Education System (6B Chan Sau Yuen, Bernie)

         Last week, an old classmates of mine came home for a holiday from a boarding school in the US. I asked him what he found most difficult about going to a boarding school. Surprisingly, it was not keeping up with the reading or managing time. It was agreeing to help a friend, sharing notes and lab work, and contributing ideas in his class. In other words, it was learning to work as a team.

Competing with classmates and schoolmates is the culture of Hong Kong. The education system does not allow Hong Kong students to be promoted or get admission in a secondary school or university without competing with classmates by having a better academic result and getting in the ideal school or not. Therefore, I think it is not the Hong Kong students who refuse to learn and help one another; it is the education system which is stopping them.

I also think that teamwork is important. Nowadays, students need to do many projects and carry out division of labour and communicate with other group members. Therefore, leadership skills and communication skills are important for Hong Kong students and should be improved. Most of the Hong Kong students are self-centred and do not know how to communicate with others to come up to a common consensus and many also have poor leadership skills. So, they cannot lead a team successfully.

Therefore, I agree that Hong Kong students need to learn to co-operate with each other instead of competing against one another. So I hope the government can change the education system to help students. In my opinion, Hong Kong students should take part in the uniform team and experience physical training or the foot drill training and take up leadership tasks to be cooperative with other people.