2011年4月25日 星期一

Education in Hong Kong --- GOOD or NOT??

Nothing is perfect. No matter how great a thing is, it still has its own flaws.

In the eyes of foreigners, generally they think Hong Kong students are good at taking written examinations.

Somehow, this is ture as Hong Kong students are facing thousands of tests or exams in their school lives.

And doing good in examination becomes important in Hong Kong these years.

As the results of public examination is an important indicator for students' abilities,

people, including the Education Bureau, start focusing on the results but not the process of learning.

The policies made by the bureau in fact did not improve the whole situation.

For most of time, teachers tend to teach only according to the syllabus.

At the same time, students don't show any interests in  knowledge outside the examination syllabus.

They only concern about how to make their academic result an impressive one.

To get a higher grade, memorising the notes seems to be effective.

However, for most of the students they mermorize notes without digesting the meaning or theory behind.

They even don't ask their teachers when they find something they can hardly understand.

Instead, they just memorise them without making the concept clear.

In fact, under such a learning environment, for those who have great results in the public examination,

they may be just good at memorising notes or using examination techniques.

Academic result is no longer a reliable factor to judge one's intelligence.


Though the Education Bureau always emphasizes learning is not for the marks, it failed to do so.

Knowledge is becoming more important in Hong Kong.

As what i have mentioned above, people nowadays tend to use knowldge to judge one's abilities, ignoring one's passion and other skills.

Having a impressive certificate can definitely help one to get a job with a higher salary and better welfare.

But in Hong Kong nowadays, the economy is not that good.

If you have a high qualification, you may not also be guarantted to got a job after university graduation.

You can imagine how harsh will the situation of a student who failed in the CE or AL exams be.

Therefore, students try every means to get a higher grade in exam.

At least, this can increase their competiveness.


We can see that the original intention of learning is vanishing.

Of course the education bureau should take bear the largest responsibility.

And the views of society make the whole thing pragmatic,

In fact, we can see there are more problems in HK education.

The above is just a small part of it.

For example, when we compare HK students with students in foreign countries like USA,

it is not hard to discover that creativity of HK students is lower and they are a bit rigid, not flexible enough.

I think it may because HK students keep on absorbing knowledge but seldom think.

To solve this problems, of course the education policy should firts be amended.

and the values of the public should also be changed.

In recent years, we start ot have a subject called liberal studies.

In fact i think the idea is quite good.

However, the ways of teaching are still traditonal,

students sitting in the classrooms and receiving knwoledge from teachers.

We should learn from the foreign countires ,finding different ways which can inspire creativity in students.

Providing them more chances to ask. This can greatly enhace communication in the classrooms and

makes the learning process a reciprocal one, but not one-way teaching.

Also, we may sometimes bring them out of the classrooms such as having field trips,

this may arouse students' interests in learning and motivate them to learn something outside the exam syllabus.

As the traditional way of teaching does not work, we have to try something new.

However,  it will also takes a long time and effort and it is hard to achieve these without cooperation.

Therefore,society should hold hands and help making a better learning environment for our children together.

There is NO doubt that Hong Kong students are smart and intelligent.

It is just the way enlightening them is ineffective and unsuitable.

I do hope that the outlook of the education in HK is a bright one. :)

2011年4月24日 星期日

Project Reflection

This is the first Japanese project in my life.
Thanks that lecturer gave us the freedom to choose the topic that we are really interested in.
We really enjoy doing the project as the topic is what we really want to know.

In this project, i know more about Japanese local cultures, like Japanese male thinking.
When i was small, i did not have many channel for me to gain more information of Japanese cultures.
For most of the time, i received information related to Japan through the words of people or drama.
So i have an idea that Japanese male is male chauvinist.
(I don't know will this word be offensive or not, if this makes you feel bad, i am sorry for my poor English.)

As for most of time, like in drama, we can see the social status of women is very low.
When women are married, they should stay at home and take care of the children and elder people.
And they had to do and listen to what their husbands said without asking.
For girls who work in a company, generally their status are low also.
The hig posts are generally occupied by men. and women who are clerks who are responsible for some paper works, they have to serve men like making coffee which are not part of her jobs.
And i did feel sorry for Japanesewomen at that time. They were treated unequally and unfairly.
They were always looked down by man and you may even say they were subordinate to men.
As a Hong Kong girl, it is hard for me to understand why it can still be happening in theis century?!

But after doing this project, my view towards them is greatly changes.
The situation nowadays has drastically changed.
What i am saying above is something old and traditional.
Now the status of men and women are being balanced.
Women can work after married. And they have a say at home.
husbands and wives now are more tended to compromise rather than order and acccept.
And knowing how to cook or do houseworks are no longer a must for Japnese men choose their wives.
Also they can take up some high posts in company. Their working abilities are being recognized.

The mindset of Japanese people are noe changing (in a good way)
This is really out of my exoectation. i am sorry for my misconception before.
And now i start to see Japanese men in a different angle. 

If i have a chance to modify my project,
i would like to make one that can show the difference between the thinking of people nowadays and before.
As this time, we do it based on out own perception but not the real situation in Japan.
So the result can show the changing process of the mindset of Japanese people.
Also i think it would be great if we make a survey for HK male.
So that we can compare the mindsets of these 2 group of people.

And i would like to conduct a survey about how female choose their husbands in future.
As Hong Kong women nowadays are so strong and independent.
and we are generally labelled by Hong Kong male as bad and bothersome.
They may think Hong Kong women are too pragmatic, always focus on men's wealth, faces and qualifications when they choose their future partners.
So i would like to know how Japanese girls choose their husbands and make a comparison to HK girls.

I think it would be a good idea if we have chances to talk to Japanese in person.
We may prepare a list of questions (all under a certain topic compromised by your group) before we meet them.
After the meeting, we may do a presentation to show what you have learnt and found in the conversation or what you want to share with us.
I think it may be a quite interesting experience. :)

2011年4月13日 星期三

Project Presentation (2)

Finally, all the project presentations are done.
I would like to thx all of you as you guys did teach me something i don't really know.

For the group who talked about tourism in HK,
I think it is great to choose this topic as we don't know how people from other countries see HK.
We always hear people say HK is a food/shopping paradise.
Is it really the fact or there are some attractions of HK we don't know but foreigner can discover?
And i do agree with what you 3 said, if your project includes more information about shopping in HK,
the project will be better.
and for the one talking about animation, this is reli surprising, at least for :),
In fact i seldom watch animation or read manga.
So i don't know much but only some old famous manga.
Among the list of animation they showed us, i only know some of them.
and again, we have an idea all Japanese must love animation and they can't live without it
becuase Japanese is the origin of manga and animation.
However, the presentation just told us that the importance of manga to Japanese is not as high as we expected.

By the way, I do want to search for DRRR when i am free.
Just want to have a look, see what the story is about :)


Thanks for the interesting presentation.

2011年4月6日 星期三

Project Presentation (1)

After hearing the last 2 presentations, i have discovered some interesting information which surprised me a lot.

For the first group which talks about the Japanese msuic, the results of some of the questions are so unexpected.
For example the figures show that indeed classic music is one of the common types of music that Japanses always listen to.
Besides, we Hong Kong people always have an idea that Ayumi Hamasaki is popular in Japan as most Hong Kong people , though many of them may not be familiar with Japanese culture, only know who Ayumi is among all the Japanese female singers. However, this is not the case in Japan.
This presentation provided me additional information that correct my wrong ideas towards Japanese music.

The second group is talking about OTAKU. In fact i do not know much about it. You may say i have the same idea as other Hong Kong people, i have a negative impression towards this group of people. And i do not know under what situation i can describe a person OTAKU. But the Q&A session of this presentation told us more about their real lifestyles and how Japanese see them.
This indeed is a quite interesting topic as the information of OTAKU is not much in Hong Kong.

I learnt a lot from these 2 groups. Thanks a lot.