Extreme Education

Are we allowing kids in Hong Kong to discover the love of learning?

On Saturday I attended a TEDxHongKongED event focusing on education, but not just traditional learning in schools, but also creativity and innovation.

Two women with experience in the school system, Karin Ann, founder and principal of International Montessori School and Judy Tsui, formerly chair professor of accounting at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, talked about the need for students to learn at their own pace.

Ann in particular stressed her school does not take creativity away from children but nurtures it. Tsui expressed concerns about young children going to summer school to get a preview of what they will be learning in September.

Parents think this is a good way to prepare the children so that they will perform better academically, but Tsui says this does the opposite and breeds insecurity and diminishes the love of learning.

This is not only happening to children in secondary and elementary schools, but also those who are barely out of their diapers and expected to go to "MBA school'. It's all gotten out of hand, Tsui says and now there are stats to prove it.

Wofoo Social Enterprises has conducted a study that has found children are stressed out by academic pressure even before they start primary school. Some 65 percent of the 683 parents contacted said their children, aged four or five, were feeling pressure in the move from kindergarten to primary school.

In order to increase their chances of attending an elite school, the parents send their kids to many different after-school classes from swimming and piano to painting and singing. Many kids have some kind of activity everyday -- including weekends.

This means there's little time afterwards for kids to play, as 70 percent of parents admitted they allowed their children two hours or less of play every day, while 30 percent gave them an hour or less to play.

Seventy-six percent of parents felt competition was keener these days and so their children had to study harder than when they were younger. And 17 percent thought of moving their family overseas or sending their children to international schools because of the stress of the current education system.

"Some parents think teachers and principals at primary schools love children who are very knowledgeable," said Fung Pik-yee, principal of Aplichau Kaifong Primary School. "But sometimes it's just because some parents are too tensed up over their children's Primary One school places allocation. No primary schools want children to know everything because they come to school to study."

Both Ann and Tsui are horrified that young children are so overworked that they do not love learning anymore, which may explain why Hong Kong hasn't had much innovation let alone creativity these days.

These educators are urging parents to stop the madness and let their children develop naturally -- in particular their curiosity. That definitely does not happen from going from one class to another everyday with hardly any breaks.

Parents know what they are doing is not good for their children, but they are too scared to "lose out". They feel trapped in a rat race, that if they take their children out of a class or classes that they feel guilty not having done enough for them to get ahead.

Is that what education is all about in Hong Kong?

There needs to be a complete revamp of the system otherwise more and more children are going to not only hate learning, but their parents too for putting them through such a rigorous period in their formative years. Perhaps they will start a class action lawsuit suing for their loss of childhood?

Ideas Worth Spreading

TEDxHongKong held its event tonight at Polytechnic University

I just came back from attending my first TEDxHongKong event that was held at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hung Hom.

I'd heard of TED Talks before but wasn't familiar with the locally organized TEDx events. So when there was an opportunity to attend tonight's event I decided to spend a few hours to hear speakers with "Ideas worth spreading".

One particular one was Martin Radford, a former teacher in the UK and Hong Kong, who then in 2010 got involved in a ministry full time, in particular the Inner Cities Ministries. It's a Christian mission that works with the South Asian ethnic minority community in Hong Kong, especially the Nepalese who live in Yau Ma Tei.

ICM's Martin Radford

He started off by saying Hong Kong hides its poverty extremely well, overshadowed by skyscrapers. And he explained that with poverty comes powerlessness -- the inability to change one's situation.

However he believes we as a community can help bring about transformation, which is a step beyond change. Radford made the comparison between a caterpillar and a butterfly. A caterpillar just focuses on eating leaves all day, whereas a butterfly flies over the caterpillar, beyond just eating leaves.

But he adds you can't just dig into your pockets to give money to poverty; it's like just adding wings to a caterpillar and that doesn't necessarily make it a butterfly -- it's still a caterpillar eating leaves.

So the best way to create transformation, Radford says, is to change through relationships. It is important to engage with people to transform them, and this is particularly critical for adolescents.

One of the slides he showed was that of women in a room hunched over sewing machines. Radford said these Nepalese women were taught how to sew and have so far made 500 children's outfits. Not only do they gain new skills, but these clothes have been sent to places like Bangladesh and India to people even more poor than them.

Teaching people how to cook at Taste of Grace

The mission also teaches them how to cook, which is a good way to build relationships with people. How can you share meals without talking, he asks. Some of the people who learned how to cook are also asylum seekers who aren't allowed to work until they have refugee status. But here they can learn skills they can use.

Radford says Nepalese kids have a hard time learning in Hong Kong. At home they speak Nepali, but don't know how to read the language. Then they go to local schools where they learn English and Chinese, but can't really figure out how the languages work. To them they are all disparate symbols that aren't connected. But the mission tries to help them figure it out through storytelling.

Another way to empower the Nepalese is through performing in a park in Yau Ma Tei. And he says empowerment is important because horizons are not easy to see when you are trying to look up. But when you rise up, the sun is the same for you as it is for Li Ka-shing, he says. It's a bold statement, but an optimistic one.

For example the mission took some Nepalese kids on a week-long camp. Some had never experienced having a shower, or changing their socks daily. But he says once they learn and experience more then the return on investment is incalculable.

Tutorial sessions for kids run by volunteers

That's because transformation happens when human beings care for other human beings, which is Radford's takeaway line.

We don't hear much about the Nepalese community in Hong Kong -- or is it because we choose not to? I know many typically work in the restaurant industry but where else? Are they making decent wages? What do they want to do with their lives?

But perhaps more importantly they want to be recognized for who they are and accepted into the community. And until we reach out to them, they will continue to remain in the fringes.