July, 2004

Reprioritising Our Civic Education

Leung Yan-wing

(The author is a member of HKCI's management committee and is a lecturer in the Dept. of Educational Policy and Administration at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.)

April 26 was the darkest day for the democratic development of Hong Kong when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) ruled out universal suffrage to elect Hong Kong's chief executive and all of its Legislative Council (Legco) members in 2007 and 2008 respectively in spite of the strong demands by Hong Kong's people for more democracy as expressed in various demonstrations in 2003 and 2004.

The aim of the central government is to depoliticise Hong Kong and maintain it only as an economic city, but Hong Kong's citizens perceive that the central government is trying to secure political control over Hong Kong and protect local business interests. In order to tighten its control, the central government and the local pro-China groups began a debate on patriotism. They reiterated Deng Xiaoping's saying: "Hong Kong should be governed by Hong Kong people with patriots as the main body." They then accused some well-respected democratic politicians as being unpatriotic in order to discredit them. It appears that the central government wants obedient, submissive and uncritical patriots to ensure their rule over Hong Kong.

In facing the present political context, what should civic educators do in addition to continuing to press for faster democratisation?

Civic education always reflects the political context of a society. In Hong Kong, civic education has gone through two stages, namely, "depoliticisation by the State and school" before 1984 and "politicisation of the intended curriculum" from 1984 to 1997. In 1996, one year before the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China, the Hong Kong government published Guidelines of Civic Education for Schools, which proposed a curriculum framework with five foci: education for democracy, education for the rule of law, human rights education, nationalistic education and global education. It was also recommended that the promotion of critical thinking permeate throughout the curriculum framework. This guideline introduced concept related to politics, democracy, human rights, patriotism and global citizenship to prepare students to face the political and constitutional changes promised in the Basic Law.

Just a few years after the return of sovereignty, however, the Hong Kong government began to re-depoliticise civic education and staged the third phrase: "re-depoliticisation of civic education and official affirmation of nationalistic education" from 1997 onwards. In the official document Learning to Learn: Lifelong Learning and Whole-Person Development in 2001, "civic education" was replaced by "moral and civic education" and was integrated with education about sex, health and the family. Concepts related to human rights, politics, democracy and social justice were replaced with national identity, patriotism, a commitment to the local and national communities and perseverance. The intention of the Hong Kong government to re-depoliticise civic education and strengthen nationalistic education is clear. The official direction of civic education though is heading in the opposite direction to the wishes of citizens whose strong request for a faster pace of democratisation has been callously denied.

We need civic education that can develop citizens willing to participate actively and courageously with compassion in civil society. We need critical patriots who love China but do not do so blindly and who are willing to contribute actively to the national community. We also need citizens with a global perspective who have a genuine concern for and are willing to contribute to the global community whenever possible. In sum, we need critical citizens with multiple identities who can contribute actively with compassion to the local, national and global communities through their participation in both formal institutes and civil society at different levels. In fact, Guidelines of Civic Education for Schools with its five foci and critical thinking embedded into the curriculum framework is still relevant and appropriate in addressing current needs.

With the introduction of educational reform in schools — for example, the introduction of integrated humanities, liberal studies and lifelong learning — there are opportunities to implement this kind of civic education. There are also non-governmental organisations (NGOs) ready to help. However, are the church-affiliated schools, centres and the churches themselves willing to face this historical task seriously? The difficulty remains: Do we have the courage to stand up against the policies of the Hong Kong government and reprioritise our resources in order to address this historical task of developing appropriate citizens, a task which is beneficial to Hong Kong and China in the long term? Let us pray and act.