Friday, July 27, 2007

Hong Kong's Education System is in trouble - Part II

We want our future generations to be bilingual, Chinese and English. Since the majority of Hong Kong people are Chinese, our kids should learn their subjects in Chinese. What about English? We do have English classes since nursery so all we need to do is to hire qualify teachers to teach them. The crux is to have our children to familiar with English terms in various subjects since primary school. We should put English terms in parallel with Chinese terms in textbooks so children know that "香港" is "Hong Kong", "北極" is "North Pole", "國會" is "Parliament", "星星" is "Star(s)", "獅子" is "lion", and "水" is "water". When they are in junior forms of secondary school, the medium should still be Chinese but textbooks should be bilingual so they can choose to read Chinese or English version. Once they are in senior forms, the medium should be switched to English and most subjects should only have English version. As a result, they can understand more when they are in post-secondary school.

When we want our children to learn history, geography, physics, or others, we want them to learn some knowledge, not English. They should learn English in their English classes.

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