Schools

In an article I wrote some time ago, I described a quest for ‘salvation’ pursued by means of receiving the best possible education. I also noted the disillusionment some of these seekers experience once they’ve summited their educational Everests.

My article presupposed that this ‘education as salvation’ theme is characteristic of Confucian cultures such as Hong Kong. But of course nothing in our world is so simple. A few weeks ago I came across another article that lays out the western equivalent. Titled 'The Disadvantages of an Elite Education', it's from the American Scholar, and it's by William Deresiewicz, a Yale English professor who finds it difficult to talk to his plumber:

To wrap up a very long series on primary school applications in Hong Kong (here are Parts I, II, III, IV and V), I’d like to do a couple of things.

First, I’ll add a postscript to the story of the Tall family’s own school search. I’d then like to step back and add a couple of observations about the whole experience in the context of school choice.

To add to the list of 'things our parents never had to do', each morning we must take our 4-year old daughter's temperature, and write it in a small book provided by her kindergarten. If the temperature is over 99F children should stay at home, thereby preventing any future bird-flu epidemic.

Hello again, happy parents! In this installment of my series on applying to primary schools in Hong Kong I'll pass along some tips parents might find helpful in getting their children prepared for the actual interviews their children will be dragged to and suffer through -- uh, I mean, will accompany their smiling parents to, and participate in joyfully!

Up to this point, my series of articles on choosing a primary school in Hong Kong has remained quite impersonal. I've alluded to some of the things we Talls encountered in our own school search, but avoided saying how that search turned out. Well, in this article, here we go with the details .

In my first article in this series, I outlined the basics of the primary school application process in Hong Kong, and in the second, I set out a timeline to help parents plan. But I've said very little about what parents should actually look for in a school, so that’s the precise purpose here.

In the first article in this series on primary school applications in Hong Kong, I sketched out the boundaries of the local school choice battlefield, introducing the basic types of local Hong Kong schools, and how they go about admitting students.

Today I’m kicking off a longish (okay: practically endless) series on the primary school application process here in Hong Kong. I’ve got some inherent interest in school choice policy, but my real motivation is much simpler: the Family Tall has just been through the whole process in getting Daughter Tall a primary school place for next September.

Has anyone heard of this school? It supposed to be an international through school leading to IB diploma. The medium of instruction is mainly English and supplemented with Putungua. Any ideas?

Here's an update on Daughter Tall's primary school application process. Now that the ticking clock counting down the seconds until she'll be a P1 student has become a virtual tympani in our brains -- after all, there's only a year and two months to go -- it's just about all we've been thinking about anyway.