问答题
It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then
Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things. {{U}} {{U}}
21 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}On June 6th its education minister lifted
restrictions that forced four-fifths of the territory's more than 500 secondary
schools to teach in the "mother tongue", i.e. Cantonese, the main language of
its residents{{/U}}. Schools may switch to English, the language of the former
colonial oppressor, from next year. Tiffs reverses a decade-old
policy adopted after Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997, in an assertion of
independence from both formre and present sovereign powers. Emotion may have
played a large role in the decision. But it made some sense. Students speak
Cantonese at home, and so using it is the easiest way to impart information and
promote discussion. {{U}} {{U}} 22 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}It is also
the first language of most teachers: a study done at the time concluded that
schools labeled "English-medium" were actually teaching in Cantonese but using
English-language textbooks.{{/U}} {{U}} {{U}} 23
{{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}After much bureaucratic rearrangement, 20% of schools were
permitted to continue teaching in English, which may have made sense to teachers
and administrators, but not to ambitious parents.{{/U}} They know that their
offspring will need English to get ahead. Those who could flee the public system
for costly private schools, or for the eight semi-private schools run on the
British system, did so. The rest made extraordinary efforts to enter the
minority of English-language schools. They have huge waiting lists; Cantonese
ones gaping holes. That helps explain the minister's change of
heart, for which no reason was given. {{U}} {{U}} 24 {{/U}}
{{/U}}{{U}}So does a survey published last year, which concluded that students from
the Cantonese schools did far worse than their peers in getting into
universities-a result that would horrify Hong Kong's achievement-obsessed
parents.{{/U}} And whatever the educators think, employers from coffee bars to
banks either require people to be bilingual or pay more to those who are.
Private schools offering supplementary English tuition have
mushroomed. {{U}} {{U}} 25 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}Hong
Kong's educational bureaucracy has devoted much thought to how English could be
offered without harming other studies, and without sacrificing a generation of
teachers with strong interest in a system based on their first language{{/U}}. The
minister has skirted these difficult issues. A much debated but still
undisclosed formula will allow an increasing number of subjects to be taught in
English. Every step is controversial. Pragmatists want Hong Kong to drop
Cantonese entirely in favor of English and Mandarin. But that may demand a level
of cultural indifference which even Hong Kong cannot muster.