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Public schools: pros and cons

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  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by smiley1:
    This is not my experience at all. My son's local friends are well rounded individuals pursuing a variety of occupations and interests in music, sport, psychiatry, engineering, law etc etc. The main difference I find between his Chinese and Western friends are that his Chinese kids tend to be politer and more self-disciplined. I do not consider my son deprived of his childhood but did find the experience very competitive. However this was not due to the school system but from other parents who wanted their kid to be top of everything - which unfortunately was common
    I’m speaking from experience managing teams in an international firm - the difference is like chalk and cheese.

    The guys with overseas education are more confident (and sometimes wrong) when tackling non-standardised tasks but miles ahead performance wise.

    I read on another thread that local primary kids were getting 24 pieces of homework a day - sorry but I don’t abuse my own kid.

  2. #12

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    My kid's school is international curriculum but local kids. I'm the only parent in his class (there are some others in the school) who's not a native Canto speaker. My wife is local and speaks Canto - would be hard to send a kid there otherwise.
    It's Hong Kong, so there's a ton of kids and parents at the school who turn out to also be citizens of US/Canada/UK/Australia etc.
    The kid has too much homework but he's not "deprived of childhood." He's deprived of a certain amount of play time, and I wish he wasn't, but it's not like they're chained to their desks all day at school.

    Sorry if this winds up making a non-political post political, but you can get a good sense from the protests of what sort of skills the kids here learn. Want a 4-piece chamber music group playing Glory To Hong Kong? No problem. They all take instrument lessons. A 6-person team for neutralizing tear gas canisters, each with their own specific task? Sure. Chem lab stuff, I guess. I was surprised by all this - I associated the local schools w/rote memorization and a lack of initiative/creativity from the students, but turns out I was wrong about a lot of stuff.


  3. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Loblaw:
    My kid's school is international curriculum but local kids. I'm the only parent in his class (there are some others in the school) who's not a native Canto speaker. My wife is local and speaks Canto - would be hard to send a kid there otherwise.
    It's Hong Kong, so there's a ton of kids and parents at the school who turn out to also be citizens of US/Canada/UK/Australia etc.
    The kid has too much homework but he's not "deprived of childhood." He's deprived of a certain amount of play time, and I wish he wasn't, but it's not like they're chained to their desks all day at school.

    Sorry if this winds up making a non-political post political, but you can get a good sense from the protests of what sort of skills the kids here learn. Want a 4-piece chamber music group playing Glory To Hong Kong? No problem. They all take instrument lessons. A 6-person team for neutralizing tear gas canisters, each with their own specific task? Sure. Chem lab stuff, I guess. I was surprised by all this - I associated the local schools w/rote memorization and a lack of initiative/creativity from the students, but turns out I was wrong about a lot of stuff.
    It’s not just the homework but the ages - I mean, come on! Primary kids with homework?! GTFO of here, right?!

    I don’t deny kids are getting more “woke” no doubt by the technology they grow up with that we didn’t but the proof of the pudding is in the eating which is how good are they as employees with career paths.

    At the end of the day, the amount of work kids are put under in Hong Kong is criminal, it needs to be reduced, and my point is that if international schools can do it, why can’t local schools?

  4. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Praetorian:
    I’m speaking from experience managing teams in an international firm - the difference is like chalk and cheese.

    The guys with overseas education are more confident (and sometimes wrong) when tackling non-standardised tasks but miles ahead performance wise.

    I read on another thread that local primary kids were getting 24 pieces of homework a day - sorry but I don’t abuse my own kid.
    I am not advocating the local school system in it's entirety but in my experience the primary system provides a solid foundation - especially if you are looking for the Chinese language skills.

    If you can maintain perspective and not get caught up in the hyper-competitive parent crowd then there is no reason why your kid cannot maintain a balanced life - although this is not easy and many parents get sucked in.

    I did not read the thread about 24 pieces of homework so without knowing the context and detail it is difficult to comment but I agree that primary school is not only about academic achievement. All I can say is that teachers we dealt with were surprisingly accommodative and flexible in terms of individual kids and know they are dealing with young kids.

    My comments were really to address the tired expat stereotype that the local system is based on rote learning which destroys creativity and creates exam busting robots - it is a bit more nuanced depending which schools you choose and what kind of you want kid you want at 18years old.
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  5. #15

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    Almost every expat I hear saying the local system is working for them, is a man married to a Chinese woman. There are clearly dynamics there that would make it more suitable for that type of family.

    The people I’ve met who were fully non Chinese and went local all got out well before secondary.

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  6. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by smiley1:
    I am not advocating the local school system in it's entirety but in my experience the primary system provides a solid foundation - especially if you are looking for the Chinese language skills.

    If you can maintain perspective and not get caught up in the hyper-competitive parent crowd then there is no reason why your kid cannot maintain a balanced life - although this is not easy and many parents get sucked in.

    I did not read the thread about 24 pieces of homework so without knowing the context and detail it is difficult to comment but I agree that primary school is not only about academic achievement. All I can say is that teachers we dealt with were surprisingly accommodative and flexible in terms of individual kids and know they are dealing with young kids.

    My comments were really to address the tired expat stereotype that the local system is based on rote learning which destroys creativity and creates exam busting robots - it is a bit more nuanced depending which schools you choose and what kind of you want kid you want at 18years old.
    My limited knowledge on local schools is that primary up, the rote learning is definitely there to various degrees and heavy workload is also there. So yup, there are good grounds to say that local system still does the rote learning which instils fear into “being wrong”. As a plus, they teach respect for authority - sometimes too much, which can cause blowback in the “woke” culture of the internet age.

    My point is that parents should never ask their kid to do anything they would have crumpled to at their kids age and learn limitations of forcing resources into an issue to get an optimal result - whilst not exactly “You can’t polish a turd”, it’s more like just because you get the best coaches, it doesn’t mean a kid is going to be a Ronaldo or Messi.

    It seems international schools are in high demand from locals, to the extent parents with genuine needs for English medium instruction can’t get their kids in and ahead of families where both parents mother tongue is not English. The government needs to recreate what international schools offer for locals to reduce demand on the international schools and hence reduce the burden for parents.

  7. #17

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    The thing about the rote learning is that it is a sine qua non of learning written Chinese. And the more you rote learn, the better you get at it, so if you still learn your times tables by rote and recite lists of history dates (not that I have seen that happening for a number of decades) it will increase your ability to learn Chinese characters too.


  8. #18

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    Surely learning one additional subject (Chinese) would take much less time than indoctrination into an inefficient rote learning method?

    Besides, that’s not the point I’m making.

    The competition for school places has got to the point where the people it was meant for, expats whose mother tongue is English, can’t get their kids into the schools because families where the mother tongue isn’t English (but have more money) are given those places instead. Yeah, all right, this in Hong Kong and we all know where the airport is!

    But the issue remains, why is the demand there from non-English (actually I mean Chinese) families? It can’t be the English because as so many point out, Chinese proficiency is more important. So we are looking at the system (rote learning v out of the box thinkers), right?

    Given that the local demand is there, why can’t the government cater to that demand? Yes, I get that English may not be the local teachers mother tongue but that is not the problem - the problem is the way in which the kids are taught ... and nothing has been done in that regard for the generation since the handover - so no excuses!

  9. #19

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    I did it fine by reading the Apple Daily and writing messages using wubi on my old Nokia and ICQ.

  10. #20

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    It was a necessity to learn to be able to communicate with girls
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