Thoughts on Hong Kong’s Education

Lang writing 1

Thoughts on Hong Kong’s education

 In recent years, it is not uncommon to hear from the news that students committed suicide due to the inability in handling the heavy workload from school and fulfilling the high expectations of their parents. It was known that 72 students, from primary to college, have committed suicide in the past 2 years in Hong Kong and the number is still rising. The increasing figure has caught public’s attention and the loophole of Hong Kong’s education system became the talk of the town these days. So, what actually is the problem of Hong Kong’s education system that cause so many losses of innocent lives?

 One major cause I believe is the practice of rote learning in local schools. Students are forced to learn like robots, remembering everything that appears in the textbooks, do past papers and exercise before exams so as to learn how they can answer the questions in the way the examiner want. In such case, creativity and critical thinking of Hong Kong children are stifled as all of them are following the rules set by the others, there is no way that they can express their own ideas and fact on their thoughts. Such learning environment does not foster a love of learning; instead, growing the fear of failure and comparison with peers. In my point of view, the education system nowadays is just rewarding those kids who are able to do very well in exams and tests, in other words, those who can fulfil the expectations and wants of the teachers and parents. While for students that also have the ability to shine but fail to perform well in academic assessments are punished, being considered as a failure and useless in society.

 In fact, the world is changing so rapidly that having the ability to remember a lot of information and performing well in exams will no longer be the pathway to success. Computer will soon replace human in handling those data work and what the world really value will be creativity, critical thinking, communication skills and adaptability, human attributes that computer cannot replace. If students keep following what they are taught at school, based on the education system that were designed decades ago, they will easily be eliminated by others once they enter the workforce.