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Schools in Hong Kong, part I
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Soon the Talls -- and a little later, the Baldings -- must make a fundamental child-raising choice. Do we send our little darlings to local schools, or to expatriate-dominated international schools?
This is a no-brainer for expats who arrive in Hong Kong with children who are already school-aged: since such children don't speak or read Chinese, it's international school (or English Schools Foundation schools, which I'm lumping together with international schools for pure convenience) or nothing, and in Hong Kong 'nothing' is illegal.
But for interracial couples (i.e. expat + Chinese) whose 'mixed' children are born in Hong Kong, making the school choice is not so easy.
Let's look at the local option first. The first advantage of sending your kids to local schools is fundamental: they'll grow up truly bilingual, and possibly trilingual, i.e. with Mandarin as well. Learning English isn't usually a problem, since the great majority of mixed couples in HK speak English in their day-to-day lives. Spoken Cantonese is often taken care of as well, as kids will pick up the current vernacular from Chinese relatives, playmates, etc.
It's reading/writing Chinese that's the sticking point. Children who attend international schools simply can't be immersed in Chinese, since they're surrounded by expat students who know little or none. In other words, unless you've got an exceptional child who can learn to read and write Chinese mostly outside of school, you've got to send her to local schools if you want her to acquire these valuable skills. Chinese characters are simply too numerous, and require too much sheer, brutal memorization impressed on plastic young minds, to just 'pick up' later. Some people of course do try to learn to read and write Chinese as university students or as adults, but their road is long and frustrating, and only a dedicated few achieve true competence.
Also, local schools are essentially free. This is not insignificant, in that many of the international schools charge anywhere from HKD5,000/month to double that or more by the time the kids reach secondary level. That adds up, dear friends, especially if you are prolific with your issue.
Okay then! To local schools they go! Would anyone reject these potential advantages, especially since Hong Kong is famous for producing students who are extremely well-prepared for university study, especially in math and the hard sciences?
The truth is, almost all families in our situation do just that -- they reject the local schools, and send their kids to study with expat children.
Mr Tall has heard numerous stories, for example, of mixed or expat families who placed their kindergarteners in a local school, and jerked them back out within months or even weeks. The usual reasons? The teachers were mean and hyper-critical. The curriculum was far too demanding. Their five-year-olds had two hours of homework a day. The local children made fun of the 'different' kids.
It's easy to laugh these complaints off, and assume that people who take this route should be a little more patient and tolerant of cultural differences. This is far easier said than done, however, when you're trying to convince someone who's barely potty-trained to suck it up and tough it out in a school she sees as Hamburger Hill.
The thing is, though, without some fairly bloodyminded discipline, the kid's not going to learn something that's going to be very good for her down the road. We now must confront one of the deepest complexities of cross-cultural living: which culture do you really want your child to learn, and to live as a part of? We're in put-money-where-mouth-is territory.
In western countries these days, children are assumed to be 'active learners'. They're creative, curious, and just brimming with enthusiasm for picking up new knowledge on their own, and from each other. The best educational methods, then, are those that keep teachers from getting in a student's way. Teachers should be facilitators, not lecturers or disciplinarians. They should help students 'learn to learn', so the actual content of the curriculum is worth consideration, but isn't crucial. Above all, what is important is students' self-esteem. Students who lack confidence in their abilities will be discouraged from learning. Their bright little fires will be dampened. Whatever efforts students make should be praised, affirmed, and validated, since the carrot works better than the stick. This view is essentially therapeutic, and it is based on an optimistic view of human nature.
Contrast this with the Chinese view. Students are assumed to be naturally slothful and in need of frequent correction. Creativity is valued, but should never be indulged to the detriment of mastering a solid body of basic content. Memorization and rote learning are practiced from the very early stages of formal education -- especially, of course, in learning Chinese characters. Other teaching methods are predominantly traditional as well, with plenty of lecturing. Teachers are authoritative, and notions of setting students loose to 'learn on their own', or from each other, may get lip service, but are rarely put into serious practice. It's assumed even the best students will need knowledge hammered into them at times. This view is essentially conservative/traditional, and takes a fairly low view of human nature.
Mr Tall, if you Discerning Readers hadn't gathered this already, is of a fairly conservative nature himself. He is therefore attracted to the Chinese view in the abstract. But when he thinks of Toddler Tall trotting home from preschool in the near future with a mountain of tedious homework, and crying because her teacher told her she was a lazy girl, it's much, much harder.
At least Mrs Tall and I have a couple of years to think about this. Any advice is appreciated!
having your cake and eating it!
I have my 2 children in one of those liberal, much praise and little or no homework institutions that pass as international schools here in HK. Our neighbour's daughter (caucasian) is in one of the head thumping, homework laden local schools.
Do I ever wish there was something inbetween the 2 extremes??
The pro's (as I see it) of a 'liberal' education (our choice)
* My daughter has grown immensely in her own self-esteem since she switched schools. She loves going to school, and is an eager learner (our neighbour's daughter absolutely hates her school and it is a drama getting her out the door each day). She's less shy, more comfortable with her peer group and can hold her own (in a polite way) with adults.
* She has lapped up learning and goes to extremes to find out more about the things that catch her fancy (ancient egypt is the current favourite), she's largely self-taught on the reading side (I find the school too slow on this for her ability level)
* she amazes us with her knowledge about all sorts of things, and also her understanding of how things are inter-related to each other
* the school emphasizes Mandarin (oral) and she's doing pretty well on a conversational level, and picking up characters, albeit slower than she would be at a Chinese school - but she's really motivated about it and loves both the language and the teachers
* there is little pressure, academic or otherwise on her, so she's free to be a 6 year old child in the afternoon, without any homework, so her fiendish mother (me) drums the discipline of learning a musical instrument (cello) and daily practise into her, she also indulges in drawing, ballet, gymnastics and soccer, and still manages to get 12 hours of sleep a night.
* My son, who is significantly slower on the academic side (i.e. reading and writing) is left to be, with no pressure on him to either read or write, while his frontal lobe catches up with the rest of his development. He is apparently unaware of the fact that he is significantly slower in this regard than his older sister. Neither the school nor ourselves have labeled him as 'stupid' or 'lazy'
* He is praised for his social behaviour (being caring, disciplined, principled etc.) and chastised when he slips up on behavioural issues. We believe kids have one shot when they're young to learn social behaviour. They have a lot longer to learn the other stuff. No point in being a smart a**hole.
* Anecdotaly an acquaintance told us his kids who went to a 'soft option' international primary school are now thriving and doing extremely well at the very competitive and academic Chinese Int'l school. He reckons too, that they need to have fun when they're young and learn to love learning and school, and then one needs to turn on the thumb screws when they hit 12.
The cons:
* I get frustrated that my daughter is not pushed more. I get frustrated by the 'lowest common denominator' view on the academic side of things in the class room. And I get frustrated that she will become complacent about being 'smart' and not having to compete yet, so that it will be a huge shock when she does have to compete or is confronted with kids vastly smarter than her, or even who've just been pushed more
* I have my doubts that I'm doing the right thing. Should I be pushing them more, encouraging them more, tutoring them more, giving them homework myself, sending them to competitive schools? I'm also old fashioned in my views that life is hard, punishing and unfair. Kids may as well get used to it as soon as possible.
* The school naturally has a high proportion of foreign students. Kids are coming and going all the time. It's not the place to engender a feeling of permanency or stability
* They're not going to come out of the system being bilingual. (on the other hand, our neighbour's daughter has a lot of characters, but is afloat on reading in English ...)
Poor kids, they're the guinea pigs in all of this!
Hi Gweipo, Are your kids
Hi Gweipo,
Are your kids in an ESF school? My kids are and I have found it rigorous enough (especially now that my older one has strated KGV). SKBaba gives them a little extra work, because he wanted to make sure they are grounded in the basics - so they have extra Chinese and Maths at home, corrected by SKBaba. They also have their music practice.
The thing I like about the ESF schools my kids attend is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of turn-over among the kids. Most of them, their parents are HK permanent residents - so they have had basically the same classmates for the past 4 years (since we moved them to ESF system). In fact, sometimes I wish my older one had a bit more tunr-over because the complexities of the 11-year-old-girl-social-scene has its roots in primary school :) Do I have to hear about the ups-and-downs of her relationship with children XYZ for the next 6 years the way I have listened to them for the the past 4? Is there no clean slate ? ;) Or, mybe things are more solid (stolid?) this side of the Harbour?
re: fear of kid becoming complacent because "smart" - praise more for hard work than for cleverness - continue to show how things could be improved by more application (don't skate...). Also, address these concerns to your child's teacher (if you haven't already).
schools, pro and con . . . .
Great stuff, gweipo and skmama -- thanks so much for your insightful comments.
A couple of questions for you first, gweipo -- when you say your daughter is very interested in lots of topics and does well integrating what she knows, do you think this is a result of her school's input, or just native curiosity/good home environment? I know that's an impossible question to answer, but hey, what are discussion boards like this one good if we don't ask them?
Also, do you think it's going to be tough to be the one turning those thumbscrews when kids hit 12 or so? I think we can grant that there are going to be some kids who aren't going to love school no matter good the school they attend is, and perhaps a very few who will love school no matter how bad theirs is. But can schools' efforts to teach the other kids, i.e. those in the middle, to 'learn how to learn' and to 'love learning' really survive a Jekyll-and-Hyde model in which the kids are indulged a bit at younger ages, then asked suddenly to perform at a high level? Or is the ability to focus on academic content something that must -- again, for those kids in the middle -- be learned early, or otherwise will be lost? How is this different from learning the social graces you mention?
I don't pretend to know the answers, and I should note that I'm not trying to make comments on ESF schools or any of the others named or alluded to in this thread. I genuinely don't know, but would really like to have a better idea.
Anyway, thanks again, both of you, for really enriching the converation on this most vexing of topics . . . .
Home Enviornment, School, Upping the Ante at 12
Hi Batgung Admin,
I think that home environment has a lot to do with developing kids curiosity and desire to learn, but some of it also comes from innate personality, and that these traits can be fostered or squelched within a school.
I know that at my child's local kindie, the headmistress told me "You don't want to send her to [Famous Name School], she's not that type of girl. She'll end up being the "nail that gets hammered down"." So, when she was turned down by Famous School, I was not completely unhappy. I know that at the school that my daughter attended for 2 years, before we switched, she was beginning to get rather turned off of science by the way it was taught. I have a colleague who sends her daughter to that school now. Her child is doing very well there, but was unhappy the way her classmates wept in class when getting their exam results. These kids are SEVEN.
So, not all schools are perfect for all kids. It's important to find the right fit (yeah, I know, not a particularly original conclusion).
re: Let them play 'til they're older.
I don't think that the ESF primary school my kids go to is just letting them play. They appear to learn quite a lot of facts about geography, climatology, history, language, maths. In science classes they are learning about what is a "fair test" and how to make a hypothesis and test it. They don't have a lot of daily homework assigned by the school - but they do have to do research and projects. My second child's handwriting is not very good (I raised this w/ the teacher) so she has organized some handwriting home work for him to do, to practice making it more legible. That's good for him - but what a pity it would be for ALL the kids in the class (most of whom have decent handwriting) to have to do such work.
IMHO there's enouigh academic content. They know many countries of the world, they know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. By P-6 (the equivalent of P5 in the local school) they are working on geometry and basic algebraic-type formulae. The know about fulcums and inertia and acceleration and other physics-type things. They know lots about zoology and endangered species. In P6 my daughter's class did projects of various Great Civilizations and then had to present them to the class. So, my daughter studied the Roman Empire, but also learned about Chinese empires, Incas, etc. My son is now studying world explorers (Magellan, Leif Ericsson, Zheng He).
The place where you really see the lack is in their knowledge of reading and writing Chinese.
The "turning on the screws at 12"...
I think that it's not really that, so much as greater amounts of work and concentration are expected of the kids as they get older. My eldest had to do more in P6 than she did in P4. The amount of work she now gets in KGV is definitely greater than in primary school, but she is coping OK.
I think around 12-14, kids cognitive ability increases in quantity and quality. In Year 7 my daughter is learning Spanish and Mandarin, Geography, History, Maths, Religious Studies, PE, Technical Arts, ICT, and music. Her big history assignment for the autumn "Emperor Hadrian and Qin Shi Huangdi - compare and contrast". In religuous studies it was "Discuss Moksha, Reincarnation, and Dharmma and how they relate to each other" - which is the sort of essay I had to write in university.
WhenI was her age, if you asked me to even tell you who Hadrian and Qin Shi Haungdi were, I would have been stumped. As for Hinduism, I knew very little. So, content is there.
Controlling expectations
Hi there
I am impressed by the level of detail in the "Tall" entries (thanks very much) and it appears that the admissions process is similar to that of the UK, which we have just completed for our first child and have the joy of starting for our second one this year (2008).
so having digested it all I would like to know on a scale of 1-10 (10 being most unlikely) what our chances are of getting our 5-6 year old and 3-4 year old into the school of our choice. This is a significant part of our decision process on up rooting them when we are privileged to be very happy with their current school in the UK
Many thanks
Notagain!
Putonghua schools - the third option
The original article gave parents the simple either/or choice of local or international schools, with the assumption that local schools would be the choice if the children were to learn chinese. There was another assumption that 'Chinese' would be spoken cantonese and written traditional chinese.
But there is a third option - choose an international school that is geared up to teach western children chinese, by immersing them in a chinese-language environment. But here 'chinese' will be spoken putonghua, and written simplified chinese, ie the language of the mainland.
Gwipo is blogging about this at the moment, so take a look at her posts around this one to see one western family's views of the pros and cons.
We're planning to stick with the local system, with its cantonese and traditional chinese. Since that is the language of the local half of our daughters' family, it makes sense for them to grow up learning it.
MrB