DSE in Hong Kong, CSAT in South Kore, Gaokao in China... how the education system suffocates Asian students.

Hong Kong vs Michelle Obama and the education problem

What happened

It was confusing, at the very least, to read in the news that Hong Kong teenagers attacked Michelle Obama online because extracts from an essay and a book of hers appeared on their exam paper. Since Mrs Obama does not hold any government post in HK, and certainly none that relates to education, it's hard to see how she is even remotely responsible. At the same time, to dismiss the attacks as “crazy” or the “emotional outbursts” of immature or disrespectful teenagers doesn't do the youth of HK justice. In my experience, most HK teenagers are sensible, mature and respectful. As usual, there are deeper reasons beneath a seemingly sudden storm. And, as usual, the main problem could be the (education) system itself.

The Hong Kong flow

William Deresiewicz writes in his book, Excellent Sheep: “It doesn’t matter if your parents aren’t crazy [...] because the environment is. Other people’s parents are crazy, so the whole school is crazy. And however well-intentioned teachers often are, principals and other supervisors tend to work against them. Teachers are trapped in the system as well.” That pretty much sums up what I experienced during my teaching years in Hong Kong. There seems to be immense pressure and excruciating stress for everyone involved: teachers, parents and students. And, while grown-ups in general and professionals in particular have a clue or two about coping with that kind of stress, students often do not. 

Strained parents, stressed out toddlers

When does the madness start? Well, for parents, as soon as the baby is delivered – no, conceived; they need to start planning for its education as early on as possible: securing a place to a nice kindergarten means better chances of getting a place in a nice elementary school, then a high school and so forth. In sought-after kindergartens, toddlers attend interviews and are asked, in English, to talk about themselves, their hobbies or why they want to study there. Needless to say parents are interviewed too, and far more rigorously. Worse still, they might be asked to leave the room, so the child can be tested for “independence”. A mother told me once her two-year old started crying when she left, and that meant a lower score for the child. Really, if that is where we are today, it is possible to imagine in a decade or two from now prenatal academic laboratories where, through sophisticated ultrasound devices, embryos sit knowledge-based exams and personality tests before they can be promoted to foetuses. 

The paradox

Sounds too far-fetched? Well, already ten years ago there were English classes for pregnant women or mothers with newborn babies in Hong Kong. Competitiveness thirst drives people further and further away from rational attitudes. I've known seven-year olds who were learning four languages at the same time (Cantonese, English, Mandarin, Spanish). I've known teachers who (were asked to) read out loud Shakespeare to two-year olds. I've seen kids who break down and cry – or even vomit – when asked to do more homework. And all that for what? To become better and better, one might argue; to excel and be “well-equipped” for whatever the future has in store. Fair enough. But does it work? Well, strangely enough, despite years and years of relentless homework, there are College students who spell the word “small” as “s-a-m-l-l” and the word “girl” as “g-r-i-l” - I've seen plenty of those, when teaching academic English. And I remember thinking to myself, “How can someone who is made to start learning English at the age of two or three be unable to spell ridiculously simple words when they are 18?” 

The Honk Kong grinder 

It usually goes like this: you start learning English when you're about three years old and, actually, it's quite fun till you're seven or eight. But around that time, homework starts to be much more than before and much harder than you can handle. Cracks start to form, which turn to gaps and then to wide openings impossible to even patch up, let alone close. Year after year, grade after grade, weak students become weaker, victims of a system that does not forgive those who fall behind. Year after year, they wade through course books and work books that make very little sense, they fail test after test, to be finally presented with an excerpt from Michelle Obama's memoir and asked to show some critical thinking when, in reality, many struggled to even vaguely grasp the main idea. And, my guess is, those kids are not the ones that flocked to Mrs Obama's IG account, because they are used by now, sadly, to underperform in English tests. The boiling fury came from those who were used to doing better, who expected better, and who had the means to prepare better; those, whose betterness unfortunately turned to bitterness. They did indeed have a good reason to feel upset: after a decade of back-breaking homework, tutorial centres, extra-curricular activities and a childhood basically offered as sacrifice on the altar of success, they came across a task that went beyond the abilities of even excellent students. No wonder they were angry, however misguided their frustration towards Obama.

South Korea and Asia

Speaking of student's lives reduced to school-tutorial-homework-sleep, Hong Kong is not the only place where an insatiable drive for competitiveness has robbed children of their childhood. I quote from The Korea Herald: “What’s more important is that, instead of just following what others are doing, as parents we should try to better observe and understand our kids. We must grant them the same compassion we give our friends.” Parents in South Korea pay dearly for education, and children are expected to work hard and excel. Good education means a good job, and good jobs are not always easy to come by in South Korea. Those who remember 1997, when South Korea was forced to accept a $58 billion loan from the IMF, will certainly recall as well the painstaking austerity measures that followed, and how the unemployment rate nearly tripled in the two years right after the deal. A lot of the South Koreans who are parents today, saw their own parents lose their jobs back then, and this, along with the hard-work-is-everything Korean mindset, can explain to a great extent parental obsession with academic credentials. But in a society where success in education is imperative, and celebrity teachers (who promise exactly that) are treated as nothing sort of deities, students often are under extreme stress to perform: failing is not an option. Same or similar reasons have created same or similar environments all over Asia: Japan, Taiwan, major cities in China. The economy is in bad shape, and good (or, any) jobs are scarce, so hard work now is the key to a better future tomorrow. Actually even the economy was great, it still makes perfect sense to want your children to have a good education. What makes little or no sense is the sheer intensity that education presently involves. Kids go to school to study, then to a tutorial centre to re-study what they studied at school, and then back home to study what they studied in the tutorial centre, and finally study for school next day. Study ad nauseam and ad infinitum.

IMF in South Korea - Protester Source: WSJ

Education is not data

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for education, and I've always encouraged my students to educate themselves as much as they can. But the relentless torrent of “knowledge” all day long, all year round, is not education. It's merely “the filling of a bucket,” to paraphrase Plutarch, “not the starting of a fire.” Education needs its own space, and takes its own time. Results-oriented, exam-based education is an approach that seeks to quantify what is immeasurable. Learning to accept failure, for instance, or understanding concepts like right and wrong, forming beliefs and values, developing critical thinking and sound judgment – all that cannot be part of a model that quantifies and compares brains. The point of education is to cultivate minds, not to bombard them with data. What infuriated students in Hong Kong might have been rooted in exactly that: the task of understanding Michelle Obama's thoughts was not a mere test of vocabulary, a problem that required the retrieval of methodically memorised data, but something far deeper and harder than the stuff these kids had been taught at school. It was the injustice of having done the best they could, only to be ”betrayed” by the system whose very rules they followed.