Since 2005, Lingnan University has been conducting a series of surveys related to the happiness of Hong Kong people. One of the notable findings from these surveys is that higher education does not seem to enhance happiness, once its effects on incomes have been taken into account. But if universities confer only the benefit of earning more money but do not make people happier, all the talk about "whole person education' really comes to nothing. It is heart-warming to learn that "personal development" is now a key component in the liberal studies program in secondary schools, but developments in Hong Kong continue to suggest that up to now schools and universities have been failing their primary mission of education in making students more "whole".
People, particularly economists, often think of education as either a consumption good or an investment good. It is assumed that people either get "utility" directly out of education, in which case education is for fun and joy and satisfaction, or people get education as a way of increasing "human capital", so that we can earn a higher incomes, which is a means of getting more "utility". But education should also open the eyes of students to the value and meaning of human existence. This important aspect of education perhaps cannot be characterized as "investment" or "consumption". Education becomes a transforming experience as one's perspective on existence changes.
"Whole person education" is now a popular topic among university presidents and school principals who allude to it as an ideal. But to put this ideal into practice students must learn to treasure and respect life. To me, life education should be even more important than sex education and should indeed subsume sex education. If young people have learnt to respect life, they certainly would try their best to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Since 1997 secondary schools in Hong Kong have been advised to set a minimum amount of teaching time for sex education. According to Dr Ng Mun Lun, who wrote an article on sex education in Hong Kong for the International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, "the students of form 1 to form 3 are to have an annual minimum of 20 hours of life education, the contents of which include civics, social ethics, politics, environmental protection, etc., and among all these, also sex education." Making this statement, Dr Ng tries to say that the time allocated for sex education is not enough. He is probably right. But what is even more apparent is that the time allocated for life education is not enough. Life education can best be conducted through intensive and reflective case studies. Covering a lot of ground is not possible when the time allotted is only 20 hours a year.
Substance abuse, bullying, date rapes, and even gang rapes, teenage pregnancies and abortions, suicides, etc., have been on the ascendance in recent years, testifying to a lack of respect for life among our younger generation. The SAR government is making a serious effort to fight the infiltration of drugs into our schools, but this has been an uphill battle, because our younger generation is quickly losing its sense of purpose.
Notwithstanding the various efforts on the part of the authorities to change the forms of examinations and assessments in order to alleviate the pressures on students, the overwhelming atmosphere that a youngster in Hong Kong faces remains intensely competitive. Instead of creating a healthy atmosphere of personal growth and development, all institutions from kindergarten to university have been oriented to intensify competition among peers. At the university level, all the UGC-funded institutions are competing among themselves for higher ranking. At the secondary level, principals are keen to produce "evidence of excellence" as shown by open examination results. At the primary school level, the headmasters are preoccupied with placing their graduates in "band 1 schools": schools that attract the most students in band 1. If everybody is busy competing among themselves, what is left for those who set their minds on something more interesting and perhaps even more valuable?
Education must aim at discovering and realizing our potential. But there is so much preoccupation with the "knowledge-based economy" that other than engineering, medicine, science and technology, law, and business and finance, many people may well wonder if "life education" is "economically productive", since it cannot deliver a person to the moon or enhance our "economic competitiveness".
Paradoxically, life education is productive exactly because it tells us that there are far more urgent matters than delivering a human being to the moon, that the race for space supremacy and for military supremacy is wasteful of our precious resources, that building taller and taller buildings is nothing to be proud of, and that the world can be much more wonderful and enjoyable if people devote their time and energy more to improving the quality of life for everybody than if they set their minds just on cutting costs and lifting profits. Life education is about a mindset that puts human life above everything else and that capitalism, profits, globalization, laws, culture, entertainment, politics, bridges, buildings - and indeed everything -mean nothing except when they enhance the quality of human life.
I believe we need to make a serious effort in providing a more effective life education to our younger generation.
The author is director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies, Lingnan University
(HK Edition 09/19/2009 page1)
