openly debated in class.
While its drafters thus felt unable to adopt a thoroughly critical approach to the history of Communist China and its role in Hong Kong��s own history, the draft syllabus was nonetheless far clearer and more rigorous than the current one in promoting a thematic approach to history, and placed far more emphasis than previous History syllabuses on contemporary and controversial issues. Metternich, Bismarck, Cavour, Cixi and Sun Yat-sen, the old pantheon of senior-form syllabuses, were finally to be deposed in favour of a more modern and, it was hoped, more ��relevant�� syllabus in line with the new Form 3 curriculum and with overseas trends, and better suited to the cultivation of those skills, attitudes and values so cherished by curriculum developers. As they set about devising the new curriculum for Secondary 4�V5 History, the members of the working party appear to have been less worried by the political constraints on their selection of content�Xwhich they seem to have taken largely for granted�Xthan by the relevance of the syllabus as a whole to what was actually taught or learnt in the History classroom.
Many of the considerations that dominated discussions of the reform of the Secondary 4�V5 syllabus between 1996 and 1999 were identical to those that had loomed large in debate over curriculum change since the 1980s or earlier. Worries about political sensitivity, evident though seldom articulated, set the parameters defining acceptable content even if the definition of what was ��sensitive�� shifted with the changing political climate. Within such limitations, curriculum developers continued to pursue a liberal vision of history teaching, as an instrument for the cultivation of critical thinking skills and also, increasingly, for the promotion of a tolerant, democratic, internationalist sense of citizenship, rooted in an understanding of recent history from global, national and local perspectives. At the same time, they were aware that their aims remained at odds with what were perceived as some of the most deeply entrenched features of the local educational system: an under-skilled teaching profession, a lack of high-quality teaching resources, and, in particular, the overwhelming importance attached to high-stakes public examinations.
THE NEW HKCE HISTORY CURRICULUM�XTHE 2002 CONSULTATION PROCESS AND ITS OUTCOME
Discussions over the new curriculum for HKCE History were suspended in 1999, when it seemed likely that a decision would soon be taken to restructure the whole system of senior secondary education�Xmoving to a three-year model (followed by four-year university degree courses), and probably involving the replacement of HKCE and A��/AS level examinations with a single new public examination. However, in a move reflecting the ��disarticulated�� nature of post-1997 policymaking (see Chapter 2), this restructuring was subsequently postponed, prompting the revival in 2001 of moves to reform the history curriculum. In the meantime, changes to the institutional context of curriculum development, and to the key personnel involved, had occurred. In 2000, Patrick Wong��s lengthy stint as subject officer at the HKEA finally ended, as he became head of the Authority��s Development Section (with overall responsibility for all examination syl-labuses).18 Shortly afterwards, the Advisory Inspectorate was merged with the CDI, and Alice Ho took over from Lee Chi Hung as History subject officer. Lee was made responsible for the development of a new ��Integrated Humanities�� subject�Xa project close to the heart of the CDI��s head, Chan Ka Ki, and symbolic of the more ��integrated�� and ��skills��-oriented approach that the Institute was encouraging all subjects to adopt. Lee��s appointment did not, however, end his involvement in the development of the History subject, since the controversy that was to erupt over the first publicised draft for the new curriculum would lead to his hasty recall onto the subject committee. This controversy centred on the chronological scope of the syllabus, and the ��political sensitivity�� of certain elements of its content�Xespecially those relating to local history and the history of China.
The draft curriculum that was submitted to the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group in late 2001 appeared substantially different from that which had been under consideration two or three years earlier. In part, this was a matter of presentation�Xthe rigorously ��thematic�� approach of the earlier draft was perhaps deemed too ��radical�� and potentially off-putting to teachers, and the new draft adopted a simpler and more conventional layout. The syllabus was divided into two sections as follows:
A. Modernization and Transformation in Asia
1.
Growth and development of Hong Kong in the 20th century
2.
Change and developments of contemporary China
3.
Asia�XFrom decolonization to economic development
B. Conflicts and Cooperation in the Modern World
1.
Impact of First World War and developments in the inter-war period
2.
The Second World War and post-war developments
3.
Origin, development and thaw of the Cold War
The document thus appeared to give a new prominence to the history of Hong Kong, though this was somewhat belied by the stipulation that local history should only be allocated 15 teaching periods out of a total of 180 (the breakdown of numbers of teaching periods for the different sections did not appear on the drafts eventually released for consultation).
Despite the relatively small proportion of the syllabus allocated to it, local history appears to have dominated what the minutes (kept by the new HKEA subject officer, Lam Tin-chi) described as ��a lengthy and passionate discussion�� in the Joint Working Group. One set of concerns related to the difficulties that teachers might experience in teaching a topic that was ��new�� at this level, and it was suggested that this topic might be made the focus of ��TAS�� (or ��SBA���Xschool-based assessment�Xthen being promoted by the HKEA), since teachers ��already had experience in conducting students�� learning of Hong Kong history through inquiry methods such as visiting museums and producing reports on visits.�� Fears were expressed that ��TAS�� might increase teachers�� workload, and it was agreed that the issue of whether to introduce it or not should be put to teachers themselves during the consultation process. History would be the first school subject to adopt ��TAS��, and nervousness was expressed at this and subsequent meetings that this might adversely affect the popularity of the subject. The HKEA also went to great lengths to reassure the committee, and teachers at large, that the assessment process would be carefully monitored for ��fairness��. The proposal that was eventually put forward and endorsed during the consultation process involved abolishing MCQs, increasing the proportion of marks allocated to DBQs, and introducing a coursework (or ��SBA��) element worth 15 percent of the total subject marks. The latter would be based on an assessment of each student��s overall performance in the subject in Forms 4 and 5, plus a ��written course assignment��.20
Other concerns regarding local history related to more ��political�� issues of content and terminology. One member suggested that the title of the Hong Kong ��sub-theme�� be changed to ��Hong Kong from Colony to SAR��, but a decision on this was deferred ��pending CDI colleagues�� consultation with higher authorities whether the term ��Colony�� could be used.��21 The outcome of these consultations was clearly negative, since the word ��colony�� was nowhere used to refer to Hong Kong in the eventual consultation documents. During the same meeting, it was also suggested that
��the approach to Hong Kong history should be different from that in the Chinese History curriculum [see below], and should not be from the perspective of Hong Kong��s relation to China, but more of its own development as a result of British colonial rule, with emphasis on the self-reflection of its identity�K In response, the secretary remarked that demanding teachers to teach Hong Kong history in (sic.) such an approach would cause greater concern to them than the implementation of TAS would.��22
The draft syllabus did not in fact present local history from an emphatically ��Chinese�� perspective, but neither did it adopt an obviously ��local�� slant. At the same time, the outlawing of the term ��colony�� begged the question of how�Xif at all�Xthe status of Hong Kong under British rule was to be characterised.
Questions of identity and the role of ��colonialism�� continued to loom large in subsequent discussions. At a meeting held on 8 January 2002, members discussed the list of curricular ��aims and objectives�� that was to form part of the consultation document. Most of these consisted of distinctly unobjectionable declarations of faith in the importance of various analytical and critical skills, and values such as ��tolerance�� and ��empathy��. However, the two specific issues singled out for member��s comments related to the ��aim�� of enabling students to ��prepare themselves to become informed and rational members of the locality, the nation, and the world��. Some time was spent discussing whether ��Hong Kong�� and ��China�� should be used instead of ��the locality�� and ��the nation��, but it was eventually decided to retain the existing wording. This decision was in line with the ��correct�� line stipulated in the instructions communicated to local publishers (see previous chapter) concerning the terminology that should be used to describe the new SAR, whereby any form of language that might be interpreted as suggesting that Hong Kong was anything more than a subset of ��China�� was expressly forbidden. The second issue was raised by one of the committee members, and related to the objective stating that students should ��develop positive attitudes and values to�Kbecome responsible citizens and to have a sense of national identity��. The member obviously felt that this wording gave inadequate prominence to the importance of ��national identity��, since the committee agreed with his or her suggestion that the objective be rephrased so that it would read as ��have a sense of national identity and become responsible citizens��.23 Perhaps more significant than this change in wording, however, was the fact that this sole reference to ��national identity�� occurred in the last item on the entire list�Xcontrasting starkly with the prominence accorded to this aim in the new Chinese History curriculum (see below).
The curriculum outline released for public consultation in March 2002 was a simplified, pared-down version of the drafts considered by the Joint Working Group�X reflecting the desire of the committee to avoid ��scaring�� teachers on the one hand, while on the other avoiding an overly ��prescriptive�� approach. Nonetheless, reaction to the draft in the local media was explosive, and focused in particular on the chronological scope of the curriculum (which began in 1919 and extended up to the present day), and the treatment of local history and the history of China.
��Senior Secondary History reduced to 100 years of Contemporary History�� screamed a banner headline on the front page of the March 5 edition of the Oriental Daily, adding ��the History subject ditches ancient history, and June 4th is included in the curriculum��.24 Headlines in other newspapers echoed these themes, with the South China Morning Post delcaring ��June 4 may be taught in schools�XNew syllabus could include massacre and Patten reforms, in first lessons on post-1970s history��. The coverage given by the Post was exceptional, however, in that it reported mostly positive comments on the proposed changes. It quoted Kwok Siu-tong of CUHK as remarking that ��It is high time the department shifted the teach-
Table 1
Sub-themes
Content Focus Key Teaching Points
1. Economic, social and �� pattern of economic changes
a) Growth and
cultural changes
development of Hong
�� major social and cultural issues and
Kong
their impact
�� major administrative and constitutional reforms 2. Administrative and constitutional reforms from Mark Young to Christopher Patten
�� significance on the development of Hong Kong society and people��s livelihood
1. Experiments in �� the rise of communist rule
b) Change and
socialism
development of
�� political and social movements
contemporary China
1950s�V1970s
�� reforms and modernization since 1978
2. From isolation to
�� China��s relations with the US, the international
USSR, Britain and the Third World community
from 1950s to 1990s
�� the road towards World Trade Organization
(Taken from ��Revised S4�V5 History Curriculum, first Consultation�XCDI. March 2002)
ing method in history from memorisation to nurturing students�� critical thinking��. The head of the history department at CUHK was also supportive. ��In colonial days,�� he told the Post, ��education officials avoided putting recent historical events in Hong Kong and China in history syllabuses. Why don��t we let our children know more about Mr Patten, who made a significant impact on the political development of Hong Kong?��25
The answer to this question was to be found in the Chinese-language press, where the new curriculum was attacked precisely because of the attention it devoted to recent political developments in Hong Kong and on the mainland. A commentator writing in Ming Pao protested that contemporary controversies were too ��political��,26 and that teachers would therefore be unwilling to teach them, while another writer suggested that any teacher covering the ��June 4th incident�� would risk infringing whatever legislation on ��subversion of the state�� was about to be introduced in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law. It was also objected that no ��defi-nite interpretations�� (dinglun) of contemporary events were yet possible, while many of the relevant sources were not yet available, and that therefore teachers would be incapable of teaching students about these events .27 a revealing reflection of prevalent assumptions concerning the nature of history (according to Alice Ho, the articles in the Chinese press critical of the new History curriculum were often the work of Chinese History teachers or their supporters). Precisely the same concerns would resurface in October, in press coverage following the publication of the second draft of the curriculum.
The critical coverage of the first curriculum draft was a source of great concern to ED officials, and Lee Chi-hung recalls that he and his CDI colleagues were required to prepare urgent briefings for their superiors concerning the ��line to take�� on these matters.28 One of the first casualties of the consultation process was Chris Patten, whose name would, it was made clear, have to disappear from future drafts of the syllabus. The word ��colonial�� would also remain taboo�Xat least as far as the Hong Kong section was concerned.29
Responses to the draft curriculum from teachers and academics were generally far more supportive than the press coverage, but reservations were expressed on several points. The consultation exercise was clearly taken extremely seriously by the Joint Working Group, with the huge number of comments received all collated, re-typed and circulated among committee members for their consideration.30 According to the original schedule, the second draft of the curriculum had been due for publication in July, but in the event it did not appear until the end of October. This appears to have been a reflection of a concern within the ED to ��get it right�� second time round, by taking on board the views of teachers and avoiding hostages to fortune in the wording of the final draft.
While a considerable proportion of respondents expressed a concern that the Hong Kong and China sections of the proposed curriculum were ��too contemporary�� and ��controversial��, there was, notwithstanding the press coverage, no evidence of large-scale panic by teachers faced with the prospect of teaching issues such as the Tiananmen Massacre. On the other hand, the scope of the framework was widely criticised for omitting coverage of the late nineteenth century, which many teachers and academics felt was crucial to an understanding of issues such as nationalism and the origins of the First World War.31 A number also felt that the entire period when Hong Kong was under colonial rule (i.e. 1841�V1997) should be studied. This view was shared by the membership of the ��Hong Kong History Educators�� Society���Xa new professional group established in 1999 to act as a ��voice�� for history educators (at a time when their Chinese History counterparts were proving particularly vociferous)�Xwhich held a meeting to discuss the new curriculum and submitted a substantial report summarising the views of its members.32
Particular criticism was reserved for the ��China�� section of the curriculum, which, unlike the other sections, began in 1949 rather than 1919. This oddity was explained by committee members as resulting from their decision to focus, in the case of China, on the ��theme�� of ��socialism��, but given the history of local ��sensitivities�� in this regard (see Chapter 2), it is hard to avoid the suspicion that members may have felt more comfortable with a ��theme�� that precluded the necessity of discussing the ��controversial�� Guomindang-Communist conflict. ��A politically sensitive area, perhaps, but it should not be ignored,�� commented Tom Stanley of the HKU History Department.33 His colleague, Alfred Lin, reflected the widespread consternation at this omission when he wrote that he was ��amazed to find the absence of any reference to China��s modernization experience in the first half of the twentieth century�Kaxing China��s modernization experience in the period 1900�V1949 entirely from the syllabus is unacceptable.�� Lin also pointed out that the phrase ��the rise of communist rule�� was problematic since ��one cannot speak of the rise of ��x�� unless ��x�� exists in the first place��, and suggested replacing it with the phrase ��the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (since 1921)��. He suggested an alternative content focus for the ��China�� section, which the committee seems ultimately to have broadly accepted (see below):
1.
Late Qing reforms and transformation (1900�V1912)
2.
The drive for modernization during the Nanjing decade (1928�V1937)
3.
Building socialism in the Maoist period (1957�V1976)
4.
Reforms and modernization since 197834
The ��aims and objectives�� of the syllabus attracted relatively little adverse comment, although some teachers objected that the ��skills�� that students were expected to master were too demanding. The only ��aim�� that was singled out for particular criticism (though only by five respondents out of around 200) was that of ��developing a sense of national identity��. ��History should foster global consciousness, not narrow nationalism��, wrote one critical teacher, while another objected that turning history into a tool for promoting ��national identity�� would make it similar to a ��Political Education Class�� (of the kind that features in the school curriculum on the Chinese mainland).35
The committee could afford to ignore the views of only five respondents, and it was in any case inconceivable in the prevailing political climate that this particular objective might be dropped or watered down. However, the inclusion of ��national identity and citizenship�� as a ��value�� to be promoted through History was an issue of potentially more than symbolic significance, since it was also included in the list of ��assessment objectives�� for the SBA (School-based Assessment) component of the new curriculum.36 Hence it was conceivable that a student could (or indeed would have to) be marked down if his or her coursework reflected any deficiency in his or her sense of ��national identity��. Quite apart from the questions of whether or to what extent a sense of ��Hong Kong identity�� can be seen as qualitatively different from a sense of ��national identity��, or why and to what extent ��national identity�� should be seen as a ��positive value�� at all, this requirement raises particularly interesting issues when it is borne in mind that a substantial number of ethnically Chinese Hong Kong people hold British, Canadian, Australian or other nationalities.
The curriculum went through several further drafts before the version to be issued for the second round of consultations was finalised. In addition to the ��key teaching points�� enumerated in the original draft, ��explanatory notes�� were added, providing far more detail on what was to be included in the ��key teaching points��, and hence leaving less room for misinterpretation.37 However, the ��notes�� provided in the final draft were considerably more concise than in some previous versions, indicating a continued concern on the part of curriculum developers not only to give as few hostages to fortune as possible, but also to avoid appearing overly ��prescriptive��, particularly since this might tempt publishers to take the syllabus as a rigid blueprint when preparing textbooks, as had happened with the junior curriculum (see previous chapter). In response to the concerns expressed by teachers and academics, the starting point of the curriculum was shifted back to 1900, and the introduction to the framework emphasised that the 19th century background to twentieth century developments was something that students would have already studied in the junior forms.
Theme B�X��Conflicts and Cooperation in the Twentieth Century World���Xremained, like the old HKCE syllabus, resolutely Eurocentric, with topics focusing on the two World Wars, the Cold War and the process of European integration.38 A section in the original draft on ��Global Issues��, including the ��Spread of US popular culture��, ��The Arab World�� and ��Gender Issues�� was dropped in the face of protests from teachers who felt it would be ��too difficult�� or would overlap with other subjects such as Social Studies or Integrated Humanities.39 However, a new subtopic was included on ��other major conflicts��, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and�Xa sign of the times�X��terrorism and peace-making��. ��Attempts at international cooperation in dealing with social and cultural issues�� was the last area of ��content focus��, with subtopics including ��population and wealth��, ��human beings and the environment�� and the ��development of science and technology. South Asia, Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Australia figured nowhere in the curriculum, which adhered instead to the long-established bipolar East Asia-Europe approach with which teachers were familiar.
On the other hand, the inclusion of Southeast Asia (��Change and development of Japan and Southeast Asia��) in ��Theme A�� of the curriculum (��Modernisation and Transformation of Twentieth-Century Asia��) was a major new departure, and was retained despite jitters expressed by a number of respondents during the consultation exercise.40 One peculiarity that had not gone unnoticed during the consultation process was the fact that the words ��colony��, ��colonisation�� and ��decolonisation�� were freely used in this section of the syllabus, and it was suggested by several respondents that the history of ��colonial�� Hong Kong might be better viewed within the context of ��colonialism�� in Southeast Asia as a whole.41 However, there is no evidence that this suggestion ever received serious consideration by the Joint Working Group�Xunsurprisingly, since to admit that ��colonialism�� constituted the defining feature of Hong Kong��s history would run directly counter to official post-1997 dogma (see Table 2 on the following pages).
In comparison with the curriculum for the junior forms, the new HKCE curriculum did contain a far more open acknowledgement of the existence and impact of ��British rule��. However, ��administrative changes�� were given far less prominence than in the original draft (the term ��changes�� being preferred to the potentially more sensitive ��reforms��), and in addition to the removal of references to Governors Young and Patten, the topic was endowed with a nationalist, politically correct teleology by the phrase ��up to the resumption of the exercise of sovereignty by the PRC��. A significant addition was the ��growth and development of [the] local Chinese community��, and the wording here also seems significant. The original draft had referred to ��the development of Hong Kong society and people��s livelihood��. However, the phrases ��Hong Kong society�� and ��Hong Kong people�� were notably absent from the October version. Instead, references were made to ��the role of local Chinese leaders and associations�� and, under the heading of ��cultural change and continuity,�� to ��coexistence and interaction of Chinese and Western culture��. ��Chinese�� and ��Western�� culture were both implicitly seen as homogenous, unitary constructs, and a reference in an earlier draft to the (indisputably enormous) influence of Japanese popular culture on local culture was deleted. Nor was any mention made of the existence of any local ��communities�� other than the ��Chinese�� (such as the Indian community).
It is a tribute to the steadfastness of the Joint Working Group that it refused to abandon altogether a ��controversial�� topic such as administrative reform in Hong Kong. The Group also resisted pressure to compromise on the end date of the syllabus, which in theory still extended right up to the present day. However, revisions to the China section of the curriculum
Table 2
Theme A Modernization and Transformation of Twentieth Century Asia (approximately 90 teaching periods)
Sub-themes Content Focus Key Teaching Points Explanatory Notes
Growth and 1. From British �� major �� main features of British
development of rule to HKSAR adminstrative adminstration in the first half
Hong Kong 2. Development into an international city changes �� growth and development of local Chinese community �� economic and urban developments �� demographic changes and impact on society �� cultural change and continuity of 20th century �� major administrative changes in the post-WWII period up to the resumption of the exercise of sovereignty by PRC �� the role of local Chinese leaders and associations under British administration �� main features and problems of economic development �� process and impact of urbanization e.g. development of infrastructure �� relationship with the mainland and the role in Asia-Pacific Rim �� change and development of social structure �� significance in the developments in education, housing and social welfare �� coexistence and interaction of Chinese and western culture
�� achievements and setbacks on the work on preservation of cultural heritage
1. From
�� political reform
�� political developments from late
Transformation of
monarchy to
and revolution
Qing to 1911 revolution
contemporary
republic
China
�� rise of the Communist Party of China and its relationship with Guomindang
�� social changes and
�� the development of native attempts in
industry and emergence of new modernization
social classes and the new
intelligentsia
�� the Nanjing Governments attempts in modernization
2. Socialist �� major
�� institutional setup�Xpolitical experience
developments
system and the relationship during the first
among the party, government three years
and army
�� origin and significance of major movements and mass organizations (e.g. land reforms, collectivization of agriculture, the Cultural Revolution)
�� social and
�� ��building socialism with economic
Chinese characteristics�� and the developments
development of regional since 1978
economy
�� development of government policies towards the population issue
�� the role in Asia
��
change and continuity in foreign policy
��
the role in regional organizations
(From S4�V5 History Curriculum Framework (Draft for Second Consultation), CDI, October 2002)
meant that the sensitive issue of June 4th had effectively been sidestepped, as teachers were only expected to discuss ��social and economic [but not political] developments since 1978��.
Overall, therefore, the outcome of the development of the new curriculum for HKCE History followed a broadly similar pattern to that for the junior forms�Xthough the process was more drawn-out and tortuous, and witnessed a brave, though largely abortive, foray into highly controversial territory. In the second draft of the curriculum, the Hong Kong and, to a lesser extent the China sections presented a ��happy�� picture of progress and development�Xa pro-establishment perspective that, in the words used by Lee Chi Hung to describe the local history package of the early 1990s, portrayed ��the status quo as the natural order of things��. The rather less ��happy�� subtopic of ��major social issues���X��e.g issue of Vietnamese boat people [and] issue of newcomers from the mainland���Xwhich appeared in a July draft of the curriculum,42 had disappeared by October. The period between July and October also witnessed the introduction of a new emphasis on the ��Chineseness�� of Hong Kong, with references to ��Hong Kong society�� and the ��Hong Kong people�� replaced by references to the ��local Chinese community��. This was no accidental form of words�Xthe substitution of the term ��local Chinese�� for ��Hong Kong�� served a clear ideological purpose. According to the official (Beijing-inspired) view of local history, the ��Hong Kong people�� as a distinct community with a distinct ��Hong Kong�� identity have not merely been ��dissolved��; they never existed in the first place.43
CHANGES TO THE CURRICULUM FOR CHINESE HISTORY
Chinese History�Xand the ��Chinese�� subjects generally�Xhave, as was noted in Chapter 2, always been marked out for a key role in the post-handover administration��s kulturkampf, with responsibility for overcoming the supposedly alienating effects of Hong Kong��s colonial experience by inculcating in local students a sense of ��national belonging��. The Chinese History subject community has in general proved highly supportive of the new ��nation building�� agenda, since it chimes with their vision of the ��Chineseness�� of the local community defined by ��Chinese culture�� as an essentially timeless and homogenous construct.
However, other trends influencing education policy since 1997 have challenged the content, pedagogy and even the existence of a distinct Chinese History subject. The promotion of local history in the History subject has prompted curriculum developers responsible for Chinese History to include some coverage of this area�Xfrom an emphatically ��Chinese�� perspective�Xin their own syllabuses, though this has gone very much against the grain of their deeply-rooted state-centred conception of history. At the same time, the requirement that students cover the full ��5,000 years�� of Chinese history has come under fire, as being inimical to the more ��skills��-based approach that the ED expects all subjects to adopt. Finally, as is discussed at the end of this chapter, the development of new ��integrated�� subjects has been perceived as a direct threat to the status of Chinese History within the school curriculum. All this has provoked a fierce rearguard action on the part of Chinese History traditionalists, resulting in a retreat by officials from the more radical reforms originally envisaged.
LOCAL HISTORY IN THE CHINESE HISTORY CURRICULUM FOR JUNIOR FORMS
In 1999, the CDI released a Chinese History teaching pack on local history. The materials adopted an openly nationalist perspective, as did the revised junior syllabus for the subject as a whole. Their production was a sign of the unwillingness of the Chinese History subject group to surrender the territory of local history to the rival History subject, and may have been motivated in part by the suspicion that the inclusion of this topic in History constituted a conspiracy to ��internationalise�� Hong Kong in the run-up to the handover (see previous chapter). At the same time, the peripheral importance attached to Hong Kong history by those in charge of the Chinese History subject was demonstrated by their decision to make their package an optional appendix to the junior syllabus, rather than making it an integral part of the syllabus as the History committee had done. The preface to the package emphasised that teachers should use it only if they had time left over after teaching the conventional dynastic narrative of the main syllabus.44 This was a reflection of the conception of history dominant among local Chinese History teachers, as among their mainland counterparts, which treats it primarily as a state-centred (or court-centred) political narrative.
The first two paragraphs of the text spell out the central message, in language borrowed directly from Beijing��s own propaganda (indicated by my italics):
��From many archaeological discoveries, we have learnt that Hong Kong��s history can be traced back six thousand years to the New Stone Age. In the early period, it was inhabited by the People of the Hundred Yue Tribes, most of whom lived near the shore and fished and foraged for a living. Following the continuous progress of human civilisation, the culture of the northern central plains began to blend with the culture of the Southern Yue people, and Hong Kong gradually fell under the influence of the northern culture. By the time of the Qin and Han dynasties, Hong Kong had already come under the administration of China��s central government, and had become part of the Great Chinese National Family.
��Hong Kong��s long and close relationship with the inner regions of China has been proved by the teams of archaeologists who have been to Panyu County, photographed the Han Dynasty tombs there, and compared them with Hong Kong��s Han tomb at Lei Cheng Uk. This historical fact can enable students more deeply to appreciate that Hong Kong has been part of China from time immemorial.��45
This interpretation of Hong Kong��s early history conflicts markedly with the records of twelfth-century ��ethnic cleansing�� of the indigenous ��Yao�� in the Hong Kong region (see Chapter 3), but the use of archaeology in this way to assert China��s timeless unity has become a staple of mainland propaganda, justifying Beijing��s claims to Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang.
The materials consisted of five study units, the first two of which concerned the pre-British period, while the third dealt with ��the founding of Hong Kong��. The fourth unit was devoted to ��Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution��, emphasising, like the History syllabus and the new local museum, Hong Kong��s connection with the founding father of modern China. The coverage of the package concluded in 1945 with a section on ��The War of Resistance against Japan, and Japanese Rule in Hong Kong��. Anti-Japanese resentment has long proved to be a relatively uncontroversial, and therefore unifying, outlet for expressions of patriotic sentiment in both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.46
As a whole, therefore, the local history materials for junior form Chinese History focused overwhelmingly on those aspects of local history that serve to illustrate the fundamental and immutable ��Chineseness�� of Hong Kong. There was no interest in the distinctiveness of local historical experience, but only in the place of the ��locality�� in the grand narrative of the national past. A similar approach to local history was originally envisaged for the new HKCE level Chinese History curriculum, which was being drafted at roughly the same time as that for History.
HKCE CHINESE HISTORY�XTHE NEW CURRICULUM
The first draft of the new HKCE Chinese History curriculum was released in April 2001, almost one year before that for History.47 Reflecting the influence of the reforming pressures emanating from the leadership of the CDI, it represented a radical departure from the prevalent approach to the subject. As with History, the new curriculum for Chinese History was to focus on the twentieth century (1912�V2000), and the dynastic period would only be covered thematically rather than exhaustively (in around thirty teaching periods, as opposed to the forty periods to be devoted to the twentieth century). This move was justified, as in the case of History, by the fact that students would already have covered earlier periods in the junior forms, and that the emphasis at more senior levels should be more on the training of ��skills�� than the accumulation of detailed factual knowledge. However, in the case of Chinese History there was little or no support for such an approach among the subject community at large; indeed it directly challenged their cherished shibboleths of an emphasis on the glories of dynastic China, and the comprehensive coverage of the full ��5,000 years�� of Chinese history.
In addition to the drastic revision to its chronological scope, the original draft for the revised curriculum was divided into two parts: the first part consisting of two compulsory sections on the dynastic period and the twentieth century, and the second consisting of eight ��special topics�� of which students were to be required to study three.48 The first two of these (of which students could only study one) related to the history of Taiwan and Hong Kong�Xthe first time that Taiwanese history had been included in the local school curriculum. Predictably, the first teaching aim of the ��Taiwan�� section was defined as ��recognising the fact that Taiwan has been part of Chinese territory from time immemorial��. Nonetheless, the very inclusion of this topic represented a radical and controversial new departure in the development of the Chinese History subject. Other ��special topics�� related to ��the development of [China��s minority] nationalities�� (also a highly novel move, since the history of areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia had hitherto received little attention in the Chinese History curriculum), ��the central administrative structure��, ��the development of Confucianism��, ��the spread of religion��, ��foreign relations�� and ��food and residential culture��.
The ��special topic�� on Hong Kong focused almost exclusively on relations between the ��locality�� and the mainland, rather than on the internal development of the ��locality�� itself.49 As with the curriculum for History, the word ��colony�� was nowhere used to describe Hong Kong�Xthere was a reference to Britain��s ��occupation��, but not to ��colonisation��. The themes to be studied focused exclusively on ��positive�� aspects of the local-mainland relationship, such as Hong Kong��s ��contribution�� to the movement to save the country (jiuguo yundong) during the late Qing period, the impact of nationalism on Hong Kong, local support for the war of resistance against Japan, and ��the contribution to all aspects of Hong Kong��s development made by migrants from the mainland��. Hong Kong was in no way seen as possessing an autonomous history of its own�Xthe local past had meaning only insofar as it ��contributed�� to the larger, national picture.
Nevertheless, this religious adherence to post-handover political correctness did not prevent the draft curriculum from provoking a storm of protest in the media from the Chinese History subject community when it was released for consultation. Faced with accusations of betraying the ��patriotic�� purpose of their subject by ditching the bulk of the ��5000 year�� narrative, the drafters promptly went back to the drawing board, and produced what Patrick Wong described as ��a complete copy of the old syllabus�� that he and other senior officials ��threw back��. What emerged in the final draft was a compromise whereby ninety teaching periods were allocated to the pre-1840 period, and ninety to the post-1840 period, with a highly detailed breakdown of precisely what topics teachers were expected to teach (the contrast with the minimal guidelines provided in the History curriculum was striking, and reflected the continued emphasis in the Chinese History subject on ensuring factual ��correctness�� rather than teaching analytical skills).50 At the same time, all the ��special topics�� in the original draft, including Hong Kong history, were removed�Xleaving no local history whatsoever in the proposed curriculum for HKCE Chinese History.
The October 2002 draft curriculum, far more than the draft of the previous year, reflected the concern of its drafters to leave no doubt as to what they felt the principal aim of their subject to be:
��With Hong Kong��s return to the motherland, strengthening national education, and fostering students sense of their national identity, is crucial to the future development of Hong Kong. Among the CDI��s seven guiding principles for curriculum reform [promulgated in 2002], helping students to ��recognise their own national identity, and contribute to the nation and society��, and raising students�� national consciousness, is one of the most important aims. [The guidelines for] moral and citizenship education, one of the four main areas of reform, have also stipulated that the promotion of national identity is one of the main values that schools must promote.��51
This point was emphasised and repeated again and again throughout the document: ��The expectation is that through strengthening students�� interest in Chinese history and the culture of the Chinese race [we will] awaken their consciousness of their national identity��.52 The antiquity and uniqueness of Chinese history was also stressed: ��Chinese history is as vast as the ocean, and can hardly be encompassed by the gaze of men, so that to cover the whole of Chinese history requires an extremely long time.��53
Despite the wholesale retreat from the earlier, more radical proposals, the revised draft curriculum received an ambivalent reception in the press when it was released in October 2002. The pro-Beijing Wen Wei Bao commented approvingly that the inclusion of contemporary Chinese history would ��raise students�� interest�� and enable them to better ��understand the background to the national situation (guoqing) and develop a sense of national consciousness��.54 However, the concern of teachers regarding the absence of ��fixed verdicts�� (dinglun) on contemporary issues was also reported. Papers adopting a more ��pro-democracy�� stance focused on the implicit (by virtue of the chronological scope) inclusion of the Tiananmen Massacre (or ��June 4th��) in the curriculum, speculating that covering this issue might involve teachers in contravening legislation on ��subversion��.55 However, the CDI was at pains to stress that teachers should not follow a single ��official view��, and that the Basic Law guaranteed ��freedom of speech��.56
In this regard, the actions of the CDI in its drafting of curriculum documents belied its reassuring words. The ��freedom�� or ��autonomy�� that teachers were expected to exercise and to promote in the Chinese History or History classroom was evidently not enjoyed by the Institute��s own curriculum developers. Particularly in the case of Chinese History, and to a lesser extent in the case of History, curriculum developers were clearly under pressure to subordinate other aims to the priority of promoting ��national consciousness��. However, while for History this factor was a constraint determining the parameters of acceptable content, for Chinese History it constituted the defining purpose of the entire subject, precluding any acknowledgement whatsoever of the existence of a distinctive local past.
THE ��NEW HISTORY�� CONTROVERSY
Local curriculum developers have long been conscious that the division between the two history subjects was anomalous, but ever since the 1970s fears of a backlash from the influential and vocal Chinese History subject community had deterred attempts to effect a merger. The priority attached by the new administration to promoting ��national education�� appeared if anything to further reduce the prospects of overcoming this division. In late 1999, however, a sudden shift in CDI policy on this issue occurred, and proposals were mooted for a ��New History�� subject. Lee Chi-hung explained this as a consequence of ��curriculum overcrowding�� resulting from the government��s other educational priorities:
��It has long been complained that the humanities occupy too large a share of curriculum time, compared to sciences, in the junior forms�K When the government tried to introduce putonghua as well as IT into the curriculum, the concern was how to create space for these. So this seemed an obvious time to look at merging the two histories, especially since no other place in the world has two history subjects.��57
The new subject would not be forced on schools; rather, it would be an option that school principals looking for ways to free up timetable space could choose if they so wished. There were as yet, Lee insisted, no plans to abolish the existing two history subjects, either at junior or senior levels.
However, the move to create an integrated history subject came in the context of a broader push for integration across the school curriculum. As a prelude to what the government clearly hoped would be a general shakeup of the entire educational system, the CDI itself was reorganised, and the old subject committees (which had paralleled those of the HKEA) were replaced with a new system of inter-disciplinary committees organised around ��key learning areas�� (see Chapter 2). CDI Director Chan Ka-ki had herself been one of those responsible for the design of the A�� level Liberal Studies course, which included elements of global, Chinese and local history. Her preference, and the CDI��s official policy, was for the eventual creation of an ��Integrated Humanities�� subject that would encompass History along with Chinese History, Geography and Civics. From the perspective of the as yet rather vague official vision of ��holistic�� educational reform, New History might therefore be seen as merely an interim measure�X the prelude to a more thorough and ambitious integration of the curriculum for all the humanities subjects.
Lee Chi-hung described the proposed approach to Chinese and World history as ��parallel��. For example, the first topic would deal with ��early civilisations�� in ��river valleys��, and the early history of the Huang He Valley civilisation would be a compulsory sub-topic, along with the study of one other early civilisation, such as those of the Indus or Nile river valleys. The next topic would provide an outline of the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties, which would be compared with the history of the ancient Greek and Roman empires. A comparative approach would be followed throughout, and a local history component would also be included, so that each topic would follow roughly this pattern:
Topic�X��Early Civilisations��:
1.
Overview�X��The rise of early civilisations��
2.
Example from World History�X��The civilisation of the Nile Valley��
3.
China�X��Early civilisation in the Huang He Valley��
4.
Hong Kong�X��The early history of human settlement in Hong Kong��58
The syllabus would thus adopt a global-national-local perspective similar to that envisaged for Secondary 4�V5 History, except that more space would be devoted to China.
This proposal met resistance both from Chinese History subject officers within the ED, and from teachers of the subject more generally. Firstly, they stressed the difference between looking at Chinese history from a global perspective, and looking at world history from a Chinese perspective, the latter approach being, in their eyes, the only acceptable one. It was a question of whether China is to play ��host�� or ��guest�� in any combined subject�Xof whether the narrative of Chinese history was to form the backbone of the subject, with comparisons occasionally made to global developments, or vice versa. Therefore, according to Lee, the syllabus for New History would be designed in such a way as to make it difficult to tell whether Chinese history or world history was being treated as ��the host��.59 However, when it was suggested that Hong Kong history be incorporated into the Chinese segment of the ��New History�� syllabus, to give it a dual centre-periphery perspective, the Chinese History subject officers objected that this would violate the integrity of their traditional narrative.60
Lee��s account of the tense discussions within the CDI thus portrays the debate over New History as essentially a struggle for curricular territory, with Chinese History teachers�� insistence on the inviolability of their chronological, state-centred narrative leaving little room for compromise. Lee was, of course, a far from disinterested party to these discussions. His personal opinion was that the strength of opposition on the part of Chinese History teachers to the new subject only underlined the ��outdated�� nature of their approach and the need for change:
��I think for quite a long time Chinese History has been seen as a subject that emphasises a lot of rote memorisation and factual recall. Students do not find the subject popular, or if students like it, many other teachers do not find such an approach acceptable. Maybe some students would like the subject because they can memorise things and get high marks, but many educators do not approve of this. So maybe New History will bring new life to Chinese history. It might be a chance to bring some real reform to the teaching of Chinese history. This might be a reason why some principals and some schools would be in favour of the idea. This might also ring the alarm bells of the Chinese History teachers, because they anticipate that they might have to change their teaching methods, or that the content that they will have to teach will be changed and reduced. This is why they are fighting to make Chinese History compulsory, and insisting that it remain an independent subject. I don��t think they are going to give up this idea.��61
The determination of the Chinese History teachers proved even stronger than Lee had anticipated.62 The sorts of arguments put forward by the opponents of ��New History�� were very similar to those advanced twenty-five years earlier by opponents of the inclusion of Chinese History in the proposed Social Studies curriculum, except that now the partisans of Chinese History no longer saw themselves as anti-colonial dissidents, but as ardently patriotic supporters of the new regime. Whereas, in 1975, Chinese History was portrayed as a symbol and guarantee of the preservation of the cultural identity of a community under colonial rule, in 2000 it was held up as a remedy for local people��s lack of ��national consciousness��.63
Lee��s growing anxiety arose from the way in which the New History project was being vilified in the Chinese-language press as ��unpatriotic���Xa strategy which, in the prevailing political climate, threatened to put him and his colleagues under enormous pressure to back down. A writer in the Economic Journal compared the current reforms to the 1975 Social Studies proposal, and accused the proponents of New History and ��Integrated Humanities�� of failing to ��erase the taint of colonial education��. He insisted that ��teaching Hong Kong��s younger generation to recognise and identify with the culture of the Chinese nation is the most important task of education in Hong Kong��.64 This view was echoed by a Ming Pao editorial which proclaimed that ��the status of Chinese History should be strengthened rather than weakened��,65 while a columnist in the same paper lamented that ��the next generation will perhaps have no opportunity to receive comprehensive instruction in Chinese history, and will become tragically rootless citizens of the nation��.66 A traditionally pro-Beijing newspaper, Wen Wei Bao, conducted a survey of teachers of whom, it was claimed, 82.6 percent agreed with the propostion that ��retaining Chinese History�� was ��the most effective way of strengthening students�� sense of national identity��.67 The press campaign became increasingly well-orchestrated, and gave rise in early May to the formation of a ��Chinese History Education Society��, composed of school-teachers and sympathetic academics. Dr. Leung Ping-wah, the convener of the new group, spoke of the need ��to establish a strong premise that Chinese history is worthy of being a distinctive subject without any ambiguity��. The group also took the view that it should be made a compulsory subject.68
The retention of Chinese History��s status as an independent subject was justified by its defenders as essential to a post-colonial normalisation of Hong Kong��s school curriculum. As Ming Pao��s editorial writer put it,
��The vast majority of countries across the world emphasise the history of their own state, because this is an important means of promoting patriotism among the people. Many states in America make national history an independent subject in their schools, and the mainland and Taiwan make Chinese history a compulsory subject in secondary schools.��69
However, this appeal to international precedent conflicts with another type of argument often simultaneously advanced in defence of Chinese History, which sees it as a peculiarly Chinese discipline fundamentally incommensurable with history as practised, or experienced, in ��the West��. A feature article in Ming Pao expressed this view by arguing, in terms reminiscent of the ��Hong Kong culture as ��mongrel culture�� thesis�� (see Chapter 3), that combining ��Western�� and Chinese history within the humanities curriculum was analogous to ��extra-marital sex��.70 The writer claimed that it was impossible to teach ��Western�� and Chinese history together from a comparative perspective because China��s dynastic history was culturally too different from that of Europe, and could not be studied using the same chronological or conceptual categories, such as ��The Middle Ages��, ��the Renaissance�� or ��Empire��. This coincides with the views of Qian Mu, discussed in Chapter 1, regarding Chinese exceptionalism�Xas does another argument which holds that Chinese History is imbued with a uniquely Chinese ��moral spirit��. This argument was advanced by a District Councillor who took to the streets of Causeway Bay on April 9, campaigning for the retention of the Chinese History subject, and proclaiming that greater emphasis should be placed on describing the deeds of heroic individuals from China��s past.71
An attack on Chinese History traditionalists from a perhaps unexpected quarter came when the methods used for teaching the subject were attacked in an article by Cheng Kai-ming, a prominent local educationalist with close connections to the Tung adminstration. Cheng blamed the low status of Chinese History in Hong Kong schools on the way in which the subject is taught, and claimed that ��both students and teachers generally regard Chinese History as an extremely boring subject��. ��The proper study of Chinese history,�� he declared, ��requires a new method��:
��Some friends do not agree. They believe that every dynasty and every emperor must be studied one by one, and that it is necessary to memorise every era and every event. From time immemorial [they say], this has been a way of preserving the national culture. If it is not done like this, then tradition will be destroyed and individuals will have no cultural identity.
��However, time waits for no man. Times change, students change, and the study of Chinese history must also change. The mainland and Taiwan have both been exploring new ways of teaching Chinese history. There are abundant historical and cultural resources in our society, and there is no reason why Hong Kong cannot also move in a new direction. Why cannot
Hong Kong��s historians perform such a service for our primary and
secondary school students?��72
As a member of the Education Commission, Cheng was closely associated with the moves to promote putonghua and IT that, according to Lee Chihung, occassioned the curricular squeeze which originally gave rise to the New History proposal.
Nevertheless, Cheng��s intervention did not signal any abandonment by the administration itself of the overriding priority of promoting ��national consciousness��, and there was no sustained attempt to face down the opposition of Chinese History teachers. On the contrary, after the initial media furore of 2000, the development of the ��New History�� subject followed a pattern reminiscent of the fate Social Studies during the 1970s, which, after an initial burst of publicity, sank down the list of the ED��s priorities and was eventually adopted, in watered-down form, by a relatively small number of schools (see Chapter 2). Responsibility for developing the new subject�X renamed ��History and Culture�� (after some objections that the title ��New History�� reflected British influence)73�Xpassed to the former Chinese History subject officer, Wong Ho-chiu. It was piloted at junior level in four secondary schools as a ��seed project on Alternative Mode of Curriculum Organization��, all schools using Chinese rather than English to teach the subject. Local history featured in the content of the piloting materials, along with Chinese history and world history (once again effectively synonymous with ��western�� history). However, the emphasis was on ��the origin of Chinese and western cultures, their characteristics, interaction as well as the development of human civilization��. Developing a sense of ��belonging towards the country�� appeared in the list of aims, along with that of developing ��independent and critical thinking skills towards historical events and a positive outlook on life��.74 The teaching materials produced for the piloting exercise suggested that the content of the subject would be heavily weighted toward Chinese history�Xfar more so than was originally envisaged by Lee Chi-hung.75
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The likelihood of ��History and Culture�� taking the place of the separate subjects of History and Chinese History would appear to be extremely small, particularly given the resistance to this by the Chinese History subject community. It seems destined, rather, to take its place in the succession of well-intentioned but ultimately ��symbolic�� initiatives that have characterised education policy in Hong Kong both before and since retrocession. An adminstration enjoying only weak public legitimacy, and which has nailed its own colours so firmly to the mast of Chinese ��patriotism��, is ill-placed to tackle an entrenched vested interest group that has made the promotion of that sense of ��patriotism�� its very raison d��etre.
It is therefore through History and Chinese History that the vast majority of local students continue to learn about the local, national and global past. More attention has been devoted in this chapter than in previous ones to Chinese History, and it should be borne in mind that this subject has always been studied by far more students than History�Xperhaps as many as double the number. In addition, the majority of students who study History also study Chinese History. As a result, the increasingly ethno-centric, homogenising and triumphalist discourse of ��national identity�� promoted since 1997 through the latter subject, to the exclusion of any distinctive ��Hong Kong�� identity, enjoys widespread currency in local schools.
The 1997 change in policy on medium of instruction, favouring Chinese over English in most schools, was a highly welcome development for curriculum developers involved with the History subject, who had long seen the language problem as one of the greatest barriers to the realisation of the skills-based approach they favoured. However, following a trend established well before 1997 (see previous chapter), political considerations have continued to intrude upon the curriculum development process, thwarting efforts to insert into curricular proposals explicit references to ��controversial�� themes, and thus undermining attempts to confront students with issues that would exercise their ��critical thinking�� skills in a really meaningful and relevant context. Meanwhile, the change in language policy has failed to dent the rationale for maintaining the division between the two history subjects, since Chinese History has strengthened its role as the vehicle for a vision of Hong Kong people as members of an undifferentiated Chinese volksgemeinschaft.
History has been influenced by the same nationalist agenda, though in stark contrast to Chinese History this has gone against the grain of curriculum development, and tensions have emerged between the ��nation-building�� aims imposed on the subject from above, and the focus on critical and analytical skills that, for curriculum developers, has come above all else to define their subject. Their status as government officials, accountable directly to the civil service hierarchy, makes it impossible for subject officers at the CDI in particular to resolve such tensions by exercising the sort of critical autonomy that they expect of History teachers and students. Given the highly unpropitious political circumstances in which they have had to work, it is remarkable how far they have managed to go in developing a curriculum that addresses contemporary themes, and that gives considerable prominence to local history.
Efforts have been made to avoid producing an overly-prescriptive draft HKCE curriculum, out of an awareness that textbook publishers tend to follow all such drafts religiously. Curriculum developers may hope that private textbook publishers will, in filling in the gaps in the content outline for Hong Kong and China, exercise more autonomy and imagination than they themselves dared venture in the drafting of the outline itself. However, if past experience is any guide�Xas many historians claim it can be�Xthen the prospects for publishers adopting a provocative, critical approach to controversial issues must seem minimal. The importance of the official textbook screening process means that there is little chance that publishers will venture where no CDI official has gone before, and these officials�� status as government functionaries means in turn that they cannot, even implicitly, question the post-1997 orthodoxy on such issues as Hong Kong��s ��colonial�� status, or the existence and nature of a distinct ��Hong Kong people��. Government officials cannot effectively act both as poachers and gamekeepers, but that is precisely what the curriculum development system as currently constituted requires of the officials responsible for the History subject.
Chapter 8 Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCHOOL SUBJECT OF HISTORY IN HONG KONG cannot be explained by reference to simplistic or deterministic notions of ��culture�� or ��colonialism��, although, as has been noted in previous chapters, the uncritical acceptance of such notions continues to inform much public discussion of history teaching. After summarising the main findings of the present study, this concluding chapter therefore addresses their implications for interpretations of the roles of ��colonialism��, ��culture�� and identity in the history curriculum. The state of the local tradition of History education in the post-1997 period is analysed, highlighting the tensions and problems within it that remain unresolved. Many of these tensions relate to the long-standing division between History and Chinese History, and the political and cultural assumptions that both produced that division, and have been reinforced by it. The ��colonial�� origins of both history subjects are demonstrated, and it is argued that Hong Kong��s return to China has in fact strengthened, rather than removed, the collaborative imperative that characterised the ��colonial�� process of curriculum development. Demands for ��post-colonial�� history teaching to be made more culturally ��authentic�� are anyway shown to be something of a red herring, since they wrongly assume the existence of a single, monolithic, homogenous Chinese culture. The difficulty of promoting a critical, liberal vision of history teaching in Hong Kong has had, it is argued, less to do with ��culture�� or ��colonialism�� conceived in essentialist terms, than with a political context that has always been and remains illiberal and undemocratic.
SUMMARY
1 �XCHANGES TO CURRICULUM CONTENT
It has been emphasised throughout this study that the nature of the History curriculum cannot be understood without reference to the existence and role of the separate subject of Chinese History. This division, which for some has come to symbolise the essential incommensurability of ��Chinese�� and ��world�� cultures, was in fact a product of the colonial politics of 1950s Hong Kong, as outlined in Chapter 4. It arose in part out of a recognition that, while most other school subjects were taught through the medium of English, it made little educational or political sense to use English to teach the history of China to Chinese students�Xparticularly when, in contrast to the situation in some other colonies, there was a long and proud indigenous historiographical tradition. However, the government was also anxious to prevent the spread in local schools of the destabilising ideologies of Communism and Guomindang Nationalism, and to promote instead a depoliticised, sanitised version of Chineseness, quarantined from the modern world. Classically trained, and mainly Nationalist scholars, refugees from the turmoil on the mainland, willingly collaborated in the production of syllabuses, both for Chinese History and for the Chinese-language subjects generally, that encapsulated an idealised and homogenised vision of Chinese culture.1
This separation effectively denied to the History subject the principal function performed by school history curricula worldwide�Xthat of teaching students about their national past. In the 1950s and 1960s, History at all levels of the curriculum for the elitist Anglo-Chinese schools provided students with a perspective on world history which was almost entirely European, and largely British. Some Asian, Chinese and even Hong Kong history was included in syllabuses, but here too the focus was primarily on the ��discovery�� of these areas by Europeans, and on the influence of Europeans on their subsequent development. The history of Hong Kong, though included in syllabuses, was seldom taught, and was equated with the history of the British administration of the territory. Hong Kong history was widely seen as colonial history, reflecting the weakness of any distinctive Hong Kong identity amongst the largely refugee population.
There was therefore until about 1970 a certain symmetry or even symbiosis about the official curriculum for the two history subjects: Chinese History was unapologetically sinocentric and antiquarian in its coverage of China, while History adopted a Eurocentric or Anglocentric approach to the more modern global past. One subject recounted the triumph of the modern West over everyone else, while the other salved indigenous pride by celebrating the glories of traditional Chinese civilization. Neither encroached significantly on the territory of the other.
The curriculum for Chinese History was to remain virtually unchanged until the 1990s. Language and politics contributed to the insulation of the subject from developments that were taking place in history teaching outside Hong Kong. Chinese History teachers were also able to claim a role for themselves as the defenders of Chinese culture within a school curriculum otherwise heavily influenced by overseas models. The furious allegations of a colonial conspiracy to ��erase Chinese culture��, which in 1975 greeted a proposal to include elements of Chinese history in a Cantonese-medium Social Studies course, were sufficient to deter the government for the next quarter of a century from any further attempt to impose change on the Chinese History subject.
The subject of History, by contrast, witnessed a series of efforts from the 1970s onwards to reform both the content and aims of its curriculum. These attempts at reform reflected a feeling, on the part of some administrators and academics, that the advent of mass secondary education required a new justification of history teaching in utilitarian and pedagogical terms. There was a consciousness that History teachers would no longer be able to rely to the same degree on a captive audience of highly-motivated ��elite�� students, happy to study academic subjects geared principally to the requirements of university entrance. Reforms to the History curriculum therefore sought to make the content of syllabuses more relevant to students, while at the same time placing a new emphasis on History��s utility in training students in transferable ��skills�� such as the critical analysis of evidence.
As was the case with the introduction of Social Studies, much of the inspiration for these changes to official History syllabuses came from developments overseas, particularly in Britain and America. Hong Kong��s History subject owed its origins to a British history-teaching tradition, and British practice continued to be regarded as a natural point of reference by those involved in developing the local History curriculum. Faced with a need to re-assert the importance of their subject in a changing educational and social context, officials and academics responsible for History looked to the curricular and pedagogical innovations being attempted in Britain and America, where mass access to secondary education had already given rise to problems resembling some of those which now confronted them.
At the same time�Xfrom the late 1960s and early 1970s onwards�Xthe most obviously ��colonial�� features of Hong Kong��s History syllabuses began rapidly to disappear. Coverage of British history was drastically reduced, and the history of Hong Kong was removed almost entirely. Syllabuses, though they remained largely Eurocentric, began to reflect and advocate a more global and thematic approach to history. In Chapter 4 it was remarked that in Britain itself a triumphalist attitude to the national past, and in particular to the history of the Empire, was giving way, amongst many teachers of history at any rate, to feelings of embarrassment and guilt regarding the record of British imperialism. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, the riots of 1966 and 1967 served to underline the weakness of the colonial government��s legitimacy, and gave rise over the following decade or more to a policy of downplaying the colonial nature of the administration, while fostering a sense of identification with and commitment to Hong Kong. However, the new taboo regarding ��colonialism��, and the sensitivity of Hong Kong��s relationship with mainland China, meant that the study of Hong Kong��s history would for many years play no part in developing a sense of local belonging amongst secondary school students.
Official syllabuses for History thus came increasingly to espouse liberal values of tolerance for different points of view, and a belief in the importance of cultivating a capacity for critical, independent thought. These were allied to the promotion of pedagogical techniques such as the use of role play, discussion groups, exercises in the analysis of sources, and project work. In this respect, Hong Kong syllabuses were similar to British ones, and reflected the extent to which local curriculum developers both looked to overseas precedents when drafting syllabuses, and shared many of the liberal attitudes of their foreign counterparts. The realisation of this liberal vision of history teaching in schools was constrained by many factors�Xsome common to Britain and America, but others, such as those associated with teaching through a second-language medium, more peculiar to Hong Kong. However, besides such technical hindrances to implementation, the existence of Chinese History, and the changing relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China, placed local syllabus drafters under a quite unique set of political pressures.
While the new fashion overseas for emphasising the importance of ��skills�� in history teaching provided curriculum developers with a strategy for defending the status of their subject within the local curriculum, the need to distinguish its nature and purpose from that of Chinese History led them to place special stress on this as the principle raison d��etre of History. It was noted in Chapter 1 that history syllabuses in Britain have continued, in addition to the new emphasis on ��skills��, to acknowledge the role of history teaching in providing students with an awareness�Xalbeit an increasingly critical one�Xof their national identity. In Hong Kong, by contrast, the subject of Chinese History existed to supply students with an uncritical, depoliticised vision of their national-cultural identity. In default of any similar role for History in fostering a sense of identity, other than a vague and rootless concept of global citizenship, the rhetoric of official syllabuses came to adopt what, in international terms, was a rather extreme reliance on justification-by-��skills��. This is not to imply that curriculum developers�� belief in the importance of ��skills�� was insincere, but the peculiarities of Hong Kong��s political situation and education system prevented them from balancing their emphasis on ��skills�� with other aims.
In Chapters 5 and 6 it was noted that moves afoot by the late 1980s to re-introduce local history into History syllabuses marked a significant change in this respect. Local history was promoted by its advocates primarily as a means of providing more and better opportunities for the practice of teaching and learning methods�Xsuch as the analysis of primary sources and project work�Xthat curriculum developers had long been encouraging. It was also seen as a means of introducing students to aspects of social and economic history which had traditionally been neglected in local syllabuses. However, the decision to proceed with the development of a Hong Kong history syllabus coincided with the emergence of an increasingly assertive sense of a distinctive local identity amongst the population at large during the territory��s transition to Chinese rule. For this very reason, the inclusion of local history in what was generally regarded as a ��World History�� course, rather than in Chinese History, outraged those who insisted that Hong Kong had always been and forever would remain part of a monolithic ��Great Chinese National Family��.2
The previous two chapters have shown how the fear of provoking controversy has had a very noticeable impact on the character of syllabuses published over the past decade. The extent to which the political climate has continued to define the parameters of acceptable curriculum content has been particularly evident in the treatment of topics relating to Hong Kong and mainland China. While the most recent draft syllabus guidelines have shown signs of a greater willingness to deal openly with the issue of Britain��s role in Hong Kong��s development, the relationship with mainland China, along with all aspects of post-1949 Chinese history, is still a minefield of political sensitivity through which curriculum developers pick their way with extreme caution. In addition, the greater coverage of social and economic issues has generally not encouraged a critical approach either to Hong Kong��s capitalist system, or the mainland��s communist one. Therefore, although the re-introduction of local history had been planned partly with the intention of providing students with more opportunities to exercise their critical and analytical skills, in official syllabuses it is with respect to local and mainland Chinese history that a critical approach has been least in evidence.
The avoidance of controversial issues, particularly those relating to recent Chinese history, has long been a feature of history textbooks as well as syllabuses. Although there is no evidence that outright censorship of textbooks has been practised over the past thirty years, authors and publishers have generally avoided testing the limits of ED tolerance, and textbook interpretations have tended to closely match those suggested in official syllabuses and teaching guides. This pattern has remained largely unchanged through the period of transition to Chinese rule, and as the parameters of acceptable syllabus content have shifted, so those of textbook content have followed. However, the approach of the handover brought with it an intense politicisation of local and Chinese history that contrasted with the avoidance or depoliticisation of the previous two decades. In this uncertain and somewhat menacing political climate, some publishers or authors have appeared especially concerned to ensure that the content of their textbooks conforms to a rigid interpretation of the ��one China�� principle. The same pressures, as well as a concern to limit the extent of textbook revisions, has prompted the ED to issue guidelines to publishers making more explicit the parameters of acceptable content, as regards topics relating to Hong Kong��s (and Taiwan��s) relationship with the rest of China. ��Guided self-censorship�� therefore more accurately characterises the nature of political influence over textbook production in particular.
The treatment of Hong Kong and mainland history in syllabuses, and the relationship between the two subjects of History and Chinese History, need to be seen in the broader context of official representations of the local and Chinese past. The return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule has brought with it the expectation on the part of pro-Beijing elements that history will be used to promote an uncritical, state-centred patriotism amongst local people. This view has been aired, for example, in discussions over what approach should be followed in selecting content for Hong Kong��s new Museum of History, discussed in Chapter 3. While those responsible for Chinese History have appeared keen to meet this expectation, and have revised their syllabuses accordingly, developers of the History curriculum, with their more liberal and internationalist outlook, have been reluctant to follow. Though they appear to have seen the omission of controversial issues as prudent, given the prevailing political climate, they have been aware that the promotion of uncritical patriotism would run directly counter to the overall ethos of their subject.
The curriculum for History has thus displayed, perhaps more clearly than that for any other single subject, the conflicting demands that have been placed on secondary education by the post-retrocession administration. The Chief Executive himself has repeatedly referred to history��s usefulness in fostering patriotism, while he and his advisors have also stressed the importance of teaching students to be creative and analytical. The fate of the ��New History�� initiative is a testament to the ��disarticulated�� nature of education policy-making in the ��new�� Hong Kong SAR, and with its apparent sidelining it is primarily in the curricula for History and Chinese History that an indication of the balance of the government��s educational priorities must be sought. As was noted in the previous chapter, it appears clear that the promotion of a predominantly happy, patriotic vision of local and national history, in which Hong Kong��s historical identity is portrayed almost entirely as a derivative off-shoot of a totalised and homogenous ��Chinese�� past, has tended to take precedence over the pursuit of a thoroughly critical, liberal vision of history education.
2 �XTHE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Political considerations have clearly played an important role in setting the parameters of acceptable content in official syllabuses, but there was little evidence, at least between the 1970s and the mid-1990s, of direct interference in the syllabus drafting process by the senior levels of the government��s bureaucracy. In the more politically turbulent period of the 1950s and 1960s the colonial authorities intervened to ensure that syllabuses for Chinese History and Civics (later EPA) promoted a thoroughly depoliticised sense of Chinese and local identity. By the 1970s, depoliticisation appears to have become so institutionalised in the local education system that interventions of this kind became largely unnecessary. It is possible that confidential documents yet to be released from the government��s archives may reveal a greater degree of active government manipulation of school syllabuses than currently appears to have been the case. However, the available evidence indicates that the agencies and officials responsible for developing the History curriculum have enjoyed considerable formal autonomy.3
In Chapters 4 and 5 it was shown that the power of such officials has tended to grow with the increasing bureaucratisation of the curriculum development process since the 1970s. The assumption by the government of the responsibility for providing mass secondary education brought a new drive to rationalise and bureaucratise the previously more informal arrangements for consultation over syllabus and examinations policy. A highly formal consultation process, involving most of the major stakeholders�Xteachers, university academics, and officials from the ED and HKEA�Xwas established, making the curriculum development process appear more open and inclusive than before. The organisation by officials of teacher seminars, and the canvassing of teachers�� opinions on curriculum changes through questionnaires, also became increasingly common. The process nonetheless remained highly centralised and top-down, and the initiative for curriculum reform stayed firmly in the hands of the ED and HKEA subject officers.
The fact that officials potentially wielded such influence did not determine whether or how they would use it. In Chapter 5 it was noted that officials responsible for Chinese History continued for almost three decades to defer to the authority of one professor in the Chinese Department at HKU, whose main concern seems to have been the preservation of the existing curriculum. If certain academics at the History Department of HKU had been able to maintain a similar level of authority, the development of the History curriculum might have exhibited a similar inertia. However, the activism of several key officials, and the sympathy of a number of academics, helped to ensure that this was not so. Whereas conservative academics retained control over the Chinese History curriculum, by the late 1980s the influence over History syllabuses of those who saw the school curriculum first and foremost as a preparation for their university courses had been greatly reduced.
In Chapter 5 it was also shown how the decline of the influence of academic historians as a group over the development of the subject was linked to the impact of the shift to mass secondary education on History��s popularity and status. This shift affected History far more severely than Chinese History, and led to growing concerns about a decline in candidatures for the subject. Attempts to halt this, as noted earlier, focused on the promotion of a more ��skills��-based and student-centred approach, the re-introduction of local history, and the teaching of more modern periods of world�Xand increasingly also of Chinese�Xhistory. The use of English for teaching the subject was identified by curriculum developers as a key reason for History��s declining popularity amongst a student population whose level of proficiency in that language was also perceived to be falling. However, as explained in Chapter 2, societal demand for English-medium education deterred the colonial government, always conscious of its weak legitimacy, from compelling schools to teach in English, and attempts by the ED to persuade schools to switch to mother-tongue instruction proved ineffective. This situation changed in 1997, when the incoming administration felt sufficiently confident to opt for compulsion where persuasion had failed, but a ��final solution�� to the language problem continued to prove elusive.
There was little that individual subject officers, still less academics or teachers, could do to influence overall policy on the medium of instruction. By contrast, individuals, and especially officials, could and did play a highly significant role in shaping the curriculum for the subject of History. The introduction of DBQs, which was aimed both at promoting the teaching of ��skills�� and at limiting the linguistic demands on examination candidates, might not have happened when it did had it not been for the energetic efforts of Patrick Wong. The re-introduction of local history was also the result of a personal initiative on the part of D.C.Lam and, more particularly, Jane Cheng of the Advisory Inspectorate. The support given by academics such as Anthony Sweeting and Elizabeth Sinn to these initiatives, and their assistance both in lobbying for their adoption and in producing teaching materials, was also crucial. Personal, informal connections amongst these individuals, such as the friendship between Sinn and Cheng, the teacher-student relationship between Sweeting and Wong, Cheng and Lee Chi-hung, or the relationships established between Sweeting and Cheng, Julian Leung or Flora Kan as fellow teacher educators at HKU, also helped to build and shape the consensus for change. The interviews conducted in the course of this research conveyed a clear impression of the continuing importance of such informal networks.
What the interviews also revealed was the extent to which most of the individuals involved in the development of the History curriculum shared very similar backgrounds and values. Almost all of them were graduates of the older Anglo-Chinese, and often Christian, schools, which they had attended in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s when secondary education was still the privilege of a relatively small elite. Most had also studied history at the University of Hong Kong, and had done their teacher training there during the 1970s or 1980s, under the supervision of Anthony Sweeting, Julian Leung or Jane Cheng. The high value they placed on critical and independent thinking was reflected in a generally liberal-democratic political outlook. However, as already noted, this has not generally led them, at least in their syllabuses, to adopt a very critical approach to the political history of Hong Kong or modern China, to Hong Kong��s capitalist system, or to the mainland��s communist one. Anthony Sweeting has been more willing than most to push openly for a more unreservedly critical attitude to local history in History syllabuses.
Sweeting��s comparative radicalism is not, I would argue, a reflection of any essential ��cultural�� difference between him and his local Chinese counterparts, nor does it imply that their espousal of liberal values has been hypocritical or false. As noted in Chapter 6, Lee Chi-hung has suggested that the social and educational background of many key players in the curriculum development process helps account for the cautious, conservative, pro-status quo orientation of the local history package of the early 1990s. However, the fact that Lee himself, while possessing a similar social and educational background to other members of the Local History Working Group, has tended to adopt a rather more daring approach to content selection (as demonstrated in the early drafts of the new syllabus for Secondary 4�V5), serves as a warning against the assumption of any deterministic link between socio-economic status or educational background and political stance. Similarly, any expectation that Sweeting, by virtue of being British, would automatically favour a more pro-British slant on local or world history than his local colleagues, is contradicted by the evidence. The contrast between the radicalism displayed by Sweeting, and the relative caution exercised by local educational officials, including Lee, may be best explained by the understanding on the part of the latter of their inescapably collaborative role�Xa role from which Sweeting, largely by virtue of his expatriate status, has been exempt. The relationship between curriculum development and the politics of collaboration in Hong Kong is examined further below.
Those responsible for the development of the History subject have been educated in a liberal tradition of history teaching which has its origins in Britain. However, their relationship to this tradition has neither been one of simple dependence, nor of unquestioning deference. The HKEA has continued periodically to send examination papers and scripts to London for vetting, but the main concern has been to secure wider overseas recognition for local qualifications. The advice proffered by London��s examiners has routinely been criticised or ignored by the local subject committees, and dissatisfaction with the vetting arrangements led in 1998 to a decision to switch from the London to the Cambridge Examinations Board. Reforms to the local curriculum, such as the promotion of a thematic, global approach, and the introduction of DBQs, have been largely inspired by practice overseas, especially in England. Nonetheless, the use made of ideas from overseas has been selective and, as in the case of DBQs, they have been picked up as ready-made solutions to problems faced in the local context, not simply copied from or imposed by overseas agencies. Local curriculum developers have looked to English or American practice with an eye to adopting or adapting whatever in that practice might help to boost the effectiveness of history teaching in Hong Kong, and the popularity of the History subject.
At the same time, officials have looked to a far lesser extent to local teachers for suggestions as to how the curriculum might be reformed and, when they have done so, the response has not generally been very constructive. Although, since the 1970s, teachers have been increasingly involved on official curriculum committees and working parties, and have been informed and consulted more thoroughly regarding the nature of proposed changes, the role of the History teaching profession in general has remained passive and reactive. The highly centralised, administrative pattern of curriculum development established since the 1950s has helped to produce, and has in turn been reinforced by, an expectation on the part of teachers that any major initiative for change would come from the ED. No subject association for History teachers existed until 1999, and it remains to be seen whether the new ��Hong Kong History Educators Society�� will be able to establish itself as a broad-based and assertive professional body.4 Though, as noted in Chapter 6, teachers, and teacher members of subject committees, have in recent years tended to become more assertive and outspoken, their main concerns have usually been to shorten syllabuses, minimise content change, and secure more support in terms of teaching resources from the ED and HKEA.
The position of these institutions regarding the provision of such resources has been ambivalent. On the one hand, officials have lamented the poor quality of many commercially-produced textbooks and the ineffectiveness of the quality-control mechanisms at their disposal. At the same time, the ED has sought to maintain a strict division between the work of drafting official syllabuses, and that of writing textbooks�X partly out of a desire to reduce the opportunities for corruption, and partly in order to maintain a posture of political neutrality or ��laissez-faire�� regarding textbook content. Officials have also been reluctant to ��spoon-feed�� teachers, and have insisted that the latter should produce more of their own teaching materials. When DBQs were introduced at A�� level, a government-funded programme of in-service training for History teachers was organised, aimed largely at encouraging them to develop more materials of their own. The ED has nevertheless played an expanding role over the past decade or so in producing curriculum packages�Xthe main example being that for local history�X especially for use with junior forms. This increased intervention in the provision of teaching materials has reflected growing concern regarding the problems of curriculum implementation.
A more fundamental problem affecting the process of curriculum development itself lies in the very fact that it is an ��official�� process. In particular, as I have noted elsewhere, the status of the CDI as an organ of government rather than an autonomous entity makes it inevitable that political considerations that should be irrelevant to the question of what is ��best�� for education intrude upon the deliberations of curriculum committees.5 It is possible that the CDI might be better able to perform its primary function of reforming and developing the school curriculum if it was removed from the authority of the ED, and combined with the HKEA to form a quasi-autonomous ��Curriculum and Assessment Authority��. This arrangement would both remove the incoherent division between curriculum development and assessment policy that the existence of a separate HKEA entails, and might also, by liberating subject officers from direct accountability to the government��s bureaucratic hierarchy, enable them to pursue a more genuinely autonomous course. It must be admitted, however, that the political climate that has prevailed since 1997 makes the prospect of achieving such genuine autonomy appear more remote than ever.
HISTORY TEACHING, CULTURE AND COLONIALISM
The difficulty of establishing a critical, liberal tradition of history teaching in Hong Kong may appear to lend credence to the view that the approach that the History subject has promoted is, in some fundamental way, incompatible with the ��Chinese culture�� of the local community. The British origins of the school subject of History, and the continuing overseas influence on its development, are undeniable. This fact alone might lead some believers in ��cultural imperialism��, dependency theory or ��world systems�� theory to argue that the subject has represented a ��hegemonistic�� attempt to foist a ��Western�� approach to history onto people from another culture. What post-colonial Hong Kong needs, they would contend, is a more authentically Chinese approach to history teaching�Xone that, by reconnecting local students with their Chinese cultural roots, will liberate them from the intellectual shackles of colonialism. Chapter 7 has demonstrated that just such arguments have indeed been put forward in defence of the division between Chinese History and History in local schools.
The remainder of this chapter attempts to counter interpretations of this type by relating the findings of this research to the critique of determinist views of history, culture and educational development outlined in Chapter 1. An alternative interpretive framework is suggested, placing the relationship between colonialism, culture and the History curriculum in the context of the discussion, in Chapters 2 and 3, of Hong Kong��s political and educational systems and its distinctive local culture. The validity of the concept of an ��authentic��, homogenous Chinese culture is then re-examined, in the light of a comparison between the controversy over the fate of Chinese History in Hong Kong, and the ongoing debate over history and national identity in Taiwan. Finally, an assessment is made of the major practical and political tensions affecting efforts to promote a liberal, critical vision of history teaching in Hong Kong��s schools.
POLITICS, COLONIALISM AND HONG KONG��S TWO HISTORIES
The school subject of History originated in Hong Kong��s highly elitist Anglo-Chinese schools, and thus began life very much as a colonial British import. The development of its curriculum in the forty years up to 2002 continued, as this study has shown, to be very much influenced by overseas precedents, and especially by reforms to history teaching in Britain. Does it therefore follow that this subject has conveyed a ��colonial�� conception of history that threatens the preservation of Hong Kong��s essential cultural ��Chineseness��? Moreover, is it possible to distinguish meaningfully between those influences that are the product of ��colonialism�� and those which result from the free exchange of ideas across borders and between ��cultures��, however defined?
As was noted above, curriculum developers have been selective in their adoption of overseas-inspired innovations, and their main purpose in looking to history teaching practice abroad has been to find ideas that might help in adapting Hong Kong��s own History curriculum to the requirements of mass schooling. Their efforts might be seen, up to a point, as part of a struggle for curricular territory and resources, of the kind that Ivor Goodson has seen as fundamental to an understanding of the history of school subjects.6 However, whereas Goodson has described a sequence whereby subjects which have their origins in idealistic campaigns for pedagogical innovation later prostitute those ideals in a scramble for academic status, in the case of History�Xin Hong Kong, Britain and elsewhere�Xthe sequence appears to have been the other way around.7 The advent of mass secondary education has seen developers of History curricula in many countries attempt to make the subject less ��stuffy�� and academic, and more appealing to generations of students who take schooling for granted, and are less inclined than perhaps their parents were to suffer boredom in the pursuit of academic credentials.
Goodson tends to explain the history of school subjects principally as a struggle for status, control and resources between various ��stakeholders�� in the school curriculum, including politicians, teachers, academics, inspectors�Xor even social ��classes��. His ��social constructivist�� analysis sometimes verges on the deterministic in suggesting that the behaviour of these stakeholders is primarily informed by an obsession with the pursuit of ��power��. Thus the success or failure of school subjects in establishing or defending their status is seen in terms of the effectiveness of their ��discourses or legitimating rhetorics��,8 whose relationship to actual policy, let alone classroom practice, may be largely or even intentionally illusory. The present research has shown that, in the case of History in Hong Kong, the social and educational background of curriculum developers, their desire to preserve their curricular territory, and an official vision of history teaching sometimes far removed from classroom reality, have all played an important role in the development of the subject. Nonetheless, what tends to be neglected by interpretations of curriculum development which focus on the pursuit of ��power�� is the issue of whether those involved actually believed that they were doing more than furthering their own personal or class interests and, more importantly, whether there are any grounds for judging whether or not they were deluding themselves.
Many of those who have promoted new approaches to history teaching in Hong Kong have done so, like their counterparts in Britain or America, out of a genuine belief that the study of history ought to foster critical and analytical skills. They have also seen critical thinking skills, and a sceptical attitude to sources, as useful in discouraging intolerance and building values associated with liberal-democratic citizenship. As was discussed in Chapter 3, such values have in recent years commanded increasingly broad allegiance from Hong Kong��s expanding middle class. However, curriculum developers have been and continue to be faced with a political climate that is far from liberal or democratic. The political situation has led to little obvious or crude official interference, but has rather given rise to a general fear of provoking Communist China or ��rocking the boat�� locally. This fear has been evident in the especially cautious treatment of the history of Hong Kong and modern China in History syllabuses and textbooks.
Teachers of Chinese History and their supporters have consistently sought to emphasise the throroughbred Chineseness of their subject, explicitly or implicitly contrasting this with the ��foreign�� or ��colonial�� nature of History��s approach and perspective. This ignores the fact that the stigma of ��colonial�� origins attaches to Chinese History just as much as to History. Although its proponents see it as the essential embodiment of Chinese tradition, the Chinese History subject represents, if not an ��invented tradition��, then at least a particular approach to China��s past tailored to suit both the political needs of the colonial government and the ideological preferences of the conservative scholars who wrote it. The curriculum for Chinese History is simply one amongst many possible approaches taken by Chinese people to the history of China. Others have been and are being explored by teachers and curriculum developers in Taiwan, mainland China and, as this study has shown, among Chinese teachers of History in Hong Kong.
It would therefore be wrong to see the division between Hong Kong��s two history subjects in terms of a division between a ��colonial�� version of the past on the one hand and a ��Chinese�� version on the other. On the contrary, the nature of both subjects and the division between them are explicable by reference to Hong Kong��s collaborative political and social order, discussed in Chapter 2. During the last half-century of British rule, and especially from the late 1960s onwards, the authority of the colonial government was entirely dependent upon the collaboration of Hong Kong��s Chinese inhabitants, in particular the business and official elites, and on the acquiescence of the mainland government. Morris and Sweeting have shown how awareness of this situation led to the conscious depoliticisation of the school curriculum by the colonial authorities.9 Most curriculum developers and teachers, like the bulk of Hong Kong��s largely refugee population, accepted this depoliticisation because, like the colonial government itself, they knew that serious instability within Hong Kong, or any provocation of the mainland authorities, might bring about the replacement of British rule with rule from Beijing.
This collaborative imperative was crucial to the development of both history subjects, though it took the form of a tacit contract whose existence was seldom if ever acknowledged either by the government or by those directly involved in curriculum development. Chinese History existed to foster in local students a sense of pride in their Chinese cultural identity, but in a way which would involve no challenge to the legitimacy of the colonial authorities. The curriculum for Chinese History, as for the other Chinese subjects, therefore purveyed an idealised vision of an ancient and essentially changeless Confucian civilisation, ignoring the crisis which that civilisation was undergoing in contemporary China. Meanwhile, the History subject came by the 1970s to embody a vision of the modern world beyond China which, by avoiding substantial coverage of issues such as communism and colonialism, and offering instead a narrative of the progress of nationalism, liberalism, democracy, and international harmony, provided an almost equally idealised account of the recent global past. While the development of the subject drew its inspiration from American and British attempts to make history more challenging and stimulating, the promotion in Hong Kong of this new, more critical approach was effectively neutered by the requirements of depoliticisation. Other factors, such as the medium of instruction, the low level of teacher professionalism, and a deeply entrenched view of education as the transmission of received knowledge rather than ��skills��, all contributed to the difficulty of promoting such an approach to history in local schools. However, the neglect in syllabuses for both subjects of the history of modern China and of Hong Kong, and of communism and colonialism more generally, betrayed the crucial role played by politics in constraining curriculum developers. The avoidance of these topics exposed particular tensions within the History subject, since its developers claimed to place far more emphasis both on modern history, and on the adoption of a critical approach to it, than did their Chinese History counterparts.
Hong Kong��s transition from British to Chinese rule witnessed the emergence of a more assertive sense of local identity, while the expansion of the middle class brought with it the growth of a more vibrant civil society. Increased popular and scholarly interest in Hong Kong��s past helped to stimulate some support for the re-introduction of local history into History syllabuses, though the initiative of individual officials rather than any popular demand determined the timing of this move. However, despite significant reforms to syllabus content and assessment practices between the early nineties and the early ��naughties��, what is most striking is not the extent of the changes to History, but their limitations. Hong Kong��s gradual ��decolonisation�� has not liberated curriculum developers from the fetters of collaboration. On the contrary, as was noted in Chapter 2, local elites have had to adapt to the necessity of collaborating with the new sovereign power. For developers of the History curriculum this has meant that topics relating to the history of Hong Kong and China, which they have tried to place at the core of recent History syllabuses, have had to be handled with extreme caution. The very public pronouncements of Hong Kong��s post-handover leadership regarding the importance of ��patriotic�� history, and the highly politicised debate surrounding the new Museum of History, show how the parameters of acceptable content have become more explicit and rigid than was previously the case.
While the necessity of collaboration with the post-colonial regime has thus imposed more obvious constraints on those responsible for History curriculum development, it has been seen by their Chinese History rivals an opportunity to reassert the special status of their subject. Most Chinese History teachers and curriculum developers in Hong Kong have never demonstrated any real interest in the history of either Hong Kong or modern China, since their whole approach has been predicated upon a homogenous, state-centred vision of Chineseness to which both Hong Kong and Communist China are peripheral. Their preference for a traditionalist, ethno-centric, moralistic account of Chinese history was originally at odds with the Marxist interpretation favoured in mainland China. However, by the 1990s Beijing��s own propaganda had toned down its Communist orthodoxy, and the new official vision of the national past combined a celebration of the achievements of Chinese antiquity with an interpretation of the ��one China�� principle that stressed China��s immemorial homogeneity.10 In these circumstances, many of those involved with Chinese History appear to have accepted it as natural that their subject should assume the role of promoting Hong Kong��s cultural and spiritual re-integration with the ��motherland��.
To talk of the end of British rule as bringing a ��decolonisation�� of the local education system therefore obscures the fact that Hong Kong��s autonomy�Xin education policy as in much else�Xremains circumscribed by an unwritten collaborative contract underpinning the entire political system. Theories of neo-colonialism, cultural imperialism, or the ��hegemony�� of Western ��discourses�� do not account for the way in which the political climate has helped to shape the curricula for History and Chinese History since the 1960s. As was noted in Chapter 2, some recent studies on Hong Kong��s history have drawn upon Ronald Robinson��s ��excentric theory of imperialism�� in stressing the essentially collaborative foundations of colonial rule, and Robinson himself has argued that ��collaboration theory provides a measure for the post-colonial era��.11 If this measure is applied to History curriculum development in Hong Kong, what is most apparent is not any perpetuation of neo-colonial domination, but the gradual assumption by China of a ��colonial��-style authority far stronger than that exercised by the British over recent decades. Whereas collaboration with the British authorities involved tacit acceptance of certain taboos�Xespecially concerning colonialism and communism�Xthe new regime is seen as demanding more than the observance of negative prohibitions. In other words, while the British were more concerned with what was not taught, the PRC is more interested in what is taught. The ��repoliticisation�� of national history for the purpose of promoting uncritical patriotism has been particularly apparent in recent changes to Chinese History syllabuses and textbooks, but has also influenced the treatment of topics in History relating to Hong Kong and China.
While there is evidence that political pressures have caused some unease amongst developers of the History curriculum, the government��s ambitious programme of educational reforms has also thrown up the ��New History�� proposal (involving a merging of History and Chinese History), thus alienating the Chinese History teachers who have emerged as some of the most enthusiastic supporters of ��patriotic education��. The more interventionist stance adopted by the government in education policy as in other fields has reflected its greater confidence in its own authority, but, as was suggested in Chapter 2, there are growing signs that this confidence is misplaced. The new regime has felt itself to be representative of Hong Kong people in a way that its colonial predecessor was not, and did not claim to be. However, the incoherence or incompetence that has characterised some of the administration��s recent schemes�Xperhaps reflecting the ��disarticulation�� of the post-handover political system identified by Ian Scott�X12 has led to the increasing disaffection of a number of groups (including civil servants and teachers) on whose collaboration the government has traditionally depended. Hong Kong��s new rulers have ignored Robinson��s adage that ��the less the pro-consuls demanded of their mediators in the way of reform, the safer they were��.13 It remains to be seen whether this popular disaffection will grow or subside, or whether it will lead to any significant political changes, which, if they came, might produce a climate more conducive to the promotion in schools of a critical, liberal approach to history.
CHINESE HISTORY, IDENTITY AND CULTURALISM�X��ONE CHINA��, OR MANY?
As was noted in Chapter 1, liberal-democratic political institutions by no means guarantee the triumph of enlightenment and the banishment of bigotry in official representations of the national past. History��s importance to attempts to define national identity ensures that history teaching, and public debate over history more broadly, can often become highly politicised. For example, governments or political parties in democratic states as far apart as Britain, Australia and India have in recent years attempted, with varying degrees of success, to direct or manipulate public discussion of history in order to project a particular vision of national identity. However, despite such attempts, debate over history and history curricula in these countries remains significantly freer than under more authoritarian regimes such as those of Pakistan, Burma or China. In the latter, state ideology sets strict parameters within which historical debate must be conducted, so that history textbooks are compelled to accept a common vision of the nation��s historical origins, and to promote a homogenised sense of national identity, whether rooted in race, religion, political ideology, or a combination of all three.
Perceptions of national and cultural identity on the part of Hong Kong people, discussed in Chapter 3, have been complex and in some ways contradictory. On the one hand, Hongkongers have appeared increasingly eager to differentiate themselves from ��mainlanders��. Greater wealth, a distinctive Cantonese-based popular culture, and a liberal, cosmopolitan vision of Hong Kong as an ��international city�� have been key elements of this growing sense of local identity. Interest in local history has also risen, though the sense of ��Honkongeseness�� has generally been predicated more upon pride in Hong Kong��s present prosperity than upon any consciousness of a distinctive local past. Nevertheless, it is this vision of Hong Kong, as a prosperous, liberal, cosmopolitan ��international city�� that the History curriculum, despite political constraints, has come closest to reflecting.
On the other hand, as was also noted in Chapter 3, there is a widespread acceptance in Hong Kong of a vision of China as a monolithic ethno-cultural bloc. Attempts by Beijing to demand the unquestioning allegiance of Hong Kong people on the basis of ethnic loyalty alone may be largely ineffective, given the strong local antipathy to communism and suspicion of mainlanders in general. However, on issues such as the Diaoyutai Islands and the Belgrade Embassy Bombing, which involve tension between China and ��foreigners��, many local people and much of the local media demonstrate a strong residual attachment to what is frequently defined as ��the Chinese race��. Being Chinese for many Hong Kong people appears to mean being part of what Brown terms a ��cultural nation�� (as distinct from a ��political nation��)�X14 a concept of nationhood which has also been at the heart of the curriculum for Chinese History in local secondary schools.
In Chapter 1 it was shown how this ��primordial�� conception of nationalracial identity has its roots in the vision of China as an ��awakened�� nation-state promoted by nationalist leaders such as Sun Yat-sen. This was a blend of more traditional ethnic prejudices and political practice with neo-Darwinist conceptions of race and nation, which a century ago were still in vogue in Europe. For early Chinese nationalists, as for many of their European contemporaries, racially-defined nationalism was part of the natural order of things. Since history was widely conceived of as an epic racial struggle in which only the strongest would survive, nationalist ideology tended to emphasise the importance of unity, solidarity, and military strength. Their consciousness of China��s weakness led Chinese nationalists to give unity and strength all the greater priority, and this was reflected in their educational policies, and in particular in the promotion of putonghua as the single national language.
This approach to nationalism has remained prevalent in mainland China. Indeed, in the form of the ��one China principle��, it has become the central tenet of PRC state ideology. In Chapter 6, the generally uncritical treatment of the Italian and German, as well as the Chinese, national move-ments in History textbooks was taken as an indication of the influence which this view of nationalism as a ��good�� in itself has had on the teaching of History. Developers of the History curriculum have nonetheless been conscious of the way in which rigid adherence to the ��one China principle�� can involve twisting history�X for example as regards local archaeology, the issue of ��population influx��, or references to Taiwan�Xeven while they have felt compelled to connive in such distortions.
Those responsible for the Chinese History curriculum have demonstrated no similar misgivings. On the contrary, as was shown in Chapter 7, they have actively promoted a primordialist, essentialist view of Hong Kong��s Chineseness, proclaiming, for example, that ��from time immemorial�� the region has been part of ��the Great Chinese National Family��. In the debate over ��New History��, defenders of the separate status of the Chinese History subject appealed to a culturalist conception of Chineseness, arguing that only a subject that teaches China��s history in splendid isolation from the global past can truly reflect China��s cultural uniqueness. At the same time, they emphasised that in giving priority to the use of history for fostering ethnic loyalty they are merely doing what every other nation does. This not only ignores how far some states have in fact moved away from the nineteenth-century nationalism that still informs official historiography in China; it also contradicts the assertion that there is a single authentically Chinese approach to history. If China��s cultural essence is seen as determining that only one approach to the past qualifies as ��Chinese��, then any attempt to justify this approach by reference to what happens elsewhere is both irrelevant and incoherent.
The criticisms made by Brown, Hoffman and others of this kind of determinist or ��essentialist�� view of culture were discussed in Chapter 1, and so are not repeated in detail here. However, the belief in China��s cultural homogeneity and uniqueness is so widely held, and so central to arguments over how history should be taught to Chinese students, that it is worth reinforcing this critique with a brief discussion of attitudes to history, ethnicity and identity in a Chinese society other than Hong Kong: that of Taiwan.
In Taiwan, the Nationalist view of a monolithic cultural Chineseness was the state orthodoxy throughout most of the period of Guomindang rule. The government based its claim to legitimate authority over the whole of China (including, according to its definition of ��China��, Outer Mongolia) partly on the assertion that it, rather than the Communist regime, was the more faithful heir to ��the 5,000-year-old civilisation of which Taiwan has always been a part��.15 History lessons in Taiwan, like Chinese History lessons in Hong Kong, taught the whole 5,000-year narrative from a state-centred perspective, without any recognition of local variations. The history of Taiwan itself, like local history in Hong Kong, was seen as peripher-al and was not taught. Taiwanese were taught to see themselves, and their ancestors ��from time immemorial��, as members of a racially and culturally homogenous Chinese nation. Chinese languages other than Mandarin, which formed the native tongues of most of Taiwan��s Chinese inhabitants, were suppressed. The aboriginal Austronesian tribes, who until the seventeenth century had had the island largely to themselves, and who by 2000 were officially reckoned to number just over 400,000 (i.e. almost as numerous as Australia��s aborigines), were forcibly assimilated.16
The democratisation of Taiwan since the late 1980s has been accompanied by an increasingly open and vigorous public debate over Taiwanese history and identity. There are still those, particularly among the ageing mainlanders who came to the island with the Guomindang, who maintain that ��Taiwan is an integral part of a single and indivisible Chinese nation on the basis of a shared cultural and even biological heritage��.17 While their influence remains substantial, however, it is in steep decline. Whereas until the 1980s Mandarin was the only official language in Taiwan, and the use of minanhua18 or other languages was forbidden in schools and other government institutions, nowadays the increasingly widespread use of minanhua has come to symbolise the assertion of Taiwanese distinctiveness. Just as striking has been the growth of interest in the history and culture of the Austronesian tribes, with many Taiwanese now eager to rediscover (or perhaps, in some cases, to invent) their aboriginal roots. In the past few years, Taiwanese history, from pre-Chinese settlement times, through the incorporation of the island into the Qing Empire, to the Japanese colonial era and the period of Guomindang rule, has begun to be taught in schools.19
This new interest in Taiwanese history has of course been stimulated by the ongoing debate over the island��s political status. Identity has continued to be defined in largely ethnic terms, so that, for example, the keenness of many Taiwanese to establish their aboriginal ancestry has been linked to a desire to assert a new ethnically-based Taiwanese nationalism in opposition to the claims of Chinese nationalism.20 The Democratic Progressive Party, which won the 2000 presidential election, has traditionally promoted another variety of ethnic nationalism based on the claims of the Hoklo-Hakka majority to represent ��authentic�� Taiwaneseness.21 There thus remains a certain ��ambiguity or incoherence�� in much of the debate over identity in Taiwan, similar to that seen, according to David Brown, elsewhere in South-East Asia, since many parties and politicians ��claim somehow to offer equal citizenship rights to all citizens irrespective of cultural attributes, but�Kalso define the nation in cultural terms so as to give priority of some kind to those possessing the attributes of cultural nationhood��.22 However, another popular notion of Taiwaneseness�XPresident Lee Teng-hui��s formula of the ��New Taiwanese���Xcomes closer to political or liberal nationalism in taking as its principle rallying point not ethnic origin, but ��commitment to an island bent upon progress and exchange��.23
The rediscovery of Taiwanese history, and the open and vigorous debate over Taiwanese ethnicity and identity, has its origins, according to Allio, in ��the maturing of the democratic system�� there.24 The fact that this interest has been influenced by political ideologies and interests, and specifically by the problem of how to define Taiwan��s relationship with mainland China, does not invalidate the inquiry into the extent and nature of Taiwan��s distinctiveness. As Allio points out, ��ethnic groups�Kdo not exist a priori, but are interdependent realities that have been socially and symbolically constructed��.25 The notion of a culturally and racially homogenous Chinese nation was developed and elaborated a century ago by intellectuals concerned above all to strengthen a sense of unity and solidarity in the face of the threat posed by the modern West and Japan. Their vision of a monolithic ethno-cultural China, which forms the basis of PRC claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, has been challenged in its turn by Taiwanese determined to show how their history and culture, as well as their wealth and their political system, set them apart from the Chinese mainland. The fact that this is no longer a staged debate between two authoritarian regimes, but a free one conducted in an open society, has meant that multiple conceptions not only of Chineseness, but also of Taiwaneseness, have emerged. There are signs that a recognition of ethnic diversity, previously seen as threateningly divisive by both Nationalist and Communist regimes, is giving rise in Taiwan to a more tolerant, democratic, multi-ethnic conception of national ��belonging��.
By comparison with the Taiwanese controversy over history, culture and identity, debate over such issues in Hong Kong has been muted. The assumption of a monolithic cultural Chineseness not only goes unchallenged in history syllabuses and textbooks, but is also largely unquestioned in the local media, as coverage of the ��New History�� proposal has demonstrated. A number of factors may help to account for the relative strength of this belief in Hong Kong. As was noted in Chapter 3, the development of a strong sense of local identity has been quite recent in Hong Kong, which until the 1970s was a largely refugee society. By contrast, most of Taiwan��s population has roots on the island stretching back well over one hundred years. In addition, the isolation of Hong Kong from broader Chinese politics�XCommunist or Nationalist�Xand the experience of colonial rule, encouraged the adoption of a cultural ��Chinese identity in the abstract��,26 epitomised by the secondary school curriculum for Chinese History. This tended to foster a highly sentimental identification with an idealised Chinese nation, most dramatically expressed in the massive local pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989 organised in support of the ��patriotic democratic movement in China��. Indeed, elements in the local intelli-gentsia continue to evince a certain ambivalence concerning the status of local popular culture, which they persist in seeing as the ��bastard�� or ��mongrel�� offspring of Chinese and Western cultures, and thus as inferior to ��pure�� Chinese culture (the source or location of which remains unclear).
However, the crushing of the student movement in 1989 shattered much of this local ��pan-Chinese�� idealism, and in sealing the alienation of local people from the mainland regime, helped to further reinforce their sense of Hong Kong��s distinctive identity. The setback to local hopes of democratisation, and the subsequent rise in tension between Britain and China, were also crucial in shaping the political climate of Hong Kong during the 1990s. It has been emphasised throughout the present study that an appreciation of this tense and uncertain political situation is essential to an understanding of why the developers of the History curriculum acted in the way that they did. It explains why, despite their evidently liberal and democratic values, and their belief in the importance of critical thinking, they nonetheless balked at criticism of almost all the most contentious issues in the history of Hong Kong and modern China. It has been the political pressure to collaborate, rather than any mystic Chinese cultural essence, that has led museum curators, textbook publishers, and developers of the curricula for both History and Chinese History, to maintain a taboo regarding criticism of the ��one China principle��.
Far more research needs to be done on the development of history teaching and curricula in both Taiwan and mainland China, and on Chinese historiography more generally. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that when some supporters of Hong Kong��s Chinese History subject appeal to a monolithic, culturalist vision of Chineseness, they are being, so to speak, more Catholic than the Pope. Not only in Taiwan, but in mainland China too, there have in recent years been attempts to reform history curricula, largely influenced by overseas practice.27 While on the mainland the political climate has prevented the adoption of a genuinely critical approach to history in official syllabuses, textbooks or classrooms, in Taiwan there is already, as noted above, an open and critical public debate over history and national identity. The fact that this debate is being conducted freely and publicly between parties with radically differing viewpoints makes it more likely that Taiwanese curriculum developers, teachers and students will feel free to adopt a similarly open and critical attitude. By contrast, the way in which Hong Kong��s political climate has set narrow parameters for this debate continues to make it if not impossible, then at least much less likely that officials, textbook publishers or teachers will risk practising the critical approach that they preach.
DEMOCRACY AND THE ��CRAFT�� OF HISTORY IN HONG KONG
Although the division of the school history curriculum into two entirely separate subjects may be unique to Hong Kong, this has arisen out of a specific set of historical circumstances, and is not a reflection of any ineffable cultural schism between ��East�� and ��West��. Those who promote an ethno-centric, culturalist approach to history are not expressing a purely or essentially Chinese perspective, but are rather speaking the international language of populist nationalism. Conversely, the sort of critical approach to the past that developers of the History curriculum have attempted to encourage, far from being incompatible with ��Chinese culture��, is a reflection of the culture and values of these Chinese Hongkongers�Xnone the less ��authentically�� Chinese for having been influenced by ideas from overseas.
The preoccupation with achieving cultural ��authenticity�� in approaches to the past is far from unique to China. As was noted in Chapter 1, there has in recent years been a growing tendency amongst historians, educationalists and others in what is commonly termed ��the West�� to ��essentialise�� culture, and to accord to it the sort of determining role that Marxists typically give to socio-economic forces. Foremost amongst those who have treated culture in this way have been those influenced by postmodernist or post-structuralist ideas. Following thinkers such as Foucault, they have reacted against attempts by Marxists and others to explain history or culture ��scientifically�� by proclaiming the hopelessness of any search for ��truth��, and adopting instead the Nietszchean model of ��genealogy��. Postmodernists in Western countries have generally adopted a left-wing stance, and have therefore attacked historical accounts which they see as elite-oriented, Eurocentric or otherwise tending to favour ��hegemonic�� interests. However, some postmodernist approaches to ��multi-culturalism�� have themselves been criticised by Brown for fostering an intolerant ��micro-fascism��, while a number of scholars in mainland China have deployed postmodernist arguments in an attempt to reinforce their case for the incommensurability of Chinese culture.28 In Chapter 7 it was noted that such ideas have also influenced arguments in defence of the separate status of the Chinese History subject in Hong Kong.
The challenge posed by postmodernism has forced historians, philosophers and educationalists in countries such as Britain, America and Australia to reflect upon and defend their practice in a way in which historians, in particular, have not previously been prone to do. It was argued in Chapter 1 that Alasdair MacIntyre��s model of a craft tradition, also implicit in R.G.Collingwood��s philosophy, provides the best model of what history is and what it is for. This vision of history as a ��craft�� differs not only from the genealogical approach of Nietszche, Foucault and their intellectual heirs, but also from the ��encyclopaedic�� tradition of positivist social science. It conceives of truth and best practice not in absolute terms, but in relation to a living tradition of enquiry concerning ��the good��. History is, in this view, not just one amongst many academic disciplines, since a historical perspective is integral to any and every ��craft tradition��. Nor is history simply a mountain of accumulated ��facts�� which, taken together, provide us with a true picture of the past. Discovering the truth about the past may be the ��telos�� of history as a discipline, but what the student needs most of all to understand is how knowledge of the past is possible, why it is important, and what is involved in being a good historian.
Despite the fact that relatively few historians and educationalists make reference to Collingwood or MacIntyre, or even appear to have read them, the challenge of defending history against the postmodernist critique, and that of justifying its status as a school subject, have resulted in the articulation of a vision that closely approximates to that of a ��craft tradition��. This has been evident in the growing emphasis over the past thirty years in North America, Australia and parts of Europe on the importance of teaching students to exercise analytical ��skills�� when studying history. In addition, since the practice of citizenship is perhaps the most important ��craft�� of all, the role which the critical study of the national and global past can play in preparing pupils as liberal-democratic citizens has often been accorded particular importance.
It is no accident that the critical, ��skills��-based approach to history has been elaborated and promoted most extensively in liberal-democratic states. This does not mean that the teaching of history in such countries is entirely consistent with the craft-based conception of the discipline, or that official history curricula are entirely philosophically coherent. Pressures exist in most countries for history to be taught in a nationalistic, triumphalist manner�Xor, which in some ways the other side of the same coin, for the history of allegedly persecuted minorities to be taught in a similarly celebratory, uncritical fashion. Even in democratic states, such demands may need to be accommodated or mediated in an effort to achieve a politically viable consensus. At the same time, the right balance needs to be found between teaching historical ��skills��, and providing students with a basis of historical knowledge sufficiently secure to enable them to begin to exercise such ��skills��. For example, research comparing history teaching in Britain and Japan,29 and some of the comments made by London examiners vetting Hong Kong examinations, suggest that striking a suitable balance between the teaching of ��skills�� and ��factual�� knowledge remains a problem for British history teachers. Debates over teaching methods and curriculum content in Europe, America, Australia and worldwide look set to continue.
The ongoing controversy over the development of history curricula in Hong Kong may similarly stimulate local historians, teachers and curricu-lum developers to reflect more profoundly upon their practice, and to articulate more clearly and forcefully the rationale that underpins it. The present study has shown that some of the most formidable problems they face in attempting to promote a critical, ��skills��-based approach to history have been the use of English as the main language of instruction, and the generally low level of teacher professionalism. Of these, language has been perhaps the most intractable problem, and must take much of the blame for the popularity of poor-quality, over-simplified textbooks and cramming aids. The poor standard of English, as well as lack of confidence in teachers, have also to some extent handicapped efforts to reform examinations. Assessment reform remains central to attempts by History curriculum developers to challenge the prevalent ��encyclopaedic�� educational culture, with its overwhelming emphasis on the accumulation of facts at the expense of analytical training. Recent shifts in medium-of-instruction policy, and plans to introduce an element of school-based assessment, therefore hold out the prospect of some progress towards a more critical, ��skills��-based approach to history teaching.
However, irrespective of whether the language problem is tackled effectively, or assessment reform is forthcoming, there remains another issue that such reforms on their own cannot address. This is the influence of an illiberal political climate upon the curriculum policy-making process, and in particular on the ability or willingness of curriculum developers to take the lead in promoting a genuinely critical approach to the local and national past. Even in the absence of direct governmental interference in their work, officials and others involved in History curriculum development have felt obliged to work within parameters of political acceptability that have meant the exclusion from syllabuses and textbooks of many of the most important and controversial issues in Hong Kong and Chinese history. At the same time, the political climate has increasingly encouraged the active promotion, particularly in the Chinese History subject, of a ��one China�� orthodoxy with its roots in an ahistorical, culturalist nationalism. The present study demonstrates, as studies of history curricula elsewhere have done, that the development of the history curriculum in Hong Kong must be seen in its social, cultural and, in particular, its political context. This context, itself the product of man-made history and not of any ineffable cultural essence, has posed special difficulties for those who have attempted to promote a liberal, critical approach to the study of history. Whether their liberal vision, or a more chauvinist ��pan-Chinese�� one, will in the long term come to dominate Hong Kong��s history curriculum, depends in the final analysis upon what sort of political community Hong Kong wants, or is allowed, to become.
Appendix
Interviews
(All interviews lasted between an hour and an hour and a half)
Name
Mr. Richard Barnard
Ms. Jane Cheng
Mr. Chung Chi-keung
Ms. Alice Ho
Ms. Flora Kan
Professor Kwok Siu-tong
Mr. Lam Ding-chung
Mr. Lam Tin-chi
Mr. Lee Chi-hung
Position
Senior editor, Oxford University Press
Former History Inspector (responsible for the local history pilot scheme)�Xalso former teacher educator and school-teacher
School-teacher, member of HKCE History Subject Committee (1988�V94), HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committee (1989�V98), Chairman of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) (1988�V94)
History Inspector (1992�V2000), CDI subject officer i/c History (2000-), former school-teacher
Assistant Professor, Department of Curriculum Studies, HKU; member of HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committee (1998-), member of HKEA Sixth-form Chinese History Subject Committee
Dean of Arts Faculty, CUHK, member of A�� level/Sixth form History Subject Committee, 1980�V83 and 1987�V92, CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), late 1970s�V1980s
History Inspector, 1968�V1991 (after the setting up of the CDI in 1992, no longer involved in syllabus development), former school-teacher (Queens College)
HKEA History Subject Officer
History Subject Officer, CDI, 1996�V2000, former school-teacher and History Panel Chair (Wah Ying College); teacher member of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 1992�V6 (Chairman, 1995�V6)
Date of interview
November 12, 1997
May 15, 1999
July 10, 1999
March 22, 2000 and September 4, 2002
July 16, 1999
April 15, 2000
May 25, 1999
September 10, 2002
I�XOctober 9, 1997 II�XApril 4, 1999 III�XMarch 29, 2000 IV�XSeptember
4, 2002
Dr. Julian Leung Yat-ming
Dr. Alfred Lin
Mr. Alberto Morales
Dr. Elizbeth Sinn
Professor Anthony Sweeting
Ms. Wong Lai-han
Mr. Patrick Wong
Mr. Wong Ho-chiu
Mr. Woo Ho-wai Chief Executive Officer of the CDI, 1996�V1998, previously lecturer at the Department of Curriculum Studies, HKU, author of History textbooks and former school-teacher
Lecturer in the Department of History, HKU; member of A�� level History Subject Committee, 1980�V92, and of HKEA Sixth-form Subject Committee, 1995-; Chief Examiner for A�� level.
Former Principal of Raimondi College, History teacher and textbook author
Historian, Head of Hong Kong Culture and Society Programme, HKU, member of A�� level History Subject Committee (1987�V89), member of CDC Working Party on Local History Pilot Scheme, former school-teacher
Historian, lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies (formerly ��School of Education��), HKU, 1969�V1998; long-serving member of various HKEA and CDC committees; previously a school-teacher in East Africa
School-teacher, member of HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committee, 1995- (Chairperson of the committee)
HKEA History Subject Officer, 1978�V2000, former school-teacher
CDI Subject Officer, Humanities Section (responsible for the new ��History and Culture�� subject)
School-teacher, member of A�� level History Subject Committee, 1981�V85 November 1997
July 2, 1999
November 1997
May 27, 1999
March 11, 1999
March 24, 1999
April 24, 1999
September 4, 2002
April 30, 1999
Notes
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
1 See, for example, the column by David Chu Yu-lin in the July 10 1997 edition of the South China Morning Post. See also accusations made in Dagong Bao on May 26, 1996, concerning the local history pilot project for junior secondary forms (cited in Lee Chi-hung, M.Ed. Dissertation (University of Hong Kong, 1996))
2 Or Angel Lin. See Angel M.Y.Lin, Bilingualism or linguistic segregation?: symbolic domination, resistance and code-switching in Hong Kong schools (HKU Library, Xerox copy from Linguistics and Education, 1996, v. 8, pp. 49�V84)
3 Pennycook, op. cit., p. 27. 4 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), pp. 269�V70.5 For a separate analysis of the development of the Chinese History subject, see E.Vickers,
F.Kan, & P.Morris, ��Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong Kong Schools��, in The Oxford Review of Education (March 2003).
6 Robert Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State (London: Cassell, 1998), pp. 1�V2; Andy Green, ��Education and State Formation in Europe and Asia��, in K.Kennedy (ed.) Citzenship Education and the Modern State (Falmer Press, 1997).
7 Gordon Craig, Germany 1866�V1945 (Oxford: O.U.P., 1981), pp. 421�V4248 See Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: CUP ��Canto��, 1990)9 Andy Green, op.cit. (1990), p. 31 10 Ibid., p. 18111 David Brown, The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 1994). See also
Chapter 3 below.12 Isaiah Berlin, ��Historical Inevitability��, in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: OUP 1969), p. 46.13 Andy Green, (op.cit., 1990), p. 109 14 quoted in ibid., p. 3215 quoted in ibid., p. 16116 quoted in ibid., p. 3717 For an analysis of the influences that have shaped the development of a modern system of
education in China, see Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). A comparative analysis of the recent development of history education in East Asia is Edward Vickers (ed.), ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, a special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research (forthcoming, 2003). See also L.Hein & M.Selden, Censoring History: citizenship and memory in Japan, Germany and the United States. (New York: M.E.Sharpe, 2000).
18 See Slater, (ed.), Teaching History in the New Europe (London: Cassell/ Council of Europe, 1995)
19 Diane M.Hoffman, ��Culture and Comparative Education: Toward Decentering and
Recentering the Discourse�� Comparative Education Review, vol. 43, no. 4, p. 465
quoted in ibid., p. 46521 David Brown, ��The State and Ethnic Politics in South-east Asia�� (Routledge, 1994), Chapter 1 22 See Diane M.Hoffman, op.cit. 23 See Ronald Robinson, ��The Excentric Idea of Imperialism, with or without Empire.�� In
Imperialism and After, ed. W.Mommsen and J.Osterhammel, (London: German Historical Institute, 1986), p. 28424 Ibid., p. 268 A.G.Hopkins, ��Introduction: Globalization�XAn Agenda for Historians.�� In Globalization in
World History ed. A.G.Hopkins (Pimlico, 2002), p. 2.26 R.G.Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: OUP 1993), pp. 257�V66, 274�V8227 ibid., pp. 274�V528 Ibid. 29 Michel Foucault, ��Nietzsche, genealogy, history��, in The Postmodern History Reader ed.
Keith Jenkins (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 126
See Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History (The Free Press, 1996); also Richard Evans, In
Defence of History (London: Granta, 1997)31 MacIntyre, After Virtue (Duckworth, 1985), p. 27732 Collingwood, ��Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1926.�� In The Idea of History (Oxford:
OUP 1994)33 Collingwood, The Idea of History34 Ibid., p. 270
Ibid., pp. 282�V30236 quoted in ibid., p. 28137 MacIntyre, op. cit., p. 193 38 Collingwood, The Idea of History, p. 33439 Ibid., p. 333; See also MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Duckworth, 1990)
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Duckworth, 1985), p. 22241 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Duckworth, 1990), p. 23142 MacIntyre himself has written on the possibilities for meaningful ��conversations�� between
philosophers situated in the ��Aristotelian�� and ��Confucian�� traditions. See REF 43 Vera Schwarz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement (California, 1986), p. 290.44 Michael Ng-Quinn, ��National Identity in Premodern China,�� in China��s Quest for National Identity, ed. Lowell Dittmer & Samuel S.Kim (New York: Cornell, 1993), p. 33. John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution
(Stanford University Press, 1996) 46 Ibid., Chapter 247 Ibid., p. 5048 Ibid., p. 5049 E.G.. Pulleyblank, in The Legacy of China (Oxford: OUP, 1963), p. 146. See also William
Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Harvard, 1996) W.J.F.Jenner, The Tyranny of History (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 1551 Michael Hunt, ��Chinese National Identity and the Strong State,�� in Kim and Dittmer (ed.), op.
cit. (1993), p. 76. The same point is made by John Fitzgerald, in op. cit. 52 Jenner, op.cit., p. 11.53 Qian Mu, ��Zhongguo Lishi shang di Daode Jingshen�� (��The Moral Spirit of Chinese
History��), in Zhongguo Lishi Jingshen (Taipei: Dong Si) (in Chinese) 54 See E.Vickers, F.Kan, & P.Morris, ��Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong
Kong Schools��, The Oxford Review of Education (March 2003).
55 David Faure and Tao Tao Liu, Unity and Diversity: local cultures and identities in China (University of Hong Kong Press, 1996); also Helen Siu, ��Remade in Hong Kong: Weaving Into the Chinese Cultural Tapestry��, in Faure and Tao op. cit.
56 John E.Schrecker, The Chinese Revolution in Historical Perspective (New York: Praeger,
1991)57 Schrecker, op. cit., p. 185.58 Perry Link, Evening Chats in Beijing (New York: Norton, 1993), pp. 163�V459 See Perry Link, op. cit. 60 Edward Shils, ��Reflections on Civil Society and Civility in the Chinese Intellectual
Tradition.�� In Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity ed. Tu Wei-Ming (Harvard, 1996), p. 6961 Ambrose E.King, ��State Confucianism and Its Transformation: The Restructuring of the
State-Society Relation in Taiwan��, in Tu Wei-Ming ed., op. cit. (1996) 62 Lucien Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Harvard, 1992 edition), pp. 231�V23263 See Vera Schwarz, op. cit. 64 See Alisa Jones, ��Politics and History Curriculum Reform in Post-Mao China.�� In ��The
Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special edition of The International Journal of Educational Research edited by Edward Vickers (forthcoming, 2003). 65 ��Chinese History should not lose its status: Beijing��, in The South China Morning Post, May 28, 2000
66 See Wang Gungwu, The Chineseness of China (Oxford: OUP, 1991) pp. 223�V224. The twists and turns in official interpretations of history have been particularly evident in the development of the school history curriculum on the mainland (See Chapter 3 below)
67 See Wang Gungwu, op. cit., p. 22968 See Alisa Jones, op. cit.69 See Wang Gungwu, ��Introduction��, in The Chineseness of China (OUP., 1991), pp. 1�V7
(though Wang is typically non-committal about the degree of ��Great Han chauvinism�� exhibited by post-Cultural Revolution Chinese historiography. On China��s crisis of national identity, see China��s Quest for National Identity ed. Dittmer and Kim (Cornell, 1993), especially pp. 237�V290, and on the state��s use of anti-Western patriotism to bolster its legitimacy see Jenner, The Tyranny of History (Penguin, 1992), pp. 96�V7, and Link, Evening Chats in Beijing (Norton, 1992), pp. 210�V211. On racialism in China, see Frank Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (HKUP, 1992), especially ��Epilogue: Race as Class��, pp. 191�V195), and The Construction of Racial Identity in China and Japan (HKUP, 1997), pp. 25�V33.
70 Barry Sautman, ��Myths of Descent, Racial Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities��, in The Construction of Racial Identity in China and Japan ed. Frank Dikotter (HKUP, 1997) pp. 75�V95, esp. pp. 84�V89, ��Peking Man as Chinese Everyman��.
71 Ibid., p. 8872 Ibid., p. 9573 John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution
(Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 54 74 Ibid., p. 9075 Postcolonialism has more recently enjoyed a certain vogue in mainland academic circles, but
the impact on school history curricula has been minimal. See Ben Xu, ��From Modernity to Chineseness�� positions 6:1, Spring 1998, pp. 214�V21576 William Theodore de Bary, The Trouble With Confucianism (Harvard University Press,
1991), p. 11277 W.C.Sellar and R.J.Yeatman, 1066 and All That (Methuen, 1930)78 John Slater, The Politics of History Teaching: A Humanity Dehumanized? (Institute of
Education, Special Professorial Lecture, London, 1989), p. 179 Robert Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State (Cassell, 1998), pp. 17�V19 80 Phillips, op. cit., p. 1481 Ibid., pp. 14�V1582 Ibid., p. 1683 See M.B.Booth, History Betrayed? (Longman, 1969)84 Phillips, op. cit.; R.Aldrich and D.Dean, ��The Historical Dimension.�� In History in the
National Curriculum ed. R.Aldrich (Bedford Way Series, Kogan Page, 1991) 85 Aldrich and Dean, op. cit., p. 9586 Times Educational Supplement, 18 August 1989, p. 4, quoted in I.Goodson, Studying
Curriculum (Open University Press, 1994), p. 100 87 Keith Robbins. Essay in The History Debate ed. Juilet Gardiner (History Today Books, 1990),
p. 2488 Conrad Russell, in ibid., p. 5089 Robert Phillips, Paul Goalen, Alan McCully and Sydney Wood, ��Four Histories, One Nation?
History teaching, nationhood and a British identity�� Compare, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1999, pp. 153�V
169 90 Janet Nelson, in Gardiner ed., op. cit., p. 6091 The Economist, Nov. 1 1997, pp. 99�V10092 Separate sections on curriculum implementation were included in my original PhD
dissertation, but these have had to be removed in order to keep down the length of this book. They were, in any case, primarily based on second-hand perceptions of implementation (garnered from curriculum committee minutes, examination reports and interview data) rather than first-hand observation.
93 See Paul Morris, The Hong Kong School Curriculum (HKUP, 1995)
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
1 As Eric Kit-wai Ma has argued, the development of a distinctive Hong Kong identity at around this time was closely linked to negative stereotyping of mainlanders in popular culture. Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong (London: Routledge, 1999) The virulence of anti-immigrant sentiment has been particularly evident recently, with the public reaction to the right-of-abode controversy (see below).
2 One government official in the mid-1990s privately estimated that as many as one million local people (out of a population of around six million) could exercise a right to reside abroad immediately if necessary. See Michael Yahuda, Hong Kong, China��s Challenge (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 59.
3 This arose from the insistence of the PRC government that Hong Kong, along with Macao, be removed from the United Nation��s register of colonies, since they felt that this would imply a recognition of the reality of British sovereignty, and hence an acceptance of the legality of the ��Unequal Treaties�� which they rejected. See Yahuda, op. cit., p. 49.
4 Ronald Robinson, The Excentric Idea of Imperialism, with or without Empire,�� in Imperialism and After, ed. W.J.Mommsen & J.Osterhammel (London: German Historical Institute, 1986), p. 284.
5 Ibid., p. 268.6 Ibid., p. 271.7 See P.J.Cain and A.G.Hopkins, British Imperialism, Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914�V1990
(London: Longman, 1993).8 C.K.Lau, Hong Kong��s Colonial Legacy (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1997),
Chapter 1.9 John Walden, quoted in ibid., p. 30.10 Steve Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China (London: I.B.Tauris, 1997).
11 Tak-wing Ngo, ��Colonialism in Hong Kong Revisited,�� in Hong Kong��s History, ed. Tak-
wing Ngo, (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 7.12 Ibid., p. 9.13 Ambrose Y.C.King, ��Administrative Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong: emphasis on the
grass roots level,�� in Social Life and Development in Hong Kong, ed. Ambrose Y.C.King and Rance P.L.Lee (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1981), p. 129.
14 See Tak-lok Lui, ��Pressure Group Politics in Hong Kong,�� in Political Participation in Hong Kong, ed. Joseph Y.S.Cheng (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 1999). 15 Tai-lok Lui and Stephen W.K.Chiu, ��Social Movements and Public Discourse on Politics,�� in
Ngo (ed.), op. cit., pp. 106�V7.16 Matthew Turner, ��60��s/90��s: Dissolving the People,�� in Hong Kong��s Cultural Identity (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995).17 Tai-lok Lui and Stephen Chiu, op. cit., p. 110.18 C.K.Lau, op.cit., p. 42.19 See Steve Vines, Hong Kong: China��s New Colony (Aurum Press, 1998).20 Tsang and Yahuda, op.s cit.21 Tsang, op. cit., Chapter 5.22 Ibid., pp. 97�V98.23 Ibid 24 Ibid., p. 109.25 Ibid., p. 127.26 Though there were, at the same time, some indications that the Chinese government did not
fully appreciate how Hong Kong��s civil service operated and, therefore, what they were
conceding by this pledge. See Michael Yahuda, op. cit., p. 44. 27 Yahuda, op. cit., p. 78.28 Cheng Kai-ming, ��Educational Policymaking in Hong Kong: The Changing Legitimacy,�� in
Education and Society in Hong Kong, ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992).29 For example, see Ming K.Chan, ��Forward,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong, ed. Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992).30 There does appear to have been some validity to the belief that UK companies were advantageously treated in the awarding of government contracts. See Steve Vines, op. cit.
31 The ��pro-/anti-China�� dichotomy even extended to the local women��s movement, with Hong Kong, uniquely, sending two delegations (a liberally-funded ��pro-China group sponsored by the New China News Agency, and a poorly-funded ��grassroots�� delegation) to the 1995 UN Women��s Conference in Beijing. See Choi Po-King, ��The Women��s Movement and Local Identity in Hong Kong,�� in Hong Kong Reintegrating with China, Political Cultural and Social Dimensions, ed. Lee Pui-tak (Hong Kong: HKUP, 2001).
32 Ian Scott, ��The Disarticulation of Hong Kong��s post-handover Political System,�� The China Journal (January 2000); Governor Wilson��s replacement by Chris Patten in 1992 was also seen in Hong Kong partly as a response to a sense locally, as well as in London, that he had misread or mishandled the local political situation post-Tiananmen by appeasing China.
33 Steve Vines, op. cit., Chapter entitled ��The Shameless Elite��; See also Yahuda and C.K.Lau, op.s cit.
34 Local officials had long privately pressed for full British nationality for Hong Kong residents (Simon Vickers, personal communication). In 1995, Patten publicly called for such a move. See Yahuda, op. cit., p. 102.
35 China claims not to recognise the validity of passports issued under the British nationality scheme, though in theory it should be impossible to distinguish these from other British passports.
36 The quote is taken from an article in the South China Morning Post, October 1996; See also a feature article on eradicating the colonial content of textbooks in Ta Kung Pao, 9 September 1996 (in Chinese).
37 See Chapters 6 and 7 below.38 C.K.Lau, op. cit., pp. 168�V171.39 Scott, op. cit.40 Quoted in Simon Vickers, ����More Colonial Again��?�XThe post-97 Culture of Hong Kong��s
Governing Elite,�� in The International Journal of Public Administration, special 2000 edition on the effects of Hong Kong��s handover in 1997.41 Michael deGolyer et. al., Hong Kong Transition Project (Baptist University of Hong Kong,
1998).42 Scott, op. cit.43 Vines, op. cit., p. 228.44 Ibid. 45 South China Morning Post, July 15, 2000, and subsequent issues. 46 Paul Morris & Ian Scott, ��Educational Reform and Policy Implementation in Hong Kong��,
paper forthcoming in the Journal of Education Policy. 47 See, for example, the May 19, 1999 editorial in the relatively cautious newspaper, Ming Pao (in Chinese)
48 Andrew Yung Man-sing, ��Higher Education,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong and Macau, ed. Mark Bray and Ramsey Koo. (Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, HKU, 1999), pp. 75�V86.
49 Paul Morris & Anthony Sweeting, ��Education and Politics: the case of Hong Kong from an historical perspective,�� Oxford Review of Education (Vol 17, No. 3, 1991, pp. 249�V267), p. 258.
50 A.E.Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed (Hong Kong: OUP, 1993), pp. 210�V1151 Ibid., p. 208.52 Ibid. 53 Summed up in the Chinese saying ��An shen li ming�� (more or less translatable as ��keep your
head down and no-one will bother you��). 54 Morris and Sweeting, op. cit. (1991), p. 250.55 Morris & Scott, op. cit.56 For further discussion of these procedures, and of the influence of the subject officers over
selection, see Chapter 7 below.57 Michael Harris Bond, Beyond the Chinese Face (Hong Kong: OUP, 1991), pp. 26�V3158 See Colin Marsh and Paul Morris (ed.), ��Curriculum Development in East Asia�� (London:
Falmer, 1991)
59 Paul Morris, ��School knowledge, the state and the market: an analysis of the Hong Kong secondary school curriculum,�� in Curriculum and Assessment for Hong Kong ed. Paul Morris and Philip Stimpson (Hong Kong: The Open University of Hong Kong Press, 1998), p. 146.
60 Ibid., p. 147.
61 One of my first jobs as a private tutor, shortly after arriving in Hong Kong, was to coach a five-year-old boy for his ��kindergarten entrance examination��. His parents were anxious for him to attend the kindergarten of a prestigious international school.
62 Anthony Sweeting, ��Education in Historical Processes,�� in Education and Society in Hong
Kong ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992), p. 49.63 Paul Morris, op. cit. (1998), pp. 145�V6.64 See C.K.Lau, op. cit., Chapter 5, ��The Language Malaise��.65 Paul Morris, op. cit. (1998).66 As witnessed by its opposition in the late 1980s to the recruitment of native-speaking English
teachers, and its current resistance to government proposals to ��benchmark�� the language proficiency of local teachers, which is often seen as being sub-standard. See South China Morning Post, May 28 2000, p. 4.
67 Morris & Scott, op. cit.
68 ibid.
69 A policy very much supported by most developers of the History curriculum (see following chapters).
70 South China Morning Post, editorial, July 8, 1999.
71 A Holistic Review of the Education System (Hong Kong: CDI), 1999, p. 9; In April 2000, Cheng Kai-ming, a member of the Education Commission and Provice chancellor of Hong Kong University called for more teaching to be done in putonghua, claiming that ��Cantonese is killing our students��. See South China Morning Post, April 1, 2000.
72 Education Blueprint for the 21st Century, (Hong Kong: Education Commission, January, 1999), p. 11.
73 This episode featured sit-ins, other protests, and eventually the closure of the school followed by the opening of two new schools to accomodate factions from the first. The initial protests were prompted by ED intereference in the internal policies of the school, which provoked accusations of ��colonialist�� behaviour.
74 Paul Morris, ��The Management of participation in the policymaking process: the case of the Education Commission in Hong Kong,�� Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1996), pp. 319�V336), p. 335.
75 Ibid.
76 P.Morris, F.Kan & E.Morris, Education, Civic Participation and Identity: continuity and change in Hong Kong,�� Cambridge Journal of Education Vol. 30, No. 2 (2000), pp. 243�V 262; also Sweeting and Morris, op. cit., 1993.
77 Ibid.
78 For example, Cheng Kai-ming, a prominent member of the Commission, published an article expressing ��private�� views on the policy regarding ��elite schools�� that appeared to conflict with the Commission��s declared approach (Sunday Morning Post, 14 May, 2000). The views on the status of Cantonese expressed by Cheng and Commission chairman Anthony Leung, and referred to above, were also supposedly ��private��, and had nothing to do with the Commission��s proposals. Confusion also surrounded the proposal to expand university education from 3 to 4 years without allocating any extra funding to universities, and the Commission��s vague proposal that universities should consider criteria ��apart from public examination results�� when evaluating applicants. See Review of Education System: Reform Proposals, ��Excel and Grow�� (Hong Kong: Education Commission, 2000), p. 42.
79 It is noticeable that the Education Commission has said little about class sizes, which are typically larger than forty in local secondary schools (though less, in the case of History, at senior secondary level when it is an optional subject).
80 Paul Morris, Gerry Mc Clelland and Wong Ping Man, ��Explaining Curriculum Change: Social Studies in Hong Kong,�� Comparative Education Review (February 1997), p. 34
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., p. 35
83 Ibid.
84 See Dongfang ribao (Oriental Daily, 7 March 1975), (in Chinese). One of those who led the protests was Szeto Wah, one of the founders of the PTU.
85 See Chapters 4�V7 below. See also Flora Kan & Edward Vickers, ��One Hong Kong: Two Histories�XHistory and Chinese History in the Hong Kong School Curriculum,�� Comparative Education, (2001) 38(1), pp. 73�V89. Also Edward Vickers, Flora Kan & Paul Morris, ��Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong Kong Schools��, The Oxford Review of Education (March, 2003).
86 Education Blueprint for the 21st Century (Hong Kong: Education Commission, January 1999), p. 10.
87 Turner, op. cit., pp. 8�V9.
88 Anthony Sweeting, ��Politics and the Art of Teaching History in Hong Kong,�� Teaching History (July 1991), p. 32.
89 Paul Morris, ��Preparing Pupils as Citizens of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong: An analysis of Curriculum Change and Control during the Transition Period,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992), p. 129.
90 Ibid. 91 quoted in Morris, ��Preparing Pupils as Citizens�K��, p. 131. 92 Ibid. 93 Lee Wing-on and Leung Sai-wing, ��Institutional Constraints on Promoting Civic Education in
Hong Kong Secondary Schools: Insight from the IEA Data (Occasional Papers Series NO. 8
(April 1999), Dept of Applied Social Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University), p. 9. 94 Paul Morris, Flora Kan & Esther Morris, op. cit.95 Civic Education Syllabus (Hong Kong: CDC, 1998), p. 2 (quoted in Morris, Kan & Morris, p.
257). It is worth noting that the nature of the Chinese government is not apparent from its formal structure, which includes ��opposition parties�� and a host of entirely theoretical constitutional guarantees. In this sense, the descriptive approach to the PRC government here mirrors the approach to the structure of Hong Kong��s government in EPA textbooks of the 1970s. C.J.G.Lowe (former Deputy Director of Education) observed that these gave a picture of Hong Kong��s government which described the role of the Colonial Office in London (then no longer in existence), the role of the monarchy, and the relationship between the Governor and the Councils which was totally divorced from contemporary reality.
96 Ibid., p. 1197 Ibid., p. 1698 Ibid., p. 1699 Ibid., p. 17100 Ibid., p. 17101 Ibid., p. 27102 Each of C.H.Tung��s annual policy addresses have emphasised the importance of patriotism.
See also his pre-handover call for Chinese History textbooks to be revised (Ming Pao, 12
March 1997), (in Chinese). 103 Morris, Kan & Morris, op. cit., p. 257.104 Bernard Luk, ��Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism,�� in
Curriculum and Assessment for Hong Kong, ed. P.Stimpson & P. Morris (Open University of Hong Kong Press, 1998), pp. 51�V74 p. 74.105 Luk, op. cit.; See also Flora Kan, Chinese History as a School Subject in Hong Kong, 1945�V
2000 (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2002). 106 Kan & Vickers, op. cit.107 See the discussion of Social Studies above, and Chapter 4 below. See also Vickers, Kan &
Morris, op. cit. 108 Kan & Vickers, op. cit.109 Morris, Kan & Morris, op. cit. 110 Ibid. 111 Chinese History Syllabus (Hong Kong: CDI 1998), p. 8 (quoted in Morris, Kan & Morris,
op. cit.).112 Hong Kong Education Department, CDI Chinese History Teaching Pack on Local History
(Education Department, February 1999), (in Chinese). See Chapter 7 below. 113 Lee Wing-on & Leung Sai-wing, op. cit., p. 16.114 See A.Porter, ��Political Literacy,�� in Political Education in Flux, ed. D. Heater and
J.A.Gillespie (Sage, 1991)115 For example, most English textbooks produced for use in Hong Kong schools make almost exclusive use of Hong Kong-related topics.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
1 Matthew Turner, ��60��s/90��s: Dissolving the People,�� in Hong Kong��s Cultural Identity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995), p. 5.
2 Gregory Eliyu Guldin, ��Hong Kong Ethnicity�XOf Folk Models and Change,�� in Hong Kong, the Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis (London: Curzon, 1997), p. 38.
3 Ibid., p. 32.
4 On Hong Kong identity see also Helen F.Siu, ��Remade in Hong Kong: Weaving into the Chinese Cultural Tapestry,�� in Unity and Diversity: local cultures and identities in China ed. David Faure and Tao Tao Liu (University of Hong Kong Press, 1996).
5 Guldin & Turner, op.s cit.; Lynn White & Li Cheng, ��China Coast Identities, Regional, National and Global��, in China��s Quest for National Identity ed. Lowell Dittmer & Samuel S.Kim (Cornell, 1993), pp. 154�V193.
6 See White & Cheng, op. cit.
7 Guldin, op. cit., p. 37.
8 For several years after 1997, this slogan was visible in large characters on the wall of the Prince of Wales Building in Admiralty on Hong Kong Island.
9 Turner, op. cit.
10 Ibid., p. 4.
11 In January 2000, a pro-Beijing businessman argued in the South China Morning Post that the Basic Law was simply ��a continuation and development of what was practised before.�� Democracy might have its advantages, he admitted, but it carried a price in terms of expensive demands for welfare provisions and higher taxes that could lead to unemployment. ��Democracy comes in many shapes and forms. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and is a product of historic developments. As long as sufficient government accountability and reasonable mechanisms for government succession are in place [conditions he claims are fulfilled in Hong Kong], all varieties should be acceptable. To incessantly strive for a purer form of democracy is futile.�� (Ronnie Chan, ��Democracy in Balance��, South China Morning Post, 12/01/2000, p. 17).
12 Lau Siu-kai, ��Utilitarianistic Familism: the Basis of Political Stability,�� in ��Social Life and Development in Hong Kong�� ed. A.Y.C.King & R.Lee (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1981).
13 Turner, op. cit.
14 Lau Siu-kai, op. cit., p. 8. See also Julian Y.M.Leung, ��Education in Hong Kong and China: Toward Convergence?,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong, ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992).
15 Graham E.Johnson, ��Degrees of Dependency, Degrees of Interdependency: Hong Kong��s Changing Links to the Mainland and the World,�� in Hong Kong Reintegrating with China: Political, Cultural and Social Dimensions, ed. Lee Puitak (Hong Kong University Press, 2001), p. 91.
16 Turner, op. cit., p. 9.
17 Preamble to the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People��s Republic of China.
18 Lau Siu-kai & Kuan Hsin-chi, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1988), p. 2.
19 Turner, op. cit., p. 7. A Chinese government minister famously attempted to reassure Hongkongers in the mid-1980s by saying ��Don��t worry, you can continue your horse-racing, gambling and shopping��.
20 See Lau Siu-kai, op. cit., 1988.
21 This observation is relative. There were riots during this period in 1956, 1966 and 1967, as well as a teachers�� strike in 1974 that led to the establishment of the Professional Teachers�� Union.
22 Michael E.Degolyer and Janet Lee Scott, ��The Myth of Political Apathy in Hong Kong��, in
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science�XSpecial Edition on the Future of Hong Kong (September 1996), p. 7623 Lau and Kuan, op. cit., quoted in Dick Wilson, China, the Big Tiger (Little Brown, 1996), p. 45.
24 Michael Yahuda, Hong Kong, China��s Challenge (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 58. Yahuda reinforces this point by quoting the words of a Hongkongerf who worked in China for a year in 1983: ��I could not understand its [China��s] people��s attitude or thinking, even though we were both Chinese. I felt a complete foreigner.��
25 Chris Patten, East and West (London: Macmillan, 1998), Chapter 1. 26 HKTP Report on public attitudes in 1998.27 Akbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: HKUP,
1997), p. 4.28 For example see Abbas, quoted below, and Guldin, quoted above. 29 ��Welcome to our Mickey Mouse city�� (South China Morning Post, June 15, 2000). The
reference is to the proposal to build a new Disneyland theme park in Hong Kong. 30 Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong (London: Routledge, 1999),
p. 24.31 Especially through the subject of Chinese History. 32 Raphael Jacquet, review of Eric Kit-wai Ma, op. cit. in China Perspectives, No. 29 (May-June
2000), p. 79.33 Writers cited in Benjamin K.P.Leung, Perspectives on Hong Kong Society (Hong Kong: OUP, 1996), p. 71.34 Lilley, Rozanna, ��Claiming Identity: Film and Television in Hong Kong,�� History and
Anthropology, 6 (2�V3): 261�V92, (1993), pp. 267�V8.35 Leung, op. cit., p. 72.36 Ibid. 37 See, in particular, Hui��s film ��Song of the Exile��, that looks at the relationships between a
British-educated local journalist (played by Maggie Cheung), her Japanese mother, the Chinese grandparents (originally from Guangzhou, but exiled to Macau), and the mother��s family in Japan. Wong Kar Wai��s 2000 film, ��In the Mood for Love��, also starring Maggie Cheung, is in part a nostalgic portrayal of the ��lost world�� of 1960s Hong Kong. It is notable that references to mainland China are entirely absent in this film, whereas the principal characters all either have family overseas (in America), or end up going to live and work overseas themselves (to Singapore, in the case of the lead male character).
38 HKTP, 1998.
39 Including, as in a number of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films (e.g. ��Drunken Master I and II��), injustice perpetrated by evil colonialists (though usually in a nineteenth century context).
40 Ibid., p. 68. It is unclear what forms of ��official censorship�� Leung is referring to�Xor what
period.41 Ibid., pp. 68�V9.42 Ibid., p. 69.43 Jacquet, op. cit.44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. Local terrestrial broadcasters, in particular the ��Asia Television�� (ATV) network, have in
recent years carried more and more programming from the mainland, including CCTV news and overtly propagandist offerings such as the series ��Secrets of the PLA (People��s Liberation Army)��, broadcast in 2000.
46 See previous chapter. 47 See, for example, Ming Pao, 17 May, 1999.
48 A Democratic Party poster was stuck on the door of the building where I was living in May 1999, with the slogan ��Za Wo Shi Guan, Jin Wo Zhu Quan!�� (��Bombing our embassy is an invasion of our sovereignty!��).
49 Ming Pao editorial, March 8, 1999.
50 See Edward Vickers, ��Conclusion: Deformed Relationships�XIdentity Politics and History Education in East Asia,�� in ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research, ed. Edward Vickers (forthcoming, 2003).
51 See Yahuda, op. cit., pp. 112�V113.
52 The Portuguese presence was established in the sixteenth century as the result of an agreement with the local Chinese authorities and not, as with Britain in Hong Kong, through the exercise of military muscle. The Portuguese government had offered to return Macao to China during the Cultural Revolution in 1967, but the offer had been declined because it was felt that such a move might damage confidence in Hong Kong. See Geoffrey Gunn, ��A Few International Ambitions,�� China Perspectives, Number 26, (November-December 1999), p. 43.
53 China Daily (Hong Kong edition), May 5, 1999. 54 It��s name is ��The Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China��. 55 See editorial on May 4, 1999. 56 Ming Pao editorial, May 18, 1999. The editorial quoted a conversation between Stalin and the
late Taiwanese President Chiang Ching-kuo, in which the former is supposed to have said ��As soon as your nation is reunified and your people are in unity, it will quickly become more powerful than other nations. That is Eastern peoples�� strength as well as a national cultural advantage.��
57 Herbert Pierson, ��Cantonese, English or Putonghua,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong
ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992), p. 195.58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. For a further discussion of the origins of popular myths concerning the nature of the
Chinese language, see John deFrancis, The Chinese Language, fact and fantasy (University
of Hawaii Press, 1984).60 See previous chapter. 61 HKTP, 1998.62 Abbas, op. cit., pp. 6�V7.63 Tung Chee-hwa, Building Hong Kong for a New Era, Tung Chee-hwa��s Policy Address to the
Legislative Council (Hong Kong: The Printing Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong, October 1997), p. 37
64 The museum ��was established in July 1975 when the Urban Council decided to split the former city museum and art gallery into the Museum of Art and the Museum of History, placing the latter within the 700 square feet of rented space at Star House. The museum was removed to�Ktemporary premises at Kowloon Park in 1983�K�Kthe extension was opened in July 89��, from A brief guide to the Hong Kong Museum of History (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1991)
65 Ilaria Maria Sala, ��Bringing History Up to Date: The New Museums of Macau and Hong
Kong��, China Perspectives, No. 22 (March�VApril 1999), p. 62.66 Ibid., p. 62.67 See Arthur F.Wright, The Sui Dynasty (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1978).68 P.Ng and H.Baker, New Peace County (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1983), pp. 22�V4.69 Ji Tao & Li Xing, ��Digging into Hong Kong��s past��, in China Daily, May 12th 1997. 70 Sala, op. cit., p. 65.71 This is a translation of the Chinese title. Interestingly, the exhibition was given a different�X
and less aggressive�XEnglish title: ��One hundred years of Self-Determination��.
72 The latter body boasts Tung Chee-hwa as its honarary patron, and the Director of the New China News Agency as an ��honarary advisor��. Its chairman is Annie Wu, the Provisional Urban Council member quoted above as saying that Hong Kong should adopt ��the Chinese version of history�� to show its gratitude for the return to the motherland.
73 ��Preface�� to the exhibition.
74 Lin Yuan, ��Gangren zhi gang, shei shi ��Gangren��?�� (��Hong Kong People ruling Hong Kong�XWho are ��Hong Kong People��?��), in Yue du Xiang-gang pu ji wen hua 1970�V2000 (Reading Hong Kong Popular Cultures 1970�V2000), ed. Wu Junxiong and Zhang Zhi-wei (Hong Kong: OUP, 2002), pp. 700�V1 (in Chinese).
75 ibid., p. 702
76 Choi Po-king, ��The Women��s Movement and Local Identity in Hong Kong,�� in Hong Kong Reitegrating with China: Political, Cultural and Social Dimensions, ed. Lee Pui-tak (Hong Kong: HKUP, 2001), p. 229.
77 Both these possibilities have been mooted a number of times since the handover, and a steady influx of mainland professionals is already underway.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1 Paul Morris & Anthony Sweeting, ��Education and Politics: the case of Hong Kong from an historical perspective,�� Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1991), p. 263.
2 R.Wake, ��History as a Separate Discipline: The Case,�� Teaching History, 1 (3), Historical Association. Quoted in David Sylvester, ��Change and Continuity in History Teaching, 1900�V 93�� in Teaching History, ed. H.Bourdillon (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 15.
3 W.C.Sellar and R.J.Yeatman, 1066 and All That (London: Methuen, 1930), ��Compulsory
Preface��. 4 Ibid. 5 quoted in Sylvester, op. cit., p. 10. 6 The title is that of a 16th century European work containing biographies of rulers from the past,
and meant to be read by kings, princes and their ministers.
7 For example, when I was studying history at school in England as recently as the 1980s, virtually the only history other than English which I studied was European history�Xno Asian or African history, and only a very small amount of American history.
8 See R.Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State (London: Cassell, 1998).
9 For example, see Avril Powell, ��Perceptions of the South Asian Past: Ideology, Nationalism and School History Textbooks��, in Nigel Crook (ed.), The Transmission of Knowledge in South Asia (OUP, Delhi, 1996), pp. 190�V228; also see Vickers, E. (ed.). ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia,�� special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research (forthcoming, 2003).
10 Morales, in History Bulletin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong History Society, 1973), pp. 21�V2. 11 Anthony Sweeting, Social Attitudes and the Teaching of History (Hong Kong: ESAC, 1974),
pp. 6�V7.12 Ibid., p. 7.13 See Slater, op. cit. 14 Sweeting, op. cit. (1974), p. 4.15 Ibid., p. 5.16 Ibid., p. 11.17 Ibid., p. 9.18 Ibid., p. 15.19 See the section on ��Process�� below. 20 ��Interim Syllabus for History (Forms I�VIII)��, (CDC, 1975), p. 1, emphasis in original.
21 Ibid., p. 2.22 Ibid., p. 35.23 Ibid., p. 1.24 See below. 25 Ibid. 26 See Chapters 5 and 6 below.27 Syllabuses referred to here and subsequently in this chapter are those issued by the STC (for
HKCE level) or by the University of Hong Kong or the Chinese University of Hong Kong (for A�� level and Higher level examinations respectively).
28 The coverage of HKCE Chinese History syllabuses for the Anglo-Chinese schools during the 1960s ended in 1911. In 1972, it was extended to 1949. It was not until 1990 that the syllabuses included the period up to 1976. It should be noted that, since Chinese History dealt with the history of China over several thousand years, the coverage of the modern period, even when it was included, was likely to be very superficial. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many teachers�Xof both History and Chinese History�Xcontinued to end their coverage in 1911 even after the syllabuses were extended. This was certainly the case at the school where I taught in the mid-1990s.
29 See the section on the process of curriculum development below.
30 The A�� levels originated as the entrance examinations for the University of Hong Kong, and were the sixth-form examinations taken by most students. The Chinese University of Hong Kong set its own examination, known as the Higher Level. This is discussed in Chapter 5.
31 Sweeting refers to such pressures from students and teachers in his ESAC pamphlet, p. 10. 32 See Chapter 5. 33 Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (London: Abacus, 1994), p. xvi34 For example, my uncle, Simon Vickers, who came to work as an Administrative Officer (AO)
in the Civil Service in 1978 recalled in a 1997 interview that many AOs of his generation had been at university in England in the sixties, had taken part in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and had learnt to regard the arrogance of old-style colonialism with disgust (See ��The Jonathan Fenby Interviews��, RTHK, in the William Mong Collection of the Hong Kong University Library). Anthony Sweeting reflected the same sort of attitude when he treated ��colonialism�� as something of a dirty word in his ESAC pamphlet of 1974.
35 On the fashion for local history in England, see Sylvester, op. cit., pp. 20�V1. 36 See the discussion of textbooks below. 37 See Chapter 2. 38 See Chapter 2. 39 Interview with Lee Chi-hung II.40 Interview with Chung Chi-keung.41 Interview with Anthony Sweeting. 42 Sweeting, op. cit. (1974), p. 11.43 Sweeting, interview.44 Ibid. 45 Interview with Elizabeth Sinn. 46 See Chapter 6. 47 Sweeting, op. cit. (1974), p. 12. The contributions of Endacott, Birch, Hinton and Sweeting to
the field of local history, though considerable, were limited by the fact that none of them
spoke or read Chinese.48 Interview with Elizabeth Sinn. 49 Ibid. 50 Elizabeth Sinn, Between East and West: Aspects of Social and Political Development in Hong
Kong (Hong Kong: Centre for Asian Studies, HKU, 1990), introduction. 51 This was at the time when the introduction of a new, integrated Social Studies course was being planned. See Chapter 2.
52 Sylvester, op. cit. 53 Interim Syllabus for History (Hong Kong: CDC, 1975), p. 1.54 History Bulletin, p. 19.55 Sweeting, ESAC pamphlet, p. 11.56 Alice Ho told me of this episode in her interview�XLam had apparently discussed it with her.
Lam himself, in his interview with me, claimed that the later reintroduction of local history was his own initiative, and that he had wanted to do it earlier. However, he simply said ��I used to work under a boss�Kthere is a personal comment�K��, and did not elaborate further.
57 See Sweeting, ��Education in Historical Processes��, Education and Society in Hong Kong, ed.
G.Postiglione (Hong Kong: HKUP, 1992)58 See the discussion of the 1975 Social Studies initiative in Chapter 2.59 Though the Chinese nationalism of student activists during the Cultural Revolution gave way,
after 1976, to the growing sense of local identity discussed in Chapter 3.
60 Besides the speeches, etc. by Mok and Sweeting already cited, see the speeches by Hinton, Lowe and others in the History Bulletin of 1970, where all speakers espoused similar liberal values.
61 P.Morris and I.Scott. ��Educational Reform and Policy Implementation in Hong Kong��, in The
Journal of Education Policy (forthcoming, 2003).62 See Chapter 2. 63 Anthony Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed (Hong Kong: OUP, 1993).64 Among the earliest textbooks commissioned were a series by F.J.F.Tingay, entitled ��Civics
for Hong Kong�� (first published 1954, second edition published as ��Living in Hong Kong�� by OUP, 1962). These books were designed to promote a depoliticised, ahistorical view of Hong Kong as an orderly capitalist utopia. Book 2 includes chapters entitled ��Our Friend the Postman��, ��Our Friend the Policeman��, ��Our Friend the Fireman��, and ��Keep Your City Clean��.
65 A number of those interviewed for this study remembered using textbooks from England when they were at school. 66 See Flora Kan and Edward Vickers, ��One Hong Kong, Two Histories��, Comparative Education 38, No. 1 (2002), pp. 73�V89.
67 See Chapter 2; also Wong Ping-man, The Evolution of a Secondary School Subject in Hong Kong: the case of Social Studies (Unpublished PhD dissertation, The University of Hong Kong, 1992).
68 Probably the ��Sunday Post-Herald��, then the name of the Sunday edition of the South China Morning Post. The reference to the editorial was made by Noah Fehl in a speech published in the History Bulletin, (Hong Kong History Society, 1973), p. 13.
69 St. Paul��s is one of the prestigious old ��Anglo-Chinese�� schools. 70 W.H.Ha, History Bulletin, p. 8.71 The Advisory Inspectorate was the successor to the Special Bureau (see Chapter 2). 72 The other speakers were C.J.G.Lowe, the Deputy Director of Education; C.L.J.Hallward, a
teacher at St. Stephen��s Girls�� School; Arthur Hinton, the Principal of Queen Elizabeth School (later the head of the Northcote Teacher Training College, and later still a trainer of History teachers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong); Professor L.K.Young of the History Department of Hong Kong University; Anthony Sweeting of the Department of Education; and the American Noah Fehl of the Department of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
73 History Bulletin, pp. 6�V7. At the start of his speech, Lowe skirted around the issue of medium of instruction in a manner that illustrates the acute sensitivity of this issue, already noted in Chapter 2: ��Put it simply (sic.), a pupil has to be pretty intelligent to succeed in History. While in the Chinese Certificate of Education the number of pupils taking Geography and World History are approximately the same, in the English Cerficate of Education 4,000 odd fewer pupils take History than Geography. Is this a satisfactory position? Here a word of warning, on no account treat what I am saying as departmental thinking on History and do not worry if you disagree with it violently. One of the glories of History is its enormous scope for contradictory definitions, philosophies, interpretation and usage. Like poetry, it is indeed a house of many mansions.�� (p. 5).
74 See Chapter 2.
75 But ��co-ordinating committees�� were not established until the 1980s. Also, although the new CDC committees for the first time included teacher representatives from non-government schools, Morris, Mc Clelland and Wong observe that their establishment did not represent a ��major shift in the political culture�� of the ED. Morris, Mc Clelland and Wong, ��Social Studies in Hong Kong�� (Comparative Education Review, February 1997), p. 31.
76 Louise Mok, History Bulletin, p. 20.77 History and ��humanities�� subjects have generally tended to be regarded as ��girly�� in Hong
Kong schools�Xwhereas science is ��for boys��. 78 Ha, op. cit., p. 7. 79 Ibid. 80 Mok, History Bulletin, p. 19.81 Sweeting, History Bulletin, p. 17.82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., p. 18.84 History Bulletin, p. 26.85 pp. 23�V6 gives a description of activities organised by the society during this period. 86 Interview with Anthony Sweeting, 11/3/1999. 87 Ibid. 88 In this respect its fate mirrored that of many of the local associations of history teachers
formed in England around the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the hope that they would act as agencies for the flow of ideas. Few of these have survived into the present. See David Sylvester, ��Change and Continuity in History Teaching, 1900�V93�� in Teaching History, ed. H.Bourdillon (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 15.
89 The list of office-bearers on page 27 of the History Bulletin shows that Louise Mok was on the Society��s committee every year bar two between 1964 and 1973. She was the Secretary of the Society from 1971�V3. Other names which appear on the list include those of the teachers and textbook authors J.Stokes, Colin Crisswell, C.L.J.Hallward; Anthony Sweeting, Dr. Alan Birch of the History Department at Hong Kong University, and D.C.Lam, later to become History Subject Officer at the Advisory Inspectorate.
90 Interview with Anthony Sweeting. 91 Ibid. 92 Anthony Sweeting, Social Attitudes and the Teaching of History (Hong Kong: ESAC, 1974).93 As a member of the Ho family, Mok was in fact of mixed blood, and not of ��pure�� Chinese
descent, whatever that may signify. 94 This is indicated by the list of office-bearers on page 27 of the History Bulletin. 95 Sweeting recalls making such a suggestion at the time, but that it was ��scarcely acknowledged
as serious by senior officials��. He felt that the reasons for this were connected with the low status of teachers in the eyes of officials, and some academics, as well as the problems that the ED was facing with teachers at the time (with the Certificated Masters Dispute and the emergence of the PTU (see Chapter 5)).�XAnthony Sweeting, personal communication, April 10, 2000.
96 History Subject Officer Louise Mok��s connection with the History Society was personal
rather than official. 97 Sweeting notes this tendency in his 1974 ESAC pamphlet. 98 Sweeting and Chung Chi-keung (the latter with reference to the 1980s and 1990s) were both
scathing about the effectiveness of the CDC subject committees in their interviews.
99 According to Sweeting, this fear occasionally amounted almost to paranoia. For example, there was a notorious incident in the late seventies at the Precious Blood Secondary School where a group of young, radical teachers were in dispute with the more conservative school management. In his interview with me, Sweeting recalled that most of the radical teachers were his own former students, and that their radicalism partly consisted in ��encouraging activism in their pupils��. The government eventually closed down the school. For a discussion of this incident, see A. Sweeting and P.Morris, ��Education Reform in Post-war Hong Kong: Planning and Crisis Intervention,�� International Journal of Educational Development, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 209�V211.
100 A.E.Sweeting, ��Politics and the Art of Teaching History in Hong Kong��, Teaching History (July 1991), p. 33.
101 Anthony Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed, Chapter 9. The Board of Education Sixth Form Committee did produce a report recommending a ��broader�� sixth-form curriculum in June 1979, but it was another ten years until the power of the universities over examinations at this level was decisively broken. See Chapter 5 below.
102 This impression is to some extent corroborated by Sweeting, who recalls being asked in the early seventies to sit on the CDC subject committee for Music because he was known to possess a large collection of classical records.
103 Interview with Morales, November 1997.104 Sweeting takes the same view in his 1991 article for Teaching History, p. 34.105 Woo Ho-wai, interview. 106 Gwynneth Stokes and John Stokes, Modern China and Japan: A Concise History (Hong
Kong: Longman, 1970), p. 14.107 Ibid., p. 28.108 Ibid., p. 44.109 Morales, interview. In Chinese History, by contrast, the term ��Opium War�� has always been
used. 110 Pat Barr, foreign Devils (London: Penguin, 1970). This book illustrates the way in which ��colonialism�� had by the 1970s become ��politically incorrect�� in Britain itself. 111 Hong Kong: The Formative Years�X1842�V1912 (Hong Kong: The Shell Company of Hong
Kong Limited, 1963).112 GB Endacott & A.Hinton, Fragrant Harbour (Hong Kong: OUP, 1962), p. 5.113 Ibid., p. 2.114 Ibid., pp. 194�V5.115 See Steve Vines, Hong Kong: China��s New Colony (Aurum, 1998), Chapter 1.116 Though by no means in all circles. It should be noted that Charles Lowe, Deputy Director of
Education in the early 1970s, had a Chinese wife. 117 A.C.Morales, East meets West (Macmillan, 1972), p. 1. 118 Ibid., p. 2�V3.119 See F.Kan and E.Vickers, ��One Hong Kong: Two Histories�XHistory and Chinese History in
the Hong Kong School Curriculum,�� Comparative Education, (2001) 38(1), pp. 73�V89.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1 See Robert Phillips, History, Nationhood and the State (London: Cassell, 1998), pp. 30�V12 And arguably making it even more politically difficult for the colonial government to tamper
with the Chinese History subject than in the 1970s (see Chapters 2 and 4). As noted in Chapter 2, the period from 1984 to 1989 was characterised by a high level of local optimism concerning the impending return of Hong Kong to China.
3 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1983), p. 5.
4 Ibid., p. 9.5 Ibid. 6 Chinese History Syllabus (Forms I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1982), p. 8 (In Chinese). 7 See Paul Morris, The Hong Kong School Curriculum (Hong Kong: HKUP), pp. 112�V117.8 For a study of the implications of teachers�� lack of training, see Hung Yuencheung, A Study of
the Implementation in a Sample of Hong Kong Secondary Schools of the History Curriculum recommended by the Curriculum Development Committee for Forms I to III (Unpublished M.Ed. thesis, HKU, 1982).
9 Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 2/12/80. 10 ��Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV)��, (CDC, 1983), p. 22. 11 Interviews with D.C.Lam and Kwok Siu-tong. 12 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV) (Hong Kong: CDC,1983), p. 6.13 Ibid., p. 26.14 Comment by Aloysius Lee, tabled at meeting of CDC History Subject Committee, 18/1/1983. 15 The Sixth-form History Subject Committee of the HKEA met for the first time on 6/12/89. 16 Minutes of the A�� level History Subject Committee, 11/10/1986. 17 Ibid. 18 ��Summary of School Comments on the Proposed 1991 AL History Syllabus��, document
tabled at meeting of A�� level History Subject Committee, September/October 1988.
19 In the sections of the 1983 syllabus on ��the inter-war period�� and ��The Second World War��, for example, references were made to a number of treaties and battles, and ��War-time diplomacy�� was described as ��another important aspect to be covered in this topic.�� By contrast, although teachers were advised to ��briefly discuss the main features of totalitarian rule��, there was no specific mention of the Holocaust or the Jews. (CDC History Syllabus, 1983, pp. 28�V9).
20 Morris, ��Preparing Pupils as Citizens�K,�� in Education and Society in Hong Kong, ed. G.Postiglione (Hong Kong University Press, 1992), p. 128. 21 Julian Leung, A Conceptual Analysis of the New Certificate History Syllabus (paper presented
to an audience of History teachers, February 22, 1986). 22 Ibid., p. 3.23 Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee, 2/2/1983+5/2/1983. 24 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV) (CDC, 1983), p. 26.25 Julian Leung, op. cit. (1986), p. 2.26 The earliest extant draft of this syllabus is that tabled at the meetting of the CDC History
Subject Committee, 12/6/1979.27 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV) (CDC, 1983), p. 23.28 Ibid., p. 28.29 Ibid., p. 30.30 London A�� level Comparability Study (1985).31 ��Teacher II���Xanonymous submission tabled at CDC History Subject Committee Meeting,
18/1/1983.32 Ibid., p. 11.33 Interview with Lee Chi-hung (II).34 Interview with Jane Cheng.35 Minutes of A�� level Subject Committee, 5/12/1987.36 Interview with Jane Cheng.37 Interviews with D.C.Lam and Alice Ho. 38 Cheng Chee-hing, Jane, ��History, A New Perspective,�� in History Newsletter 1 (Hong Kong:
History Section, Advisory Inspectorate, ED, 1989), pp. 17�V18. 39 Ibid., p. 8
40 See Edward Vickers, The HKEA and Curriculum Development: the case of History, in the commemorative volume published to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the HKEA (Hong Kong: HKEAA, 2002).
41 Although Faure himself claimed in 1990 to have had ��very little�� to do with History curriculum development, there is no evidence in the minutes or other documents as to which individuals had most influence on the initial drafts of the new syllabus, but Patrick Wong remembers David Faure strongly advocating a thematic approach in HKEA committee meetings at the time he (Wong) took over as subject officer (personal communication, April 2000). Sweeting, who consistently supported a thematically-structured approach (see his 1974 ESAC pamphlet, and 1991 article in Teaching History), also claimed to have had ��something to do with this initiative�� (personal communication, 16/5/2000). D.C.Lam and Kwok Siu-tong both claimed, in their interviews, that the new syllabus was their idea, but there is no evidence to support either claim. Kwok seldom attended meetings of the curriculum committees of which he was a member.
42 Syllabus for History (Forms I�VV), (Hong Kong: CDC, 1983).43 Interviews with Kwok Siu-tong and D.C.Lam. 44 Patrick Wong made this point in conversation with me on 12/5/2000, and added that he had
conducted similar informal consultations. In fact, I myself have been informally consulted on syllabus changes by Lee Chi-hung (see Chapter 7). 45 ��Explanatory Notes��, circulated at meeting of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 30/9/1981.46 Ibid.�Xcomment by Aloysius Lee, History Panel Chairman, Maryknoll Convent School (see above).47 Comments from schools, circulated at meeting of CDC History Subject Committee
(Secondary), 18/1/1983. 48 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (secondary), 2/2/1983 and 5/2/1983. 49 An HKEA document of 1982 claims that 90% of schools surveyed supported the proposed
new teaching syllabus: Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (1988), Proposed
History Syllabus (Hong Kong: HKEA, 1982).50 Minutes of HKEA Higher Level History Subject Committee, 26/9/1987. 51 Ibid. 52 Minutes of HKEA A�� level History Subject Committee, 30/9/1987. 53 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 19/9/1987. 54 Interview with Patrick Wong.55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Interview with Chung Chi-keung. According to Anthony Sweeting, there was a slightly larger
minority of ��progressives�� within the History Department at HKU who acted informally (for example through letters, occasional appearances at committee meetings) to promote change at A�� level (e.g. Jonathan Grant, Elizabeth Sinn and Hans Schmidt). (Sweeting, personal communication, 16/5/2000).
59 Minutes of A�� level History Subject Committee, 28/9/1985.
60 The EC considered it desirable to standardise the procedure for university entrance, and at the same time standardise the length of undergraduate courses. The Commission recommended bringing the length of CUHK courses down to three years, in line with HKU and other tertiary institutions. This move was partly aimed at reducing the pressure of examinations, since it would mean abolishing the popular practice, in many schools, of entering students for the Higher Level in the lower sixth form, and then entering those who failed that for the A�� level in the upper sixth. However, since three years was the length of degree courses in England, whereas four years was standard in mainland China (as in the USA), the decision brought accusations of a colonialist conspiracy from academics at CUHK (including Kwok Siu-tong, who expressed this opinion in his interview with me).
61 In addition, there were representatives of the other local tertiary institutions (one each), two ED officials, and eight practising school-teachers. The situation on the A�� level History Subject Committee contrasts with that on its Chinese History counterpart where, according to Flora Kan, Professor Chiu Ling-yeung of the Chinese Department of HKU has dominated the committee ��like an emperor�� for thirty years. (Flora Kan, interview).
62 For example, the Higher Level History Subject Committee agreed in its meeting on 27/9/1986 to ��withold any proposals�� on syllabus reform ��in view of the EC��s recent recommendations for the restructuring of sixth-form curricula and the possibility of phasing out the Higher Level in 1990.�� In the event, the Higher Level was not phased out until 1992.
63 Interview with Patrick Wong.64 Ibid. 65 Interview with Chung Chi-keung. Anthony Sweeting made a similar observation in his
interview with me. 66 Interview with Patrick Wong.67 Ibid. 68 Since any minutes relating to this period have unfortunately been lost, the information in this
paragraph comes entirely from a personal communication with Patrick Wong, 28/4/00. 69 Minutes of A�� level History Subject Committee, 2+9/4/1986. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Minutes of A�� level History Subject Committee, 11/10/1986. 73 Robert Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State (London: Cassell, 1998), p. 39.74 Ibid. 75 Keith Joseph, ��Why teach history in school? Address by Sir Keith Joseph to the Historical
Association Conference, 10 February 1984,�� The Historian, 2, 10�V12, (1984).76 ��Overseas Moderation for A.L. Papers��, paper issued by the Schools Examinations Board of the HKEA, 16/9/1986.
77 University of London Schools Examinations Board (ULSEB), ��Hong Kong A�� level 1985�X Comparability Study with London GCE A�� leve Examination��; and ULSEB, ��HKCE 1985 Examination�XReport of the ULSEB on the Scrutiny of Grading��.
78 ULSEB, 1985 Hong Kong A�� level Comparability Study. 79 Minutes of A�� level History Subject Committee, 2+9/4/1986. 80 Minutes of A�� level History Subject Committee, 30/9/1987. 81 ULSEB, 1988 Hong Kong History A�� level Comparability Study. 82 Interview with Patrick Wong.83 HKCE History Teachers�� Seminar, held 8/7/1989, discussed in minutes of HKCE History
Subject Committee, 30/9/1989.
84 The article was: Michael S.Henry, ��The Intellectual Origins of the Document-based Question��, contained in a book edited by Robert Blackey, entitled ��Advanced Placement Teaching��. Wong drew my attention to this photocopied article when I was looking through the files at the HKEA.
85 Ibid., p. 16.86 This view of Chan was derived from the minutes of curriculum committee meetings which he
attended, and confirmed by Sweeting (personal communication, 16/5/2000). 87 Interview with D.C.Lam. 88 History Newsletter, No. 1, (Hong Kong: History Section of the Advisory Inspectorate, ED,
1989).89 Ibid., p. 8.90 Ibid., pp. 74�V94.
91 An intriguing footnote to the story of overseas influence on Hong Kong��s history curriculum during this period concerns the contacts between Hong Kong and mainland educationalists prior to Tiananmen. Patrick Wong recalls that there were relatively frequent exchanges of visits at this time. In 1988 he met the mainland��s Chief Examiner for History, a professor from Shandong University. After looking at the Hong Kong examination papers, the professor, according to Wong, exclaimed, ��This is the way History should be taught�Xnot just memorizing to fill in the blanks,�� and then made disparaging comments about students on the mainland who ��yau hok, mo sik�� (��you xue, mei you shi���X��have knowledge, lack understanding��). Wong and several colleagues were invited to Guangdong several months later, and on one occasion gave a seminar attended by 300 teachers. ��We talked to them, showed them some papers and marking schemes, and they were impressed.�� About six months later, he was sent a draft of a new History syllabus that had been prepared for China, and asked to make comments. The syllabus was implemented, and was followed four or five years afterwards by the introduction of DBQs (though direct contacts between Hong Kong and mainland curriculum developers and examiners ceased after 1989). Wong was impressed by the openness of the curriculum developers in China, and their willingness to move towards ��a marriage of what we might consider a ��Western�� approach�� with their existing approach to the subject. He contrasted this favourably with the mind-set he saw as typical of the developers of the Chinese History subject in Hong Kong.
92 See Edward Vickers (ed.), ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research (forthcoming, 2003).
93 With the exception, noted in the previous chapter, of the Civics textbooks commissioned during the 1950s.
94 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 2/12/1980.
95 ��Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (1988), Proposed History Syllabus�XNotes on changes: 1. Background�� (HKEA, 1982).
96 My own experience as an author of English textbooks bears this out. In the early 1990s, I was given three months to write a Form 4 textbook after the publisher concerned decided that the author they had previously been working with was no good. I was teaching at the time, and those three months happened to coincide with the summer term. The editors seemed obseessed with trying to second-guess the criticisms that the ED reviewers might make of the book, though in the end their criticisms of my book were relatively few. However, they did require extensive revisions to be made to other books in the same series, resulting in frantic efforts on the part of the publishers to meet new deadlines.
97 For example, in April 1983 publishers were presented with the new HKCE syllabus and given 18 months to prepare their textbooks for submission to the ED.
98 Interview with Lee Chi-hung I.
99 Interview with Julian Leung.
100 The Constitution of the CDC specifically prohibited textbooks publishers or those connected with the publishing industry from sitting on its committees.
101 Nelson Y.Y.Kan & P.L.Auyeung, Certificate History (Books I and II), (Hong Kong: Aristo, 1986).
102 A.C.Morales, East meets West (Vol. I: 1815�V1919; Vol. II: 1919�V1970), (Macmillan, 1986).
103 Kan & Auyeung, op. cit., p. 84.
104 The term is taken from Ian Scott. See Chapter 2.
105 Jane Cheng, op. cit. (1989), p. 13.
106 Interview with D.C.Lam.
107 ��HKAL 1989,�� in Hong Kong Examinations Authority, Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination, Question Papers�XAL History, 1986�V90 (HKEA, 1990), p. 78. As early as 1981, ��some members�� of the CDC Sixth Form History Subject Committee made it known that they were ��strongly convinced that the use of the mother-tongue would contribute significantly to effective teaching and learning, and requested that this issue be recorded for
future discussion.�� Minutes, 21/5/1981.108 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/11/1987. 109 London-Hong Kong A�� level History Comparability Study, 1988. 110 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/11/1987. 111 Interview with Woo Ho-wai. 112 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/11/1987. 113 Interview with D.C.Lam. 114 Ibid. 115 This explanation was provided in a background paper prepared by Patrick Wong around
1989, when the examination syllabus for 1993 was in the process of being revised. 116 Though Sweeting claims to have been among a minority on the committee who ��opposed this change and predicted its results�� (personal communication, 16/5/2000).
117 This was noted in the first meeting of the HKCE History Subject Committee (10/9/1988) to be held after the implementation of the new examination in 1988, when members observed that the most popular and best-answered questions in that examination had been those on the Opium War and German/Italian Unification.
118 Memorandum from Anthony Sweeting to Patrick Wong, 27/1/1989. 119 Interview with Elizabeth Sinn. 120 See David Sylvester, ��Change and continuity in history teaching, 1900�V1993,�� in Teaching
History, ed. Hilary Bourdillon (Routledge, 1994), pp. 9�V23; See also Phillips, op. cit., Chapter 2.
121 Not only did most students come from socio-economic and family backgrounds in which English played little part, but so did many of the newly-recruited teachers. The latter problem ultimately led to a government proposal to ��benchmark�� the English-language skills of teachers in 1999, prompting protests from the PTU (See South China Morning Post, May 18, 2000).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1 Anthony Sweeting, ��Politics and the Art of Teaching History in Hong Kong,�� Teaching History (July 1991), p. 36. 2 The Aims of Education in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: CDC, October 1989), p. 6, tabled at a
meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 29/5/1990. 3 Ibid. 4 See Chapters 2 and 3.5 Sweeting noted that, while there was a perception amongst members of curriculum committees
that the History��s popularity was in decline, in fact the subject ��had never been exactly popular��. (Sweeting, personal communication, 23/6/00) This is borne out by the figures for examination candidature, which in fact stabilised during the 1990s. History��s low popularity amongst students has been noted by Samuel Yuen Chun-ying, ��Students�� Perceptions of the Aims and Content of Curriculum in Hong Kong�� (M.Ed. dissertation, HKU, 1996). He noted that of all school subjects, only Chinese History was (marginally) more unpopular than History with the students in his sample.
6 Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 25/11/1989. 7 Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 6/7/1993. The popularity of
local history in the media was also noted. 8 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 39 Ibid.
10 England��s History syllabus for ��Key Stage III�� was circulated amongst members of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) during 1994, and placed in the committee��s file during that year.
11 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 612 Ibid., pp. 6�V16.13 See Lee Chi-hung, An Investigation into the factors that shape the design and formulation of
a curriculum package: a case study of the Local History Package for lower secondary
schools of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: HKU, unpublished M. Ed. dissertation, 1996), p. 16. 14 A concern explicitly stated in the 1975 junior syllabus. See Chapters 6 and 7. 15 Minutes of the HKCE History Subject Committee, 18/9/1993. 16 Quotation taken from minutes of the HKCE History Subject Committee, 18/9/1993�Xthough
this was in the context of a statement of the options: ��interim�� vs. ��fundamental�� change. 17 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 26/9/1994. 18 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 23/9/1994. 19 Interview with Alice Ho. 20 Ibid. 21 A fact borne out by the HKEA��s subject reports, and figures for the popularity of questions in
HKCE History examinations. However, the exclusion of this topic was regarded by one school as ��unfavourable to the political needs of the people of Hong Kong��. (Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee, 26/9/1994) The choice of ��compulsory�� topics was also queried by at least one member of the HKCE History Subject Committee, who implied that the decision might be seen as a an attempt to steer the syllabus away from the sensitive themes of colonialism (in particular the ��Opium War��), and democracy (Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 23/9/1994).
22 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 23/9/1994. Three days later, at a meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (26/9/1994), a letter from two school-teachers was tabled which objected to the removal of ��the development of parliamentary government in Britain�� on the grounds that this was ��unfavourable to the political needs of the people of Hong Kong��.
23 Ibid.
24 Wong said in his interview that he would be quite happy for students to take English Literature instead of History, since this would provide them with an essentially similar training in textual analysis and critical thinking. His own daughter in fact did take English Literature at A�� level, rather than History (as History subject officer he felt that it would be inappropriate for her to take History).
25 Report of the Working Group on Sixth Form Education (Hong Kong: ED, 1989).26 Minutes of the HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committee, 6/12/1989. 27 Ibid. 28 See previous chapter. 29 History (Advanced Supplementary Level), (CDC, 1991), pp. 8�V9.30 Ibid., pp. 10�V15.31 Minutes of Joint Meeting of HKEA/CDC Sixth Form History Subject Committees, 17/2/1990. 32 Sweeting, who chaired the Working Group that drafted this syllabus, remarked that adopting
��colonialism��, ��imperialism�� or ��decolonisation�� as organising themes for the Asian paper would have been difficult, given that ��China and Japan were the two most popular regions [for examination candidates], and the two least willing to recognise a colonial past�� (Sweeting, personal communication, 23/6/2000). However, it could be pointed out that Japan, though not a victim of ��colonisation��, was itself a colonising power, and is widely regarded or remembered as such in East Asia, and particularly in China and Hong Kong. Moreover, official Chinese propaganda at the time of the handovers of Hong Kong and Macao emphasised, even if mainly for the purpose of arousing nationalist sentiment, China��s status as a victim of Western imperialism. (See Chapters 2 and 3).
33 Syllabus for Chinese History (A�� level) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1992), (In Chinese). 34 Chinese History A�� level paper (HKEA, 1994), (In Chinese). 35 Jane Cheng, History Newsletter I, (Hong Kong: History Section, Advisory Inspectorate, ED,
1989).
36 This distinction between the two types of arguments�Xmethodological and civic�Xfor the introduction of local history is made by Sweeting in an unpublished report commissioned by the Education and Manpower Branch of the Hong Kong Government, and completed in 1995. The quotation here is taken from the same source.
37 Jane Cheng, op. cit., p. 18.38 Brochure published by the History Section of the Advisory Inspectorate (1991), quoted in Sweeting��s unpublished 1995 report.39 ��Suggested aims and objectives for history learning in S1�VS3�� document tabled at meeting of
the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/10/1994. 40 See the section on the curriculum development process, below. 41 ��Suggested Operational principles for revising the S1�VS3 History syllabus��, document tabled
at meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 26/9/94 42 The Study of Local History��, in Wen Wei Pao (in CDI files, 1995), (in Chinese). Translated
and cited by Lee Chi-hung, op. cit. (1996), p. 59. 43 Sweeting, unpublished EMB report (1995).44 Minutes of Joint Meeting of CDC/HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committees, 17/2/1990. 45 An impression confirmed by Sweeting, who recalls being provided with an initial draft of the
local history content for A�� level, which he did not, however, feel obliged to follow. (Sweeting, personal communication, 23/6/2000).
46 This early draft was found in the files of the CDC Sixth-form History Subject Committee amongst papers dating from around 1989, and attached to the revised version of the AL History examination syllabus for 1991 (which was also published in 1989).
47 See Chapter 4. 48 Letter from Professor Maurice Craft to Patrick Wong, 7/12/1989. 49 Anthony Sweeting, personal communication, 1/6/2000. 50 AS Level History Syllabus (Hong Kong: CDC, 1991), pp. 14�V15.51 See Chapter 4. 52 Sweeting agreed to take responsibility for writing up this example at the meeting of the
Working Party on the Sixth-form History Teaching Syllabus (minutes, 4/4/1990). 53 AS History Syllabus (CDC, 1991), p. 7. 54 Ibid., p. 33.55 Hong Kong was at this time still home to a substantial number of Vietnamese refugees, who
had started arriving in the late 1970s, and were housed in extremely basic conditions in a number of camps around the territory. Local attitudes to the Vietnamese were by and large extremely hostile, principally because the cost of feeding, housing and generally looking after them was seen as an unacceptable burden on Hong Kong��s resources. In this respect, the Vietnamese were seen as even more ��undesirable�� than new migrants from mainland China. Seldom, if ever, was any comparison made in the local media between the plight of the Vietnamese and that of the refugees fleeing to Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s (often also for mainly ��economic�� reasons).
56 Note that Chinese immigration implies ��growth��, whereas that of Vietnamese implies
��problems��.57 Ibid. 58 Draft guidelines on ��Implementation of the Syllabus��, tabled at a meeting of the CDC Sixth
Form History Subject Committee, 5/10/1990. The copy in the file clearly shows the systematic deletion of the word ��refugees��, and its replacement with ��population�� or ��population influx��.
59 See the section on ��process�� below.
60 See Chapter 5. 61 Interviews with Jane Cheng, D.C.Lam, Anthony Sweeting and Elizabeth Sinn. 62 Jane Cheng, for example, was particularly keen that history teachers should take their students
on field trips, and get them to do project work using primary sources, and she hoped the emphasis on the social and ��heritage�� aspects of local history would encourage such activities. See Jane Cheng, op. cit. (1989).
63 An anxiety evident in the local history materials produced by the ED, and in the process by which the 1995 junior syllabus was drafted (see below). 64 AS Level History Syllabus (Hong Kong: CDC, 1991), pp. 28�V30. The con-sistent popularity of
this topic is evident from the figures in annual examination reports published by the HKEA. 65 Ibid., p. 28.66 Ibid., p. 29.67 See Chapter 3. 68 Patrick Wong was one of those who did so, spending over a year in Australia from 1990 to
1992. For that reason he was not closely involved in the final stages of the development of
the A�� level syllabus. 69 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 7.70 An outline of the content of the pilot project was tabled at a meeting of the CDC History
Subject Committee (Secondary) on 6/7/1993, as part of a draft survey on teachers views concerning the new junior syllabus.
71 The controversial nature of this issue is confirmed by Sweeting, who links it to the failure of the Antiquities Advisory Board in 1996 to publish a set of curriculum materials prepared for Form I by a group including himself and Lee Chi-hung. (See below)
72 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 1373 Ibid. 74 These issues were also ignored or glossed over in the original local history package�XSee Lee
Chi-hung, op. cit., p. 72.75 Interview with Jane Cheng.76 Local History Pilot Scheme�XTeaching Package for Secondary 3 (Hong Kong: History
Section, Advisory Inspectorate, ED, 1993). 77 The local history package had dealt with this issue in a very simplistic and cursory manner:
��By 1945, it seemed that the US and Britain would end the privileges they enjoyed through the ��unequal treaties�� with China. Therefore China had some hopes of taking over Hong Kong. However, after the Japanese acceptance of surrender, the British acted faster and sent Sir Cecil Harcourt with British warships to receive Japanese surrender in Hong Kong and to restore British control.�� (cited in Lee Chi-hung, op. cit., p. 72).
78 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 1579 ��A Summary Report on the Evaluation of Local History Pilot Scheme, 1992�V3��, tabled at a meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 14/9/1993. 80 The ��barren rock�� view of pre-1841 Hong Kong was also among those heresies officially
proscribed by the Beijing authorities. 81 Syllabus for History (Secondary I�VIII) (Hong Kong: CDC, 1995), p. 3.82 See Steve Vines, ��Hong Kong: China��s New Colony�� (Aurum Press, 1998), p. 135. 83 Paul Morris, The Hong Kong School Curriculum (Hong Kong, HKUP, 1995), pp. 94�V5. Also,
by the same author, ��The management of participation in the policymaking process: the case of the Education Commission in Hong Kong,�� The Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1996), pp. 319�V336.
84 K.C.Pang, Julian Leung, and K.K.Chan, the three Chief Executive Officers of the CDI to date, had all previously been members of staff at the Department of Curriculum Studies at HKU.
85 See Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) for this period. 86 Anthony Sweeting and Chung Chi-keung both made comments to this effect in their
interviews. 87 Lee Chi-hung, personal communication, 2/6/2000.88 The depoliticised, or ��apolitical�� approach adopted in these guidelines is also noted by Lee
Wing-on, who was one of the drafters. See Lee Wing-on, ��Civic Education for Political Transition: Government Action and Public Debate��, (Paper presented at 9th World Congress of Comparative Education, Australia, 1996).
89 This incident is referred to in Sweeting��s unpublished report for the EMB. 90 See Chapter 2. 91 See Chapter 2. 92 Quoted in Lee Chi-hung, op. cit. (1996), p. 63.93 Quoted in ibid., p. 62.94 Sweeting, unpublished EMB report.95 Quoted in Lee, op. cit., p. 63.96 Quoted in ibid., pp. 63�V4. The name of this individual is not given in Lee��s dissertation, and,
though known to me, it must remain confidential.97 Ibid., p. 72.98 Ibid., p. 74.99 ��A Summary Report on the Evaluation of Local History Pilot Scheme, 1992�V3��, tabled at a
meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 14/9/1993. 100 Lee, op. cit., p. 74.101 Ibid., p. 70.102 Interview with Alice Ho. 103 Lee Chi-hung, op. cit., pp. 16�V17.104 Interview with Flora Kan. Lee Chi-hung cites criticisms by several newspapers of the
decision to put local history in the ��History�� subject, before and after the publication of the new junior syllabus, e.g. Sing Tao Daily (15/12/1995), Wen Wei Bao (30/5/1996), Dagong Bao (3/7/1996)), (Lee, op. cit, 1996, p. 17). At a meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) on 29/5/1990, D.C.Lam had justified the decision to introduce local History into the History subject by arguing that ��resources were mostly available in English and teachers in History were in general better equipped with the required teaching strategies. Besides, pupils could be encouraged to look at local history in the world context��. However, he went on to point out that ��Chinese History teachers, if interested, could also introduce the package to their classes as it would be produced in bilingual form��.
105 Interview with Chung Chi-keung. Chung��s misgivings are also recorded in the minutes of the
CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 26/9/1994 106 Interview with Alice Ho. 107 personal communication, 2/6/2000�Xagain, the name of the informant must be kept
confidential. 108 Steve Vines, Hong Kong: China��s New Colony (Aurum Press, 1998), p. 170.109 Richard Barnard, personal communication, November 12 1997. 110 Interview with Lee Chi-hung, 24/9/1997.111 Nelson Y.Y.Kan, New Certificate History, Book I (Hong Kong: Aristo, 1996), p. 85.112 Ibid., pp. 80�V83.113 Ibid., pp. 119�V120.114 Fong, op. cit., Volume One, p. 27.
115 Ibid., p. 47.116 Ibid., Chapter 3.117 Even Hitler was generally portrayed in such a way as to give some of my students the
impression that he was a good leader ��because he made Germany strong��. 118 See ��Hong Kong Textbooks Get Politically Correct��, in The International Herald Tribune, 9/9/1997. This article discusses changes to Chinese History textbooks. 119 This concern was emphasised by Lee Chi-hung. See Basic Principles for the Revision of
Textbooks (Textbook Review Panel, CDI, February 1998), (in Chinese). 120 Ibid., p. 2.121 Ibid., p. 2.122 Ibid. p. 9.123 Ibid., p. 5.124 Ibid., p. 6.125 ��huoxue lishi 2�� (����History Alive 2��), (Hong Kong: OUP, 1999), (in Chinese), p. 132.126 Ibid. 127 Lee Chi-hung, personal communication, 2/6/2000. The new set of ��World History�� textbooks
published by the Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company in 2001 do include the 1967 riots and the issues of ��population influx�� in their Form 3 volume. However, the relationship between these phenomena and upheavals in the mainland (i.e., the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution) is glossed over or ignored. Discussion of the causes�Xand consequences�Xof the 1967 riots is largely sidestepped, and they are portrayed as a ��patriotic��, anti-colonial movement.
128 D.C.Lam, interview with Lee Chi-hung, quoted in Lee, op. cit., p. 62. 129 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 10/7/1992. 12 out of 15 pilot schools opted to continue using the package for Secondary 1.
130 According to Sweeting, the pilot project was not entirely unprecedented. His predecessor at HKU organised a ��Maryknoll Project�� in the late 1960s, focusing on the use of primary source materials. In the early 1980s, there was an ��Intervention Study�� organised jointly by HKU and the ED, headed by Brimer. Sweeting and Julian Leung prepared the History elements for this. (Sweeting, personal communication, 23/6/00).
131 Lee first attended a meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary) on 4/10/1991, and was invited to join the Local History Working Party at the same meeting. 132 ��A Summary Report on the Evaluation of Local History Pilot Scheme, 1992�V3��, tabled at a
meeting of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 14/9/1993. 133 Alice Ho, interview.134 Ibid. This comment is another illustration of the low opinion held by ED officials of the level
of professionalism amongst teachers. 135 SCMP, 20/5/1995, quoted in Lee Chi-hung, op. cit., p. 2.136 Anthony Sweeting, personal communication, 5/6/2000. 137 Lee, op. cit., p. 3.138 Though, confusingly, in the summer of 2000 Sweeting received an e-mail from the Lord
Wilson Heritage Trust asking him whether the Form 2 materials were ready. (Sweeting,
personal communication, 23/6/2000).139 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 16/9/1992. 140 Ibid. 141 Letter dated 5/11/1991, in HKCE History Subject Committee file. 142 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 14/9/1993. 143 See, for example, the minutes of the HKCE History Subject Committee, 12/10/1991. 144 At a meeting of the HKCE History Subject Committee in 1995, it was noted that the
candidature for the English-language version of the History paper had dropped by 6% since the previous year, while that for the Chinese-language version had risen by 15.7 %. This brought the proportion of candidates taking the paper in Chinese to 27%, compared with
23% the previous year, and only 12% in 1985. (Minutes of the HKCE History Subject Committee, 10/10/1995).145 The candidature did register a substantial fall between 1992 and 1993, but has not altered
significantly since then�Xat least in absolute terms. 146 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 18/9/1993. 147 Minutes of HKCE History Subject Committee, 23/9/1994. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 When I put this to him, Wong was unhappy with the suggestion that he did not completely
��trust�� his markers. However, while not wishing to overstate the case, I maintain that his insistence on maintaining MCQs, along with his resistance to the idea of introducing school-based assessment, do suggest a less-than-complete confidence in the reliability of teachers as assessors.
151 Interview with D.C.Lam. 152 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 6/7/1993+ 26/9/1994. 153 Wong would also have been conscious that such a move was unlikely to be welcomed by
teachers. In 1986, a suggestion that a teacher-assessed component should be introduced at A��
level had met with only 44% support from teachers attending an HKEA seminar at HKU. 154 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/6/1997. 155 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 10/11/1995 and 8/12/1995. 156 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 18/6/1997. 157 Anthony Sweeting, unpublished EMB report (1995).158 Sweeting, personal communication, 5/6/2000. 159 ��Analysis of School Comments��, sent to members of the HKEA/CDC Working Group,
5/9/1990. CUHK suggested a starting date of 1750, on the grounds that this would cover the American and French Revolutions. However, the letter written on behalf of the HKU History Department by Adam Lui expressed general disapproval of the decision to axe the earlier periods from the syllabus. See also the letter from Maurice Craft to Patrick Wong, cited above.
160 Minutes of HKEA Sixth Form History Subject Committee, 19/9/1992.
161 See Responses of the HKEA/CDC Subject Committees to the comments received, tabled at a meeting of the HKEA Sixth Form History Subject Committee, 23/3/1991. The convention in consultation exercises on draft syllabuses was that any aspect of the syllabus that met with less than 80% approval ��without reservations�� from teachers should be reviewed by the subject committee, which, if it decided to make no change to the draft, should explain why.
162 Ibid. 163 Ibid., p. 2.164 AS-INSTEP: Course 116: History (Course outline in files of INSTEP office, HKU). A
similar AS-INSTEP course was run concurrently by CUHK, with Chung Chi-keung acting as one of the tutors (interview with Chung Chi-keung).
165 Jane Cheng, ��The Advanced Supplementary Level History Syllabus: Summary on Curricular Rationale�� (in History Newsletter 3, Geography, History and Social Studies Section, Advisory Inspectorate, ED, 1993), p. 25.
166 Cited by Wong in his interview as one of the achievements of which he was most proud. 167 In line with a recommendation made by ECR 2. 168 A view taken by Jane Cheng and Alice Ho in their interviews. 169 Minutes of the CDC Sixth Form History Subject Committee 1992�V1993, first meeting. 170 Interview with Alice Ho. 171 Minutes of the HKEA Sixth-form History Subject Committee, 19/9/1992. 172 Minutes of CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 25/6/1991. 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid.
175 Minutes of the CDC History Subject Committee (Secondary), 10/7/1992.
176 The bureaucratic limitations have been discussed in Chapter 7. The political effects on official curriculum materials, particularly the local history package, have been analysed above.
177 HKCEE Question Papers: History, 1993�V97 (HKEA, 1997); HKALE Question Papers: History, 1991�V95 (HKEA, 1995). 178 Teacher comments collected on the draft A/AS level History syllabus, 1990.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1 ��Working Party on the Review of S4�V5 History Syllabus��, reference materials prepared for the first meeting, 14/8/1996.2 Ibid., p. 1. The first report issued by the Education Commission following the handover was
entitled ��Learning to Learn��.3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 2.6 Ibid. 7 Papers faxed to Patrick Wong by Mrs Yung Li Yuk-wai, Humanities Unit, CDI, 8/4/1997. 8 Ibid., p. 2.9 A slightly revised later draft of the proposed syllabus was given to me with a request for
comments by Flora Kan in June 1999. 10 Ibid. 11 Draft Syllabus for History, S4�V5, Appendix C2 (Teaching Guide) (internal CDI document,
1997), p. 2.12 The Present Status of History (S4�V5) Syllabus Revision (CDI, 9/4/1997)13 Ibid., p. 5.14 See previous chapter. 15 For example, Hong Kong: One Hundred Years�Xfrom history to the future (Zhongguo Yanshi
Chubanshe, 1997), (in Chinese). 16 See previous chapter. 17 Draft syllabus, teaching guide, pp. 3�V4. 18 Wong was initially succeeded by Wong Lai-han, who had previously been the chair of the A��
level subject committee, but she was forced to step down after less than a year in the job due to a ��scandal�� over discrepancies between the Chinese-language and English-language versions of History examination papers. Her successor was Lam Tin-chi, who had previously acted as Patrick Wong��s stand-in while the latter was away in Australia.
19 Draft tabled and discussed at the 2nd meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group,
22/11/01.20 Minutes of the 2nd meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 22/11/01.21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Minutes of the 5th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/1/02.24 Oriental Daily (Dongfang Ribao), 5/3/02 (in Chinese). 25 South China Morning Post, 6/3/02.26 Ming Pao, Education Section, 11/3/02 (in Chinese). 27 Ibid. 28 Interview, 4/9/02.29 Personal communication, CDI source.30 Documents tabled at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.
31 Ibid. The main themes emerging from the feedback on the curriculum were summarised for
members by Alice Ho at the 8th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 10/5/02.32 Document tabled at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.33 Comments circulated at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.34 Ibid.
Ibid. 36 Document tabled at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.37 See, for example, the draft tabled at the Working Group��s meeting, 8/7/02. 38 S4�V5 History Curriculum Framework (Draft for Second Consultation) (CDI, October 2002)39 Comments circulated at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.
Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Document tabled at the 9th meeting of the CDC/HKEA Joint Working Group, 8/7/02.43 See Chapter 3. 44 Chinese History Subject, Special Package on Local History (Hong Kong: CDI, 1999), p. i (in
Chinese). Ibid., p. 2 (in Chinese). 46 See Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 133�V5. 47 Chinese History Subject (S4�V5), Revised Curriculum, First Consultation (Hong Kong: CDI,
April 2001) (in Chinese). 48 Ibid., p. 549 Ibid., pp. 14�V15
Chinese History Subject (S4�V5), Revised Curriculum, Second Consultation (Hong Kong: CDI,
October 2002) (in Chinese). 51 Ibid., Section 2.1.52 Ibid., Section 2.4.53 Ibid. Section 3.4 (1).54 Wen Wei Bao, 25/10/02 (in Chinese).
For example, ��Apple Daily�� (Pingguo Ribao), 25/10/02 (in Chinese). 56 See Da Gong Bao, Education Section (Dagong Jiaoyu), 25/10/02 (in Chinese).. 57 Interview with Lee Chi-hung (III).58 Ibid. 59 Ibid.
IIbid. 61 Ibid. 62 Lee Chi-hung, personal communication, 13/4/2000.63 A survey conducted by the South China Morning Post in May 2000 found that ��57 percent of
15- to 29-year-olds had no interest in national history��. (SCMP, 4/5/2000). 64 Yip Kwok-gong, article in Hong Kong Economic Journal, 8/1/2000, (in Chinese).
Ming Pao, 7/4/2000, (In Chinese). 66 Ming Pao, ��Jiaoshi neiwai��, 14/4/2000, (In Chinese). 67 Wen Wei Pao, ��Duli Zhongshike youzu shenfen shentong��, 19/4/2000, (in Chinese). 68 Sunday Morning Post, May 28 2000, p. 4. 69 Ming Pao, 7/4/2000, (In Chinese).
Ming Pao, ��Zonghe renwen kecheng: ��gouhe�� zhongxi lishi?��, 20/4/2000, p. E4, (in Chinese). 71 Ming Pao, ��Fandui zhongshi rongru take��, 10/4/2000 (in Chinese). 72 Cheng Kai-ming, ��Zhongshi! Zhongshi!��, in The Hong Kong Economic Journal, 7/4/2000 (in
Chinese). 73 Interview with Wong Ho-chiu, 4/9/02.74 All the above information is taken from an undated document entitled S1�V3 History and
Culture, shown to me by Wong Ho-chiu (4/9/02).
75 I was not shown the full set of teaching materials produced by the CDI for the pilot project, but I was given a general description of them by one member of the committee involved in drafting the curriculum for ��History and Culture��.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8 1 See Edward Vickers, Flora Kan and Paul Morris, ��Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong Kong��s schools,�� in The Oxford Review of Education (March 2003).2 This phrase, a staple of PRC patriotic discourse, appears in the excerpt from the Chinese History curriculum package on local history, quoted in the previous chapter.
3 It appears, however, that this autonomy may have been seriously eroded in recent years. This chapter was first drafted in July 2000, before the publication of the consultation documents relating to the new senior secondary curriculum (see Chapter 7). One of those involved in the development of this curriculum informed me in January 2003 that Fanny Law, the Secretary for Education and Manpower, had in 2002 intervened personally in the curriculum development process. According to this source, she instructed the CDI��s subject officers for both Chinese History and History that the new curriculum for their subjects must promote national identity.
4 One of the prime movers behind the establishment of this association was in fact Patrick Wong (shortly before his promotion from the post of History Subject Officer at the HKEA). The founding members also included many current or former teacher members of CDI and HKEA subject committees. Consequently, though the setting up of this association may help provide the History teaching profession with the collective voice that it had previously lacked, the manner of its formation is further evidence of the crucial role of ED and HKEA officials in initiating and directing changes affecting History education.
5 See Edward Vickers, The HKEA and Curriculum Development: the case of History, in a book commemorating the 25th anniversary of the HKEA (Hong Kong: HKEA, November 2002).
6 Goodson has, it is true, not undertaken research into the history of school subjects in colonial contexts. However, as was pointed out in Chapter 1, very few people have�Xwhich is one of the reasons for the significance of this research.
7 A pattern which Kliebard has suggested might be true for other traditionally academic subjects such as Mathematics. See H.M.Kliebard, ��Constructing a History of the American Curriculum,�� in Handbook of Research on Curriculum, ed. P.Jackson (New York: Macmillan, 1992).
8 Ivor Goodson, The Making of Curriculum (London: Falmer Press, 1995), p. 194.
9 Paul Morris and Anthony Sweeting, ��Education and Politics: The Case of Hong Kong from an Historical Perspective,�� The Oxford Review of Education 17, no. 3 (1991), pp. 249�V67. See also Chapter 2.
10 See Alisa Jones, ��Politics and History Curriculum Reform in Post-Mao China,�� in ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research, ed. Edward Vickers (forthcoming).
11 Ronald Robinson, ��The Excentric Theory of Imperialism, with or without Empire��, p. 273 (See Chapter 2).
12 Ian Scott, ��The Disarticulation of Hong Kong��s Post-handover Political System,�� The China Journal (January 2000).
13 Robinson, op. cit., p. 272.
14 See David Brown, The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 1998).
15 Sin-ming Shaw, ��Big China, Little China,�� Time Magazine (March 27, 2000). Shaw, a Taiwanese writer, appeared to be defending what used to be the orthodox Guomindang view of Chinese culture.
16 Fiorella Allio, ��The Dynamics of the Identity Issue in Taiwan,�� China Perspectives, No. 28, (March�VApril 2000), p. 46.17 Ibid., p. 48. See also Stephane Corcuff, ��Taiwan��s Mainlanders,�� China Perspectives, No. 28, (March�VApril 2000).18 The language spoken in Southern Fujian, Taiwan, and by many Chinese communities in South-East Asia. Its Taiwanese variant is often referred to as ��Taiyu��.
19 See Meihui Liu and Li-ching Hung, ��Identity Issues in Taiwan��s History Curriculum��, in ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research, ed. Edward Vickers (forthcoming).
20 See Gunter Schubert, ��A New Rising Nation: The Discourse on National Identity in
Contemporary Taiwan,�� China Perspectives, No. 23 (May-June 1999), pp. 54�V64. 21 Allio, op. cit., p. 49.22 Brown, op. cit., p. 261.23 Allio, op. cit., p. 50.24 Ibid., p. 49.25 Ibid., p. 45.26 Bernard Luk, ��Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism,�� in
Curriculum and Assessment for Hong Kong, ed. P.Stimpson and P.Morris (Hong Kong: Open University of Hong Kong Press, 1998), p. 74.
27 Recent attempts at reform in mainland China are mentioned in Chapter 5 above. For one example of mainland interest in overseas trends in history education, see Li Xiaolin, Shiliao zai zhongxue lishi jiaoxue zhong de yunyong [The use of historical sources in secondary level history education]. (Beijing: unpublished M.Ed. dissertation, Capital Normal University, 2001) (in Chinese). There have also been various articles on British and American history teaching practice, including ��new history�� and skills-based approaches, in mainland journals such as Lishi Jiaoxue (History Teaching).
28 See Ben Xu, ��From Modernity to Chineseness,�� positions 6:1 (Spring 1998). See also Geremie R.Barme, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
29 Martin Booth, Masayuki Sato and Richard Matthews, ��Case Studies of History Teaching in Japanese Junior High Schools and English Comprehensive Secondary Schools,�� Compare, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1995), pp. 279�V301. See also Peter Cave, ��Teaching the History of Empire in Japan and England��, in ��The Politics of History Education in East Asia��, special issue of The International Journal of Educational Research, ed. Edward Vickers (forthcoming).
Bibliography
References to primary sources, with appropriate dates (for example of committee meetings), are provided in the chapter notes. Besides syllabuses, the documentary sources consulted were mainly those contained in the History Subject Committee files of the HKEA and CDC. These included:
HKEA
HCE History Subject Committee: 1985�V2002
Higher Level History Subject Committee: 1983�V1990
A�� Level History Subject Committee: 1985�V2002 (after 1989, this became the Sixth-form History Subject Committee)
All marking schemes for all public examinations conducted since 1978, as well as question papers and examination reports published by the HKEA
CDC
History Subject Committee (Secondary): 1978�V2002
History Subject Committee (Sixth form): 1981, and 1988�V2002.
Other documents contained in the HKEA and CDC files, such as results of teacher questionnaires, letters, reports prepared for the Schools Examinations Board, guidelines for textbook publishers, or the periodic Comparability Studies undertaken by the London Schools Examinations Board are referenced in the chapter notes.
. Patrick Wong at the HKEA was unable to account for the gap in the file between 1981 and 1988, though he said that few meetings would have been held during that period, since a new syllabus was implemented in 1984, and serious discussion of revisions to it did not occur until the late 1980s.
PUBLISHED SOURCES
History textbooks are included in the following list of published sources. References to articles local Chinese- and English-language daily newspapers, such as Ming Pao or the
South China Morning Post, are not listed again here, since the list would consist of a
string of dates. These references, with dates, are given in the chapter notes. Any books or articles published anonymously are listed by title:
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Crisswell, C., Junior Secondary History 3�XNew Edition (Hong Kong: Longman, 1982) (textbook).
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Endacott, G.B. and Hinton, A., Fragrant Harbour (Hong Kong: OUP, 1962) (textbook)
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