Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

Verbal aggression by parents and psychosocial problems of children

Analyses of data on a nationally representative sample of 3,346 American parents with a child under 18 living at home found that 63% reported one or more instances of verbal aggression, such as swearing and insulting the child. Children who experienced frequent verbal aggression from parents (as measured by the Conflict Tactic Scales) exhibited higher rates of physical aggression, delinquency, and interpersonal problems than other children. This relationship is robust since it applies to preschool-, elementary school-, and high school-age children, to both boys and girls, and to children who were also physically punished as well as those who were not. Children who experienced both verbal aggression and severe physical violence exhibited the highest rates of aggression, delinquency, and interpersonal problems.     

Positive Illusion of exemplary altruists

This paper examines the relationship between altruism and positive illusion, as formulated by Taylor and Brown (1988). It was predicted that, compared to the non-exemplary, general population, exemplary altruists would exhibit a higher level of positive illusion, which, in turn, suggests a higher level of mental health. Forty exemplary altruists and forty non-exemplary altruists were assessed in terms of positive illusion and compared with each other using Hotelling T²followed by univariatet-test. The results supported the prediction that exemplary altruists showed higher scores in terms of positive illusion than that of the non-exemplary general population. The implications of the results are discussed.     

Comparing the Impacts of Tutorial and Edutainment Software Programs on Students’ Achievements, Misconceptions, and Attitudes towards Biology

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of tutorial and edutainment design of instructional software programs related to the “cell division” topic on student achievements, misconceptions and attitudes. An experimental research design including the cell division achievement test (CAT), the cell division concept test (CCT) and biology attitude scale (BAS) was applied at the beginning and at the end of the research. After the treatment, general achievement in CAT increased in favor of experimental groups. Instructional software programs also had the positive effect to the awareness of students’ understandings to the general functions of mitosis and meiosis. However, the current study revealed that there were still some misconceptions in the experimental groups even after the treatment. It was also noticed that only using edutainment software program significantly changed students’ attitudes towards biology.     

Stability-equation method for sampled-data systems

This paper presents a new transformation by which the stability-equation method can be applied for analysis and design of sampled-data systems. New stability criteria applicable to systems with transfer function having both real and complex coefficients are presented. Several kinds of examples are considered with computer results given.     

The geometrical location of information centers

The use of geometrical factors to locate information centers for a spatially distributed user population will be shown. The total amount of information for the community of users is considered to be predetermined. A proportion of that information is to be allocated to each information center created. An optimal user versus distance and contents of the center compromise will be obtained using standard mathematical programming techniques. An interesting theoretical situation results for those cases where the “satisfaction benefit” due to quantity of information increases more slowly than the quantity of information. For such cases, the optimal decentralization (or pluralization) is no decentralization at all—a single location results. A case study locating the Mathematics information of a University concludes the work.