Education

My body is terribly pathetic, as I get sick monthly. Anyway.

Education - there is always an issue in almost every country. For instance, the system does not work well; the syllabus is not appropriate; the teaching staff is not qualified and so on.

I enjoyed a presentation in my tutorial class about the education in Western Australia. I am not very familiar with the educational system, so I can only provide a little information about it. In Australia, most states basically use an approach called "outcome-based education (OBE)". It has just been introduced in Western Australia. Some problems thus arise and lead to discussion and arguments.

OBE, by definition, is "to start with a framework and a set of expectations about the desired learning results. The curriculum and the organisational forms that are appropriate for achieving those results can then be built." (Brian Devlin, 2000, http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/ntier/newsletter/OBE.html)

It is actually quite similar to Hong Kong's previous system, which is target-oriented. This is probably because Australia and Hong Kong are deeply influenced by the British. In Britain the term attainment target’ is said to be a similar idea (Brian Devlin, 2002). However I am not certain whether Hong Kong is still using this system, because it has been criticised seriously.

The arguments about OBE include the fact that it ignores the processes. It teaches people to achieve the target by means of anything. In my class, some classmates expressed their views after the presentation that students might have learnt nothing. Students are able to promote to the next grade, but they are not actually capable of all the subjects they are doing. Probably some students are doing very well with only one subject, whereas they are not up to the standard in the other subjects. One of my classmates, who has been a teacher, said some students simply could not write a readable sentence. The students have the ideas in their mind, but they just cannot write them down.

This is all I want to talk about the problem of the education in Australia. In United States, there is a debate over the educational policy, despite its model being imitated widely. I read a news article few weeks ago, and it said the long-favoured United States' education is declining in world's position. The younger generation will probably face a problem of insufficient education when they are compared with people overseas. I have just found another article talking about the American education's image abroad in crisis (Business Wire, 2006, http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?
ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060913005261&newsLang=en).

In Hong Kong, education controversies hardly stop. Debates on 3-3-4 secondary/tertiary system, the quality of teachers and what approach is appropriate are endless. It seems that people can hardly invent or develop a perfect system, especially when a reform of education involves politics and the society. Apparently it is quite impossible and too complicated to reform.

I think as well as the aboves, it is partly because the world is always transforming. Education is a long-term project, and thus maybe it can hardly follow the steps of the world. When people start a system for the contemporary world, the world has changed already. We can only maximize our interest and do our best within the constraints.

To develop this more from the issue, I would say this is probably applicable to many social issues. The world is unsettled without a constant form; until people find out solutions, new matters arise. It is interesting - when we are pushing the world to move further, we have to be chasing the world's step. We straighten out troubles, and then we create troubles. Surely it is not only about negative, some positives are brought at the same time.

It sounds like a kaleidoscope. This makes our lifes colourful and exciting. I don't think people can live without big or small troubles, as we will probably feel dull eventually.