Batgung - Schools

Surviving the local school system

clearwaterbay — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 03:06:11 +0000

I have been lurking on this site for several years and have benefited immensely from the thoughtful and amusing articles by Mr. Tall and Mr. Balding, and the helpful comments from readers, especially those on choosing a school system and negotiating the application process. Certainly for our family, reading batgung had a significant influence on our decision to send our children to school in the local system.

Is there any chance of an update on the ongoing adventures of Daughers Tall and Balding (and their elders) through primary school? I suspect I am not the only reader waiting breathlessly for the next installment. I would love to hear from others about how one manages homework and exams; finding good tutors; balancing non-school activities; how workload progresses over time; the dreaded TSA (HK-wide exam given in the 3rd grade); the middle-school exams; recommendations for bookstores with good children's materials; social issues (school far from home, so classmates do not equal playmates; I am different from my classmates in my languages/family background/why don't my friends in ESF / internationsl schools seem to have any homework?); dealing with success (what to do when suddenly your kid is fine with Chinese but hates English?)....well, you get the picture, and I have to stop and go get in line at a kindergarten, so....

Mr. Tall and Mr. Balding, you helped us get here; can you help us make it through?

Teaching kids about race

Mr Tall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

There’s a remarkable article on kids and race in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine (yes, Newsweek actually still exists). The article’s authors, the novelist Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, have written a book on raising kids they’ve cutely titled NurtureShock. The article is an excerpt.

Bronson and Merryman begin by describing a research study conducted on a group of white children in the super-progressive college town of Austin, Texas. But they wring their metaphorical hands over its unexpected results: the children of good solid White parents (who bend over backwards to convey their multicultural bona fides) never the less think people of their own race are nicer than people from other races.

The authors note that many parents involved in this study dropped out. Why? They were so worried about saying the wrong thing that they couldn’t bring themselves to talk to their children about race at all – after all, their child might make an embarrassing statement in public that could implicate Ma and Pa as potential racists, or at least as insufficiently enthusiastic multiculturalists.

Another study the authors recount sounds even worse: children who attend ‘diverse’ schools are at least as likely to develop negative stereotypes of people from other races as do kids who attend monocultural schools.

So what’s the solution to all this racial angst? Do the authors entertain the possibility that intensive anti-racist, pro-multiculturalist, pro-diversity educational efforts actually heighten racial tensions rather than improve them?

Uh, no. Instead, they suggest that more explicit anti-racist guidance is required, starting as young as possible. Age three is suggested as a good place to get started teaching kids about race, since it’s before the ‘developmental window’ in which they’re easily malleable closes:

Small corrections in our thinking today could alter the character of society long term, one future citizen at a time. The way white families introduce the concept of race to their children is a prime example.

Another study quoted advocates teaching kids about race by packing some ideological punch:

White children who got the full story about historical discrimination had significantly better attitudes toward blacks than those who got the neutered version. Explicitness works. "It also made them feel some guilt," Bigler adds. "It knocked down their glorified view of white people."

But note the catch in both of the previous quotations: the ‘full story about historical discrimination’ has a big ‘Whites Only’ sign on the door. Children of other races are routinely taught ‘ethnic pride’, and that’s fine. So, as the authors admit:

That leads to the question that everyone wonders but rarely dares to ask. If "black pride" is good for African-American children, where does that leave white children? It's horrifying to imagine kids being "proud to be white." Yet many scholars argue that's exactly what children's brains are already computing. Just as minority children are aware that they belong to an ethnic group with less status and wealth, most white children naturally decipher that they belong to the race that has more power, wealth, and control in society; this provides security, if not confidence. So a pride message would not just be abhorrent—it'd be redundant.

****

What would happen if I tried to apply Bronson and Merryman’s approach to my mixed-race daughter here in Hong Kong? Is it ‘horrifying’ if I try to teach her to be proud of her white (i.e. European-American) heritage? And should Hong Kong schools teach local kids that it’s ‘abhorrent’ if they feel proud to be Chinese, because Chinese people hold the ‘power, wealth and control’ in Hong Kong society?

In fact, if we carry out the authors’ assumptions to their logical conclusions, Daughter Tall should feel doubly guilty: one of her parents is a white American, and the other is a member of a dominant majority culture. I guess Mrs Tall and I have a whole lot of ‘knocking down’ of Daughter Tall’s ‘glorified views’ of her heritage on our agenda!

Is this really what Bronson and Merryman have in mind? I find that hard to believe.

****

I find the Bronson and Merryman article particularly frustrating because I agree with Bronson on several other controversial issues raised in the book, parts of which are based on a series of articles he wrote for New York Magazine:

Bronson shoots down the theory of self-esteem being based on how much kids are praised, i.e. ‘How not to talk to your kids’. This is a superb article, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, in fact.
He makes a convincing case for nipping lying in the bud when kids are young in ‘Learning to lie’. I was also very favorably impressed with this article, since I knew in my heart that a certain daughter of mine was perfectly capable of telling lies at a very young age – much earlier than any baby books or developmental theories I’d encountered suggested was possible.
Bronson also argues very convincingly how important enough sleep is, especially to adolescents in ‘Snooze or lose’.

****

Bronson and Merryman are right, I think, in pointing out that kids are not simply going to benefit in some amorphous, mystical way just by being physically present in ‘diverse’ settings. Children inevitably notice racial differences and will at some point start to wonder about them. And I think there’s little doubt kids are drawn to people who look like themselves.

This is bad news for concerned parents who have assumed that dropping Junior off each day at Highly Diverse Multicultural School ensures that he’ll turn out to be a sensitive, tolerant, polished PC product. It means that the burden of teaching Junior about race has to fall on someone, and that as parents they can either trust his school to do a good job of it (and many people do not trust schools to this degree), or they have to take on the task themselves. Bronson and Merryman are right in that this issue can’t simply be sidestepped.

But if they get the form right, I believe they get the content wrong. They are too quick to accede to the prevailing conventional wisdom (at least in the USA) that posits that some races or cultures can be labeled as worthy of pride or celebration, while others must be subject to self-denunciation and apologies. This demeans all parties involved: it implies that members of some races are guilty by dint of their birth, and that members of others can only be held to lower standards. After all, which race (or ethnic group of any sort) is either an unqualified success, or an irredeemable disaster?

The content of what you teach your children about race is crucial. The messages we pass on to our children about race have to be more balanced and truthful than the politically-correct platitudes Bronson and Merryman quote in their article.

****

Although the issue of race is not an overweening presence in Hong Kong, it’s also never quite absent if you’re an expat, your spouse is local, and your children are mixed.

So what are the best ways to teach such children about their racial and cultural heritage, while avoiding both jingoistic cheerleading and self-indulgent (and ultimately self-congratulatory) guilt-wallowing and breast-beating?

I’m looking forward to responses.

Creativity

mrb — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Is it on the list of things you look for in a primary school? And how will you know if it's really there, when every school brochure lists 'nurturing your child's creativity' as one of their selling points?

But we're ahead of ourselves - what do we mean by 'creativity'?

The dictionary gives this definition for creativity:

The ability to make or bring into existence something new.

That sounds like what I had in mind. But it's not how the word is used in Hong Kong. Here, if you sign your child up for a 'creative' after-school class (there's plenty of them!), they can expect to spend an hour dancing, drawing, or playing a musical instrument. If you look at what happens in a typical class though, the emphasis is on imitation, not creation.

Or how about the website of the government's new 'CreateHK', organisation, with the mission to 'drive the development of the creative economy in Hong Kong'. The options down the left side of the page spell out what they mean by a 'creative economy': 'Film services', 'Design', and 'Digital Entertainment'. That is, grown-ups' versions of the kids' dancing, drawing and music.

Does this mean you can only be creative (bring into existence something new) if you're involved with the arts? What about all the other fields people work in? Do we want companies filled with people who will do no more than they are told (imitators), or those who see the bigger goal and look for better ways to get there (creators).

I hope our daughters will grow up in that second group. That's the creativity I hope they'll find. But can a school teach it? Or at least create an environment that gives it a better chance?

If you'll bear with me, I'd like to turn to the man from the Ministry of Silly Walks for an explanation that makes most sense to me. John Cleese is talking to his shrink, Robyn Skynner, about the purpose of laughter.

Robin Well to explain that I need to tell you first about the two different ways in which we all relate to the world. Basically we function in two modes: 'open', and 'closed'.

John Explain, please. What's the 'open' mode?

Robin That's the mode we're in when we open ourselves up to the world, take in new information, and let it change our internal maps to make them more comprehensive and accurate; so that they reflect better how the world really is, and how we can work to get what we want from it.

John And the 'closed'?

Robin We move into the 'closed' mode when some action has to be taken. We give our attention to achieving some particular goal. So temporarily we narrow our focus and stop taking in all the information around us.

John Yes. If you're attacking a machine-gun nest, you shouldn't make a particular effort to enjoy the scenery.

Robin Right. Or even to see the funny side of what you're doing. So although the 'open' mode sounds rather attractive when I describe it ...

John ... because it conveys greater awareness, greater open-mindedness, greater relaxation, and more humorous and philosophical approach and so on ...

Robin ... we need the closed mode too, on every occasion we need to act.

John So, to be really effective we need to be able to alternate between the two modes. Well ... how do we switch between the two modes?

So to me it seems the creativity I'm looking for needs the ability to switch between the open and closed modes as easily as possible. Later, Robin talks about this. He views the open -> closed switch as something that happens automatically – when there's something concrete to be done, we switch into the closed mode to get on with it. BUT, the move from closed -> open is much harder. Once we're working in the closed mode, we're on automatic pilot, and it's very difficult to switch gears and change back to the open mode.

Reminiscing on my school days, we had three types of teacher.

Some had no control of the class, so each 45-minute block with them was completely 'open'. Chaos reigned, nothing (or at least nothing related to our school education) was learned.
Most were strict. The 45 minutes were spent 'closed', in silence.
And a rare few could manage the switch between the open and closed modes. There might be a minute where there was a joke told, then with a certain change in the tone of their voice it was understood we were back to work.

I certainly enjoyed the third type of class best, and it was closest to the school environment I'm looking for. The mention of the joke is important too. Back to Robin again: he believed the most widely available tool that helps us make the switch from the closed mode to open is ... laughter! A good joke is enough of us to jolt us out of the closed mode, and back to the open.

So to come back to the question, of how to look for a school that fosters this type of creativity. I haven't ever seen a school that talks about promoting the switch between open and closed modes, but here are a couple of questions, based on the ideas above:

What does the work on show in the art class look like? I like to see a wide variety of 'childish' art. If everybody's work looks the same, and it looks a lot more perfect than I'd expect for a seven year-old, the school likely favours imitation over creation.
Do the staff and students you meet have a smile and a sense of humour? Then at least there's a chance that an occasional laugh in class is helping make that switch to open mode. One school we visited had a very serious bunch of staff and students. Despite their very good academic record, we crossed them off the list.

I've started writing this several times, and given up after struggling to get my thoughts straight. I hope this is clear enough, but let me know if it doesn't make sense, or you have a different view. I'd also be interested to hear any other tips for identifying whether a school fosters the type of creativity I'm interested in.

MrB

School open days: what to look for

mrb — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Most primary schools will have at least one open-day, for parents to visit and take a look around. Here are some suggestions on how to get the most out of the visit.

This is part of a series on how to choose and apply to a Primary School in Hong Kong. You can see the full list of articles on the left.

If you've reached this page via a search engine, you'll probably want to read the introduction first.

Do visit!

We nearly didn't visit a couple of the schools at all. We thought we'd got such a clear picture from their website and other people's feedback, we knew exactly which school we wanted. But after the visits our list of preferred schools was turned upside down, so it's a good job we went!

I'd say go along to all the schools you are considering, and maybe a even the few you feel are borderline cases. You may be surprised at what you find.

Finding out when they are held

The bulk of the open-days are held in September and October. We found out exact dates through various means:

the schools' websites
news from other parents
MissB's kindergarten arranged visits to several nearby primary schools

If you still can't find out, contact the school directly. In a few cases, some of the famous name schools don't bother with an open day at all. They have so many more applicants than places, I guess they don't feel the need.

Also check if children are expected or not. In some cases children are expected to come along, and are taken away by teachers to play games while you walk around the school. In others the children had to stay with the parents. As you can imagine, the children weren't too excited about sitting quietly through a 30-minute powerpoint presentation, and would have been better off staying at home.

Be prepared

As you'll see, there are several opportunities for questions. What would you like to ask the principal, teachers, and pupils? You might not get a chance to ask them all, but it's good to have a few questions in mind.

And what will you look for as you move around the campus?

What to expect

You are likely to start with a presentation from the principal, then get a tour around the school's facilities.

Principals are not known for being shy, and can talk at length about their schools. The accompanying presentations we saw varied a lot - some were slick multi-media presentations. Others were garish powerpoints, packed with every animated, flashing clip-art they could find. All the presenters spoke Cantonese, though some of the powerpoints were written in English.

It's a sales pitch, so of course they all present themselves in the best light possible. Still, it's possible to get an idea of the school's emphasis from what is missing, or what is talked about at length. eg only one school's presentation didn't mention parental involvement with the school - something we were looking for. When we asked a teacher, they said there was something, but it had only started in the last three years - so it seemed low down on this school's list of priorities.

After the presentation there's usually a chance for questions. Though as the size of the audience we sat in varied from around 20 at one school, to over 1,000 at another, your chance to speak varies accordingly. The parents asking questions fell into two groups.

At the ordinary schools, questions were generally about about the school, with parents trying to find if it was a good fit for what they wanted. Questions about homework seemed universal. Things were different at the one famous school we went to. There it seemed parents were looking for some secret sauce - their questions focused strictly on the interview and application process. What edge could they get on gaming the system?

At some point in the presentation it's quite likely that two or three recent graduates will be wheeled out to demonstrate the school's academic prowess. Dressed in the uniforms of whichever famous secondary school they attend, they will likely take it in turns to recite a set piece in English, Cantonese, and Putonghua. Very nice, but just about meaningless - every school should be able to find at least three smart kids in a year.

Next comes the school tour. If you didn't get to ask your question after the presentation, here's another chance - there are usually teachers around that you can corner for a quick interrogation. You may be led around the school by pupils, so it's also a chance to hear their side of things. (Though it can get a bit intense: as we left one school we tried to say goodbye and thanks to our pupil-guide. We couldn't get close though, as they were completely surrounded by a tight circle of parents, giving the poor girl a thorough interrogation.)

If lots of the pupils are involved, it's a better chance than listening to the chosen prodigies to gauge what the average pupil is really like. We were very impressed at one school we attended, where all the children seemed bubbly and confident.

Finally, the tour is a chance to put on your sherlock holmes hat, look for clues, and get ready to read between the lines:

how do the pupils and teachers interact?
are classes laid out in groups or rows?
is the building stuffy or breezy?
toilets smelly or clean?
what's the level of schoolwork you see?
are exam results posted publicly?
does the project work look like it was made by a child or their parent?
are open areas for playing, or kept pristine for show?
etc...

Your homework

As soon as possible, sit down with whoever else attended from your family, and write down notes about the school. The good, the bad, questions you didn't get answered, etc. And what would you do differently on the next school visit?

It might seem a bit over the top, but we started off not doing this, and we found they quickly get muddled up. A couple of minutes spent jotting down notes will make your life easier when you come to make a shortlist.

What tricks do you have to get the most out of school visits?

MrB

Introduction

mrb — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:29:44 +0000

Mr Tall has written a very thorough series of articles about applying for a local Hong Kong Primary School for your child. They are written with the non-Hong-Kong-native parent in mind, but they should be helpful to any parent that's starting to get ready for this.

NB 'Primary School' in these articles refers to a local school, rather than an international school. Apart from a tiny number of exceptions, children entering a local primary school will be able to speak chinese fluently, and already know how to read and write a small number of chinese characters. If you are an expat parent whose children don't speak any chinese, these articles won't apply to you. You should be looking at international primary schools instead.

The full set of articles is listed on the left of your screen. They are written in the order that the key events happen in practice - so that's probably the easiest way to read them.

Feel free to leave comments on this or any of the articles if you have any questions, corrections, or extra information to add.

Education as salvation, part II

Mr Tall — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0000

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:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.

Deresiewicz’s essay is a remarkable concatenation of genuine self-reflection and analysis, unattractive self-pity, noblesse oblige, and a measure of hard-headed thinking about the way the world really works – especially in those bastions of privilege, America’s Ivy League universities. Witness all of these themes competing for air in just a couple of paragraphs:

The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “Oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.

I'm from a background -- rural and blue-collar -- quite unlike the author's, so I found his agonized interactions with his home-maintenance contractors a bit hard to sympathize with. I also find his description of recent presidential candidates unintentionally hilarious in its ingenuousness.

But this, you see, is simply unintended -- and hence thoroughly convincing -- proof of Deresiewicz’s very thesis: his elite education really has blinded him. He seems genuinely to think – even in the very act of writing this article! – that so many members of the US electorate disliked Al Gore and John Kerry simply because these men were unable to communicate with the less educated and the unsophisticated, when of course their real problem was that we rubes seemed to grasp without much difficulty who they were and what they thought about the rest of us. Similarly, does Deresiewicz really think his plumber is incapable of understanding him, and would have warm collegial feelings for him if only he (Deresiewicz) had learned better to communicate with commoners? Or could it be that his plumber just thinks he’s a pompous jerk?

I agree, however, with Deresiewicz’s bedrock insight: learning how to talk to, and work with – and possibly even value – people unlike yourself is priceless.

And in spite of my down-home bona fides, I have some sympathy with Deresiewicz’s dilemma. As a kid, I was the complete four-eyed bookworm. I knew from a young age that although my parents weren't college graduates, I was going to be, one way or another. My parents loved me anyway, but at school I took some ribbing, as most nascent geeks do.

That was as nothing, though, compared with the s--t I took in my summer jobs while I was in high school. My dad worked for my home town's public utilities as a younger man, and still had the connections to get me work as 'summer help'. This meant doing good honest manual labor for the water department, the electrical department, and -- hold your breath; I mean it! -- the sewage department. I mowed, I painted, I dug and filled in holes in the ground (I know how to run both a jackhammer and a 'Wacker Packer', for instance), and I handed a lot of tools to men who knew what to do with them.

And day by day I learned that although I thought I was pretty smart, there were whole worlds of knowledge of which I was innocent. I also had my will and my wits tested by the full-time workers, who loved nothing better than sending the summer help off to tackle some filthy and quixotic task (pumping sump water out of manholes, anyone?) and seeing how we'd take it.

By the time I was in college, I'd found other summer work -- camp counselor, housepainter -- and although I didn't miss cleaning out the scum chamber at the sewage treatment plant, I did miss the guys I'd worked with. With an exception or two, they were decent, hardworking men I respected and wanted to emulate. They taught me that you can goof off sometimes – and gripe about your work a lot of the time – but when it hits the fan, you shut up and get your job done. And you don't leave the hard part of a job for the next guy; you do it yourself if you can. If the power goes out in a thunderstorm at 3:00 and you're called out to fix it, you don't bitch because the guy next door gets to stay home in bed. You took the job, and until you quit, you do it.

When I was back in my hometown on my most recent trip to the USA, I had a long talk with one of the guys I'd worked with over twenty summers ago. He was still working for the city, and was now head of the electrical department. But he was no longer the man I knew. He'd been electrocuted, literally. A couple years ago, a high-voltage transformer blew up as he worked on it. Miraculously, his face hadn't been scarred, but the charge ran through him from his shoulder to his leg and foot, blowing out much of one of his calves, along with other smaller pieces of flesh all over his body. He described to me how he laid in the hospital for days, feeling himself burn as the lingering fire smoldered inside his muscles and bones, wrestling with who he was and what he'd done and who God was and what He wanted. He washed right up to the brink of death, but then was pulled back.

Now he was still funny and irreverent, but he was reborn, and he didn't have time anymore to leave unsaid the things he'd never have admitted twenty years ago: the things of this world don't matter much, except for how we can know and love God, and know and love each other.

So I would venture that there certainly is a lot to gain if you can talk with your plumber – or your electrician – and the school or university you go to likely won't help you much at all. Even poor William Deresiewicz has at least learned something that some of us are lucky to have had jackhammered into us long ago:

One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more.

I am religious, and I know God does not love them more. But not less, either.

I worry sometimes that Daughter Tall, with all her classes and activities and hopefully 'good' education, will likely miss out on the chance to learn this in the brutally effective way I did. I'd like it if 30 years hence she felt no difficulty talking with her plumber.

Anybody know where I can get a good deal on a Wacker Packer?

School choice: the final chapter

Mr Tall — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0000

To wrap up a very long series on primary school applications in Hong Kong, 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.

This is part of a series on how to choose and apply to a Primary School in Hong Kong. You can see the full list of articles on the left.

If you've reached this page via a search engine, you'll probably want to read the introduction first.

The last time I wrote on this topic, in April, Daughter Tall had been admitted to just a couple of the schools we applied to.

Things changed in June. We had calls from two of the three DSS schools in Tseung Kwan O that had previously rejected Daughter Tall. One wanted her to come in for an additional ‘interview’, but the tone of the call made it clear this was window-dressing: Daughter Tall was very likely to ‘pass’ this interview. The other didn’t even bother with any pretense; a place was on offer up front.

This June ‘shakeup’ is important for school-searchers to remember. You of course can’t bank on your kid getting late offers, but it’s inevitable that places will open up at this point as the schools have to nail down who’s actually going to be attending, and who’s dropping out because they’ve been accepted to two or more schools.

Next, I’d like to add just a couple of observations on the whole issue of school choice. First, to what degree does ‘school choice’ really exist in Hong Kong? Obviously, it’s no pure free market, but Mrs Tall and I wouldn’t have tormented ourselves with months of application angst if there were no real choices involved.

Hong Kong’s educational system, although dominated by the Education Bureau, certainly does offer genuine choices. In fact, compared with many western countries, the range of choices is quite broad. Just to recap, there are:

a surprisingly small number of purely government-funded and operated schools;

a very large number of schools that are government-funded and supervised, but that are run by private organizations, mostly religious ones;

an increasing number of what are essentially charter or magnet schools, e.g. the Direct Subsidy Scheme schools; and

genuinely private schools that receive no government funding.

The obvious follow-up question, of course, is ‘Does this element of choice really make Hong Kong school better?’

Let me try to answer that by backing up a bit. First, I’ve long found it ironic how well Hong Kong students do in terms of actually getting, you know, educated, given the barrages of criticism the Hong Kong education system receives from many quarters, (with expats often leading the charge). Still, there’s no denying improvements can be made, especially in terms of loosening up the spiral of high expectations/excessive homework/achievement that drives many schools.

Having applied to quite a few schools (nine or ten, depending on how you count our progress into the schools’ various application processes), I was impressed by how hard the schools compete, not only in terms of their academic standards, but also their commitment to balancing studies with extracurricular activities.

And as the number of DSS schools and other ‘freer’ schools increases, and these schools compete for a shrinking pool of students (given Hong Kong’s worringly low birth rate) the SAR’s one-size-fits-all model of education is indeed breaking down, and real options will continue to be made available. It’s already started. Witness the floods of applications to new DSS schools promising different approaches such as UGA, and ‘music specialist’ schools such as the International Christian Quality Music Secondary and Primary School, and so on.

One final observation about school choice in Hong Kong is that, because the SAR is so densely populated, it’s a great place to promote school choice. Why? Because it’s unlikely you’ll need to move – or pay a huge housing premium – to get into a decent school. And even if you think you do need to be nearer one particular school, reasonably-priced housing is available in just about any of the government districts.

This is most patently not the case in some other countries. In my homeland, for example, many families bankrupt themselves by going too deeply into mortgage debt in order to get their kids into a decent school district.

In a good book I read recently, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, the mother/daughter authorial team, ask a simple question: if so many American families now comprise two working parents, as opposed to the single-breadwinner model from a generation or two ago, why are so many of these two-earner families going bankrupt? As the authors put it:

Why would the average person spend so much money on a home? For many parents, the answer came down to two words so powerful that families would pursue them to the brink of bankruptcy: safety and education. Families put Mom to work, used up the family's economic reserves, and took on crushing debt loads in sacrifice to these twin gods, all in the hope of offering their children the best possible start in life. (pages 22-23, italics in the original)

To mitigate this dilemma, the authors call for increased school choice via a voucher system that would, in practice, look much like – Hong Kong.

In the end, of course, it’s good to be done with the whole school choice process. Having choices is great, but there’s no doubt making them can be stressful. It was quite pleasant this week when the biggest school-related choice the Family Tall needed to make was what lunch options Daughter Tall preferred in September!

Keeping the parents busy

mrb — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:48:28 +0000

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.

So each morning, out comes the electric ear thermometer, and both her ears get a 'doot'. [Side note: does anyone really 'Always attach a new clean lens filter' before use? Ours gets a wipe on my shirt if I remember.]

But, then the system breaks down. MissB is generally warm, and for long stretches of the year her morning temperature is over 99. So I just write 99 in the book, and off she goes to school anyway. I thing 100.6 is our record so far. Yes if she's feeling poorly she'll be kept home, but if she's as lively as normal, and ate her breakfast, off she goes.

Last week I got the chance to see we're not alone, when another student's temperature book came home in MissB's bag by mistake. For added excitement, they fill in temperatures on random days, usually only once or twice a week. Second, all the temperatures I saw were in the range 91-93F. Either their child has gone into hibernation, they're running their aircon way too low, or they need to learn the 'wipe the thermometer on the shirt' trick.

So, all good in theory, not much use in practice, and a source of extra work for the people that least need it. To quote from a teacher friend's email I received yesterday:

Sometime this weekend I need to do some reports but hey who cares. The parents who need to read them can't.

MrB

Primary schools interviews: tips and techniques

Mr Tall — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:00:00 +0000

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!

This is part of a series on how to choose and apply to a Primary School in Hong Kong. You can see the full list of articles on the left.

If you've reached this page via a search engine, you'll probably want to read the introduction first.

If you're coming to this story first, I suggest reading at least the article setting out the basics; the next stories in the series comprise an application timeline and some characteristics to look for in schools; plus last year I wrote at some length about the process of preparing application packages.

Since most Hong Kong schools don’t have much time to interview their hundreds (often thousands) of applicants, and since the kids themselves are so young, there’s a limit to the questions that can be asked, and the responses that might be expected. You’re not going to explore the competing historical interpretations of the Suez Crisis with five year olds.

Schools have therefore come up with quite a range of tricks and techniques to get through their interviews. I’ll survey a few of them below, but keep in mind that the Family Tall’s experience is limited to the schools we applied to, or heard about at first hand from friends.

The first major distinction we can draw is between schools that have just one round of interviews, and those that have two. The latter typically invite a huge mass of kids on a Saturday afternoon, assign each budding scholar to a group, then take them off for a 'group interview' in which the kids are asked to interact with a teacher and other children, and usually to perform some tasks or complete little worksheets that I suppose are a very basic form of entrance exam. These schools then narrow down the pool of applicants and have a second round that is more likely to involve an individual interview with each kid.

Other schools jump right in and interview kids just once, whether in a small group or individually.

In either case, it certainly helps to have at least a basic idea in advance of what might happen. The following list sets out some of the most common practices in Hong Kong primary school interviews; I hope readers will contribute more in the comments

Group interviews -- Since many schools hold a first round of group interviews, as I mentioned, group interviews are common. It's hard for moms and dads to know exactly what goes on in these, but according to Daughter Tall's reports, they often resemble a mini-class, i.e. students are given worksheets or little tasks to complete, and they may engage in group activities/games/etc. Some schools interview small groups of kids much as marketers handle focus groups, i.e. they toss a question out there, and see what they get. In this situation, of course, some kids will be quiet, while others will be jumping up and down in their seats with their hands up trying to get the first word in. Since some Hong Kong schools are reputed to prefer ‘quiet’ kids, while others look for the more outgoing, it’s not necessarily a huge problem if your child is a bit reticent. In the end, though, if she never says anything, it’s probably not going to help.

Describing a picture -- this is a standby for some schools. The child being interviewed is handed a simple picture or illustration, and is asked to describe what she sees. We practiced this one quite a few times with Daughter Tall; I don't think it paid off, as ironically she was never actually asked to do this, but it's definitely something kids can be prepared for. Daughter Tall's initial attempts at this were quite halting and would no doubt have been total lead balloons in an actual interview, but with a little practice she was having fun with it and sounding quite fluent and 'creative'. In a variation on this theme, in one interview Daughter Tall was shown a series of simple illustrations and was asked to describe what would happen next. We quickly realized why this particular interview method is so common in Hong Kong: you can get your kid to practice the general skill, but you can't do any really specific coaching or prepping; each picture is different, so a child will have to approach it ‘cold’.

Making a Lego man -- this activity featured prominently in the interview at the DSS school we really wanted, and which subsequently rejected Daughter Tall outright. This activity might have had something to do with that. Daughter Tall reported that she'd been given several pieces of Lego, then asked to make a human figure out of them. She then recounted, cheerfully, how she'd failed utterly to do so. She's never been that interested in Lego, and we'd never worried about it. If your child is similar, you might want to think about encouraging at least some very basic Lego skills before your darling hits the interview circuit!

Listening to a story, then answering comprehension questions about it. I don't think this one is all that common, but I've heard tell of it . . . .

‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ -- Interviewees are given a set of two pictures that look almost the same, and must spot the differences, or are shown a single picture in which there are some things that are 'wrong', e.g. frogs in the flowerpots, or a spaceship in the fridge, or things along those lines. This again is an activity that can be practiced in general, but not ‘crammed’ for specifically.

Finding the Snoopy -- a certain well-known boys' school (not 'Famous Boys School’, but one at a similar level of reputation) employed this one; we were apprised of it via Daughter Tall's little boyfriend, who did indeed gain admittance to that school. As the boys are admitted to their interview room, they are told that some Snoopy dolls are hiding in that room, and that they need to find them. It's as simple as that; I'm not sure what skills this is meant to demonstrate, precisely, but there you go.

Individual interviews – I guess this is what most people think of when they hear ‘school interview’, i.e. a teacher or headmaster sitting down with one youngster and asking questions such as ‘What is your name?’ ‘Who are your major influences?’ ‘Which bridges are the Luftwaffe targeting?’, and so on. No, seriously, of course kids may be asked their names, about their family members, where they live (knowing their own address and phone number was rumored to be a common area for questions) and so on. Yet in practice, perhaps surprisingly, Daughter Tall didn't report being asked these kinds of general questions very often.

What won’t happen

If you’re applying to local schools, your child’s English/Putonghua aren’t likely to be tested at any great depth. That surprised me a bit; I thought at least some schools might at least throw in a few questions/activities conducted in English or Putonghua, but Daughter Tall reported only very basic attempts to recognize a few English words at a couple of interviews. Otherwise, the medium was solidly Cantonese. Truth be told, this disappointed Mrs Tall and me a bit, because Daughter Tall has a distinct linguistic advantage over most Hong Kong kids. Fair’s fair, however, and objectively this mother-tongue consistency is really a point in favor of the schools we applied to, i.e. they could have tried to cherry-pick kids with better language skills, but there’s little or no evidence they did this. Or maybe because Daughter Tall is visibly a 'mix' they didn't bother, instead concentrating on testing her Chinese? That's possible, too.

Daughter Tall was also not asked to demonstrate skills/knowledge beyond her developmental stage/schooling progress. That is, since her interviews took place while she was a K2 student, she wasn’t asked to read, to try to do any arithmetic beyond the very basic problems K2 students here in HK typically handle, and so on. Again, this seems to me quite fair – you can try to coach your kid to ‘get ahead’ of her peers to gain advantage in interviews, but we didn’t see much evidence this would pay off.

On the other hand, let’s stop and consider that preparation question just a bit more carefully . . . .

Preparing your child for school interviews

The idealists among us will argue that the best preparation for school interviews is no preparation at all. That way, the child’s personality, talents and temperament will shine through in their purest forms, to be apprehended accurately by the sensitive, dedicated educators conducting the interviews. This will lead to the most perfect possible match between child and school.

The idealists among us are pretty dense. This is in fact no time to just let things slide and hope for the best. I’m not advocating sending your child to interview boot camp, but I do think a bit of low-key preparation may help at least a bit, and possibly quite a lot. Mrs Tall and I ended up wishing we’d done more.

Again, however, we parents are faced with a choice. Do we conduct our own preparatory sessions with Junior, or do we pay for the professionals?

Since many of the techniques employed in Hong Kong primary school interviews are relatively predictable, an entire industry has arisen in Hong Kong, i.e. coaching kids to handle ‘typical’ interview situations. And since Hong Kong parents are famous for pushing their kids at early ages, this had led to a kind of interview-preparation arms race. Parents routinely send their children to prep classes in which the tykes are drilled in how to act politely toward the interviewer, and to master some of the little tests and games I’ve exemplified above.

We didn’t send Daughter Tall to these classes, but in retrospect it might not have been the worst idea. She clearly didn’t do well at some of the interviews she attended, especially the group ones. Although she’s a chatty, outgoing child, we’ve noticed that when she meets groups of new children (e.g. just like a group interview) she actually is quite withdrawn at first, preferring to sit back and scout things out before participating. In a ten-minute group interview there’s no time for this. And it’s hard to prepare a kid for group interview scenarios on your own – at home most of us lack spare groups of strange children, and even in school the other children and the teachers are familiar, too. Would an interview class or two mimicking this setup have helped Daughter Tall? Very possibly.

Also, there’s the ‘etiquette’ of school interviews in Hong Kong. That is, children are expected to formally greet the interviewer, thank the interviewer at the end of the interview, say ‘Bye-bye’ while looking the interviewer in the eye, etc., etc. Daughter Tall was not a success at this aspect of interviewing. Whether her failure to consistently observe these niceties actually hurt her chances in any given interview, well, who knows? But the conventional wisdom says that at least some Hong Kong schools take this social aspect of the interview quite seriously. Again, this is not an easy thing to practice at home. We certainly tried, but Daughter Tall really never took seriously our imploring to ‘make nice’. Would a couple classes run by a seasoned stranger have helped? Very possibly . . . .

I don’t really know any more about these interview-prep classes, so I’d love to hear more from readers. In fact, preparing for interviews really depends on word of mouth, so any contributions at all are very welcome indeed!

In the next installment, I'll tell you how things really went for the Tall family as we experienced the ups and downs of the application process ourselves.

Applying to primary schools in Hong Kong: a Tall tale

Mr Tall — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:00:00 +0000

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 . . . .

This is part of a series on how to choose and apply to a Primary School in Hong Kong. You can see the full list of articles on the left.

If you've reached this page via a search engine, you'll probably want to read the introduction first.

Mrs Tall and I never seriously questioned the need to get into the full-scale application process for choosing one of Hong Kong's local schools. Yes, you can avoid it all by simply allowing the Education Bureau to assign your child to a school, but for most middle class Hong Kong people this is unthinkable. We are not exceptions.

As we began thinking about what schools we'd apply to, we weren't fanatical about any one school, but we did have a general plan of attack in mind.

Since we live in a 'new town' (i.e. Tseung Kwan O), we're not near any of Hong Kong's famous old schools. But Tseung Kwan O is home to several well-known Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools. So as Mrs Tall and I compiled our list of schools to apply to, we put some on, and took others off, but there was one constant: the three best-known DSS schools in Tseung Kwan O were always near the top. We liked the combination of their commitment to teaching kids the basics with their freedom to loosen up a bit on the regimented approach most local schools here take. (If you are getting confused by the jargon at this point, reading the article on 'the basics' would really help!)

Two of these schools are within five minutes' walk of our home; the other's slightly farther away, but we can look out from our housing estate's podium and see it, glimmering, right out across a stretch of reclaimed land . . . . The choice couldn't be better, really. I caught myself now and then totting up the pluses and minuses of each school, assuming deep down that -- given Daughter Tall's success in school so far, and her outgoing, cheery, interview-friendly personality -- we'd likely have to make a choice between at least a couple of these schools. In fact, even four or five years ago, when Daughter Tall was just a baby, I'd be out jogging, and would pass a couple of these schools on one of my favorite routes. I'd think, yep, that one would be fine . . . and so would that one! No problem . . . .

We kicked off the application process in good humor, way back in June of last year, accompanying Daughter Tall to a group interview at a DSS school that was perhaps our second overall choice. All seemed to go well; she reported having had fun, but since Mrs Tall and I weren't invited into the interview itself, we really didn't know how she had done. We then sat back to wait; this school promised there would be a round a second interviews, but didn't specify when.

Next, in early September, it was time for the DSS school we really wanted. This school has a serious Christian background and teaching philosophy, it teaches most of its classes in English, and it occupies a spectacular new campus. It's through-train, and its initial word of mouth was excellent.

Again, Daughter Tall was interviewed in a group, but this time Mrs Tall and I were also invited for an interview with one of the school's teachers. We knew this was coming, and had prepared ourselves thoroughly. We gave what we thought were comprehensive, reasonable responses to the questions we were asked. The teacher laughed as we finished off our final answer, remarking that we'd might as well apply to be teachers there too, so well had our answers fit in with the school's ethos. Daughter Tall also said her interview was good, so there were high spirits all around. And since this school promised to make its choices quickly, we wouldn't have long to wait. We'd be getting our letter in just a couple of weeks.

And so we did, right on the day it was promised. Mrs Tall and I were jumpy-but-positive when we rather ceremoniously opened our mailbox that day. And sure enough, there the envelope was. But when we opened it -- well, let's just say that wasn't the most cheerful evening we had last year.

This first rejection was the worst. We had heard that there were going to be lots of applicants, and the the huge crowd of bright-faced children and nervous parents at the interview day had of course brought home the reality of how much disappointment there was certain to be. But Mrs Tall and I still could hardly believe the terse paragraph turning our daughter down.

As the autumn went on, we interviewed at the last of the three Tseung Kwan O DSS schools we'd initially shortlisted. Again, things seemed to go well, but at this one Daughter Tall was relegated to a vague offer of a place on a waiting list that might be looked at next summer.

And what of that very first DSS school we interviewed at, way back in June? Well, at the point of writing (now almost nine months later) we're still waiting to hear about that second interview. We've never received an official rejection, but I think we can safely assume Daughter Tall is not on the school's shortlist.

As our chances of Daughter Tall being admitted to one of our three DSS favorites diminished, Mrs Tall and I scrambled into action and quickly applied to several schools that we'd only half-considered previously -- assuming we'd probably not need to bother. This was perhaps a disproportionate reaction, but I admit to feeling an increasing sense of -- well, not panic, exactly, but let's say dis-ease. I mentioned in one of my articles on kindergarten choice how uptight I got about the whole process. This situation was much worse. Not only were the stakes far higher -- 12 years of real schooling, not three years of coloring and paste -- but now, our first -- and second, and third -- school choices were no more. Yes, of course there were other interviews and, we hoped, some acceptances, still to come, but I must admit I went into quite a funk for a few weeks. I felt a new sense of empathy for, and indeed psychic unity with, the many Hong Kong parents who seem mildly crazed by the school application process here.

The low point for us came in late October. Like a great many other parents of five-year-old girls in Hong Kong, we'd applied to what our frequent commenter SKMama calls 'Famous Girls' School'. As Daughter Tall's obligatory interview there approached, we'd done our best to coach her to be polite, to greet the Headmistress, to show all the evidence of good breeding and right-raising that were no doubt expected. Well, it turns out that maybe these things can't be coached in a couple of weeks! When Daughter Tall came out of her interview (we were sitting outside the door of the interview room) we dragged her out of earshot as fast as we could, and started grilling her: Did you greet the Headmistress? Did you say good morning? Did you say thank you at the end? Her responses at least had the benefit of consistency: no, no and no.

Mrs Tall and I were beside ourselves for the rest of that morning, then just agreed to say to hell with the whole thing.

The series of rejections we received dragged Mrs Tall and me out onto another kind of psychological testing ground. That is, we learned just where to find the not-very-fine line between applicant and supplicant -- and we learned if -- when! -- we would cross it. What do I mean by this?

Well, lots of kids who get rejected in the initial round of admissions to Hong Kong schools still end up getting in later on. Some of these late admissions are no mystery: the school has places open up as some of the kids it's accepted end up enrolling at other schools; children on a waiting list then move up.

But I suspect -- as surely most Hong Kong parents do -- that many schools' 'waiting lists' are highly notional. Some schools may really prepare master lists of 'just missed' applicants, prioritized from 1 to who-knows-how-many, who are then called up in perfect order as admitted applicants fail to register. But there are too many completely credible stories floating around Hong Kong about people who demonstrate their willingness to go beyond normal application procedures -- that is, who beg the school/headmaster/principal for a preferential admission after receiving an initial rejection -- who in fact succeed.

This willingness to surrender your personal dignity and show zealous 'sincerity' is explicitly encouraged, in fact, at some schools. One school's headmaster, in a pre-interview information session Mrs Tall attended, told a story about a mother whose child his school had initially rejected, but who kept writing letters pleading with this headmaster to reconsider and give her kid a 'waiting list' place, and who hand-delivered these letters by cornering this very same headmaster in the school parking lot each morning as he got out of his car. Some of us would classify this kind of behavior as borderline stalking and harassment, but this gentleman not only condoned it but -- by telling the story to this year's prospective parents -- outright endorsed it.

So Mrs Tall and I talked it over: if Daughter Tall didn't get into any other schools that we liked, would I be dispatched some early morning to a nearby school parking lot, with a deeply sincere letter in hand?

In the end, we didn't need to answer that question, because Daughter Tall did get into a couple of schools we were happy enough with, but we did not laugh off the possibility of going through with it.

So where will Daughter Tall actually be a student next year? By November we'd made up our minds: there's a fourth DSS school in Tseung Kwan O, which is less well-known than the other three. It wasn't on our initial list, but when we started getting rejections, we went ahead and applied there, and Daughter Tall was accepted. The more we learned about the school, the better it looked, although it was of course not perfect. But we felt quite settled and happy with the choice.

Our application story ended in late December, when we checked our mailbox to find the final response we were waiting for to round out the whole experience, i.e. the one from Famous Girls' School. And sure enough, it was another very slim envelope that awaited us, with a message just as terse as that first one we'd received in September.

But this one simply asked if we'd mind returning the form included to indicate that we'd accept the place for Daughter Tall that was on offer. We were happy to oblige.