housey! housey!

I was walking from Tai Wai station towards Che Kung Temple, one of the best-known such edifices in Hong Kong, in February when I passed a school. I couldn’t help but notice the names posted on one wall:

All six names are well known, although apart from their being the names of the school’s six houses—and the original bearers being famous—it would be difficult to identify a hard connection between them. There are three scientists, a moral campaigner, an explorer and an artist.

The junior school that I attended between 1953 and 1957 had four houses, all named after local mountains: Blencathra (blue); Crossfell (red); Helvellyn (green); and Skiddaw (yellow). The local grammar school, which I attended from 1957 to 1964, had just three, two of which—Lowther (yellow) and Blencowe (green)—were the names of local village grammar schools that were amalgamated with the town’s school at some point in their history. The third house—Tudor (red)—is a nod to the royal dynasty in power when the school was founded.

When I worked at the Eskdale Outward Bound Mountain School from 1971 to 1972, each group of twelve students, known as a ‘patrol’, was named after a famous explorer. I can’t remember all the names used, but both Scott and Shackleton were represented. The following year, at the Moray Outward Bound Sea School, I found that the ‘watches’ were named after famous seafarers such as Drake and Nelson.

It’s obvious that these names were intended to be inspirational, so it was something of a surprise to discover that the watches at the Hong Kong Outward Bound School were merely named after local mountains (Tai Lam Koi, Nam Tse Tsim, Tai Mun Shan and Ma On Shan) that the students would climb during a course. There was no inspirational component whatsoever.

However, the men—there are no women in the group—after whom the six houses that are named in the above photograph must have been chosen specifically to inspire their members. After all, William Wilberforce’s main claim to fame is that he was the leading campaigner against slavery in the British Empire. Fridtjof Nansen was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping displaced persons in the aftermath of the First World War, although he is probably better known for his exploration of the Arctic and his contributions to the science of oceanography.

On the other hand, I would consider Alexander Fleming and Ernest Rutherford to be relatively obscure personalities. Yes, Fleming did discover penicillin, the first antibiotic, and Rutherford was identified in the popular press as the man who ‘split the atom’, thus proving that despite the original Greek meaning of the word, atoms are not indivisible. I would have been more inclined to choose Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin if asked to nominate two British scientists, but perhaps these two are just too well known.

Nobody is likely to quibble over the inclusion of Albert Einstein, undoubtedly the most famous scientist of the twentieth century, but Leonardo da Vinci does seem to be a fish out of water here. He was a very clever man who dabbled extensively in futuristic thinking, although he is probably best known for paintings such as Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. His inclusion would seem to reflect the breadth of the school’s curriculum and the fact that the arts are important.

However, if I’d been the one choosing six inspirational house names, I would not have included any of the six I’ve been discussing here. In addition to Newton and Darwin, I would have nominated Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Shakespeare, Michael Faraday and Joseph Mallord Turner (or Galileo Galilei to replace Turner if I’m not required to restrict my list to British nominees). I imagine that most readers will have their own nominees.

university waltz

It would probably be a stretch of the imagination to describe the Chinese University of Hong Kong (ChineseU) as a tourist attraction, but the university campus is a pleasant place to spend a few hours. I almost wrote ‘strolling’ there, but the university is built on a steep hillside, so you would have to be extremely fit to walk from the MTR’s University station to the highest point on the campus.

However, over the past two days, I’ve done just that. Paula, who works here, had asked me to join her for lunch. But not just any lunch! Students in the School of Business had been assigned the task of running a ‘restaurant’ for a day, and we would be customers. We enjoyed the food provided on both days, and it seemed appropriate to go for a walk afterwards.

On the first day, we stayed at ground level, where I took these photographs:

However, on the second day, Paula suggested that we visit some of the higher reaches of the campus. We could take the (university-provided) bus, she added as an inducement. But we didn’t! The following photographs are presented in the order in which they were taken, except where indicated.

I featured some of the various paving patterns to be seen around ChineseU in both Tile Styles and Pavement Mathematics, but here is one pattern that I didn’t include in either of these posts:

I took the next photo simply because I liked the geometry:

This is a wall that forms part of a building. The photo is of the entire wall, so it is clearly a decorative feature:

There are a lot of delightful, quiet paths away from the roads:

In the same area as the last photograph, I couldn’t help but notice four paper-bark trees growing so closely together that it’s hard to believe that they are separate individuals:

I do believe that they are separate though, because there is little difference between them, and if they did share the same root system, my expectation is that there would be some kind of preferential treatment for one of the four.

Between the location of the previous photo and that of the next, we had to negotiate a flight of several hundred steps, but at the top I couldn’t help but notice this entrance:

The writing announces that plants used in Chinese medicine are being grown within.

The next photo shows an ornamental species of bamboo to the left of the entrance in the previous photo:

Contrast this species with the type of bamboo that is used in scaffolding, which is seen in this photo of a building that we passed higher up the hill:

Not all the ‘tile styles’ hereabouts are outdoors. I photographed this pattern in the foyer of a building that I believe is part of the Faculty of Engineering:

The next photo is a view of the Run Run Shaw Science Building:

If the name seems familiar: Run Run Shaw was one of the Shaw Brothers, who produced a distinctive and very successful genre of kung fu films during the 1970s. The colouring of the windows appears to be random and thus not science-based.

I’ve not included the next photo, of the Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Building, for æsthetic reasons. I just wanted to point out that it is nothing more than a glass façade, behind which the profile of the hillside continues uninterrupted.

The building in the previous photograph adjoins the university library, and this abstract sculpture is located in the middle of the piazza in front of the library:

I couldn’t help but wonder why the university authorities located the library so far up the hill—hardly an incentive for students to check out references provided in lectures—and I also imagined what would happen if this ‘stone stomper’ were to come to life!

And this is a view of the same location from even further up the hill:

I had the distinct impression that the colouring of some blocks in this retaining wall was both deliberate and significant in some way:

…like the next image, which is a bas-relief plaque set into the wall of a building:

I can’t interpret everything here, but I see a woman and child just right of centre, and a reclining man down and to the left. I’ve cranked up the colour saturation and contrast to make this more obvious.

I had to photograph the retaining walls seen in the next two photos because there were obvious abstract qualities to exploit:

In terms of where to go around the campus, I’m totally reliant on my wife, but when we ended up on the roof of a particular building on our way downhill, I simply had to take the next photo:

You can see why! In fact, Paula told me later that she had come this way deliberately because she knew that I would want to take this photograph.

My final photo is of a tile pattern that I’d photographed on the way uphill, but I decided to take this one from the opposite direction.

If, like me, you enjoy tile and brick patterns, then ChineseU is a must-visit location. But even if you don’t, there is still a lot to see.

qualified success?

What is the purpose of a school? One should perhaps make a distinction between state-run and independent schools, but if considering the former you can award yourself a bonus point if you would have said that the principal function of a school is to facilitate the nationwide screening system that weeds out unsuitable candidates at strategic intervals. Education, if it takes place at all in a typical state school, is an incidental by-product.

Two years ago, then UK Education Secretary Michael Gove announced plans to abolish the current General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), examinations for which are sat at the end of Year 11 (age 16) and which constitute the first of the sieves alluded to in the previous paragraph, and replace it with a ‘more rigorous’ General Certificate of Education (GCE) ordinary level (O level). It will not have escaped the notice of those who follow the English education system that O levels, which had been introduced in 1951, had been scrapped by a previous Conservative government, in the 1980s.

Part of Gove’s motivation was his desire to reintroduce a ‘world-class qualification’, which should stand as a reminder that politicians, who invariably think they know more about education than the professionals, can have a dangerously destabilizing influence on a country’s education system. Qualification? The BBC’s education correspondent used the same term, but passing an O-level exam is not any kind of qualification, although you will get a certificate that records your success.

Looking at Gove’s other initiatives, it is clear that he has no understanding of education as an organic process and is motivated almost entirely by ideology. His introduction of academies and free schools, which are beyond the control of local education authorities, have total control of their curricula and are allowed to employ unqualified teachers, is clear evidence of that, although these schools are subjected to scrutiny by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted).

Unfortunately, the schools landscape has changed considerably in England during my lifetime, invariably at the behest of politicians and rarely for the better. The Eleven Plus examination, which was used to decide whether a child went to a grammar school or to a secondary modern school, was introduced following the 1944 Education Act. However, both the exam and the grammar schools it fed were seen by the political Left as divisive and elitist, and the exam was abolished in most areas between 1964 and 1979, and most grammar schools were either closed or converted to comprehensive schools, which as the name suggests were intended to provide for the educational needs of all children, although I’ve always suspected that the architects of this policy were more interested in pegging back the brightest children by a notch or two rather than in raising the level that could be achieved by the least able.

Secondary modern schools were a new concept for the postwar period, the idea being to provide a technical education that purported to meet the needs of those children who were not academically inclined. The reality is that many became mere dumping grounds for those who didn’t make the grade, they were starved of funds, and they were regarded as providing a second-class education, especially by those who did make the grade.

I am not suggesting that there is no such thing as a ‘qualification’—the world would be a dangerous place if teachers, doctors, lawyers and accountants were able to practise their professions without a long and rigorous training period beforehand—but the notion that an O-level pass in English literature is any kind of ‘qualification’ is risible in the extreme, although a good mark in the A-level (advanced-level) equivalent will entitle you to apply to study the subject at university.

Another area where some form of certification is desirable is in skilled manual work: no one would employ a cowboy builder, plumber or electrician, you would think, although I regularly see examples of shoddy workmanship by the jacks of all trades (and masters of none) who build village houses in Hong Kong. The photograph below is of a wall that I watched being built a few years ago and is entirely typical. As you might guess from the undulations in the lines of bricks, no spirit level was used, and the structure consists of a single thickness of bricks with no interlocking, so its structural soundness is doubtful. A qualified bricklayer, in practice someone who has served a lengthy apprenticeship, could have been relied on to do a far better job, although his services would probably have been considered too expensive.

You will have noted that in the last example I suggested that experience is an adequate replacement for a piece of paper stating that you’re ‘qualified’. I can reinforce this point from my own experience: a few years ago, I learned about a course that one could enroll on to become a ‘qualified’ proofreader. I believe that it isn’t possible to teach someone to be a competent proofreader unless they already have some natural aptitude. But what’s so difficult about proofreading? Surely one only needs to be good at spotting mistakes.

However, the hardest part of proofreading lies not in spotting errors but in deciding whether or not the errors you have spotted should be flagged up. This will probably sound strange to anyone who has never tried proofreading, but if a mistake is the fault of the copy editor, then the publisher will have to pay for it to be corrected. Mistakes are rectified free of charge only if they were the typesetter’s fault, so the proofreader has to decide who to blame, and if it was the editor, whether the error is sufficiently trivial that it can be ignored.

But here’s the rub: although I’ve proofread hundreds of books, I’m totally unqualified for the task, if by ‘unqualified’ I mean that I don’t have a certificate of competence. On the other hand, given the way publishing is organized, a freelancer can get more work only if they can be relied upon to do a good job, and I was never short of work, so I take this as evidence that experience is a better indicator of ability than a piece of paper.

Since I started this essay, Michael Gove has been replaced as education secretary. Although it is too early to assess whether this change will have a significant impact on the education sector, it is reasonable to assume that we will hear more railing against that traditional right-wing bête noir, ‘trendy teaching methods’, using the now familiar buzzwords ‘rigour’ and ‘standards’, and a perpetuation of the myth that it is possible to learn more about a person’s intellectual capabilities from their answer to a question in a three-hour, sit-down exam than from their answer to the same question if given a week to write 5,000 words on the subject drawing on whatever documentary sources they deem necessary to construct their argument.

It is more important, and a more valuable skill, to be able to construct a rational argument than it is to memorize the information that supports that argument. However, helping pupils to develop such a skill really would be education, and both the present Conservative government and the last Labour administration have been more interested in a rubber-stamping process of training. And training is not education.

all must have prizes

…the Dodo suddenly called out ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, ‘But who has won?’
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead…, while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, ‘everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

In the triumphalist aftermath of the recently concluded Olympic Games in London (the British team had had its best result at an Olympiad since 1908), Prime Minister David Cameron called for an end to the ‘all must have prizes’ culture that had poisoned the provision of physical education (PE) in British schools for forty years, and a renewed emphasis on competitive sport. The culture to which Cameron was referring took root in the British schools system in the 1960s, in parallel with the move towards ‘comprehensive’ education.

This latter policy, which was introduced by the Labour government of the time, involved the closure of grammar schools, many of which were hundreds of years old but seen by left-wing critics as elitist, and secondary modern schools, introduced by a Conservative government in the early 1950s. They were replaced by one-size-fits-all comprehensive schools.

The ostensible rationale behind such schools was to improve the quality of education being offered to those pupils who were less academically inclined, and this goal was probably achieved in some cases, but the practical effect, most of the time, was to drag clever students down to the level of the rest. In fact, being clever was usually viewed as undesirable, because, it was alleged, it dented the self-esteem of those who were not as clever.

This mindset was reinforced by a generation of lecturers with extreme left-wing views, who dominated colleges of education—where future teachers were being trained—at the time. It was a philosophy that also invaded the provision of physical education, leading to types of activity being promoted that bore an uncanny resemblance to the silly Caucus Race in Lewis Carroll’s famous story. Losing in sport was regarded as inimical to the emotional development of children, so competition was not only frowned upon; it was frequently dropped from the curriculum entirely. It is worth noting that the teaching of English grammar was abandoned around the same time for broadly similar reasons (it stifled children’s creativity).

Nevertheless, Cameron’s crass remark betrays an ignorance of how the promotion of competitive sport in schools would actually work. I’m old enough to have had first-hand experience. When I attended my local grammar school in the late 1950s, a games lesson during the winter months consisted of a full-blown game of rugby whatever the weather, although the weather, harsh as it often was, is not what I criticize about my experience. The really galling aspect of my introduction to the world of Kipling’s ‘muddied oafs’ was that the entire game was played out between half the boys on the pitch. I was lucky if I touched the ball twice a term, even though I tried hard to get involved and was often in the right place to receive a pass. The ball carrier always went down in the tackle rather than pass to someone whom they perceived to be one of the ‘wallies’. A similar scenario plays out every time a group of children pick sides for an informal game of football. The weakest are always the last to be chosen.

In fact, Cameron’s comments beg a very important question: what is the purpose of PE in schools? I left school with a fierce dislike of any kind of organized physical activity, and it was entirely fortuitous that, during my first year at university, I discovered a physical activity that I thought was worth doing. I’ve been active ever since. I conclude, therefore, based on my own experience, that the purpose of PE in schools is not to raise a generation of footballers who are good enough to play for Manchester United or rugby players who can beat the All Blacks in their own backyard. The real job of a PE teacher is not to build sports teams that can beat every other school’s teams but to help the weaker children to find a physical activity that they enjoy doing, and perhaps excel at. It doesn’t have to be a competitive sport; running, swimming and cycling are worthwhile in their own right, and it doesn’t matter if someone is never going to become the next Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps or Bradley Wiggins. These activities can be enjoyed without the competition, although a kind of self-competition is probably necessary if the maximum benefit is to be gained.

And there is a major payoff: we are constantly being reminded that obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the developed world, and although it is probably too late to help the current generation of couch potatoes, it is possible to encourage today’s children to adopt more active lifestyles. However, finding the right activity for each individual child is crucially important and will not be an easy task.

questions, questions

Michael is a 16-year-old Form 5 student in Hong Kong. His parents, neither of whom is a graduate, have high expectations, but he is already disadvantaged by not studying in a school where English is used as the medium for instruction. The number of such schools was drastically reduced after the handover of sovereignty to China in 1997, mainly as a result of pressure from academics who maintained that instruction in students’ mother tongue (Cantonese) is more beneficial. It is hard to disagree with such a sentiment, but for one crucial fact: entry to any of the local universities requires equal proficiency in both languages.

Michael has another problem: his teachers don’t like him. Why? Because he asks questions. He is often slapped down in class for daring, as his teachers see it, to challenge their authority. Hong Kong is a society in which respect for teachers has become entrenched, ossified into a sterile convention that stifles creativity and individuality. The influence of Confucianism, combined with a feeling among most students that by asking questions they may appear to their classmates to be stupid and thus will lose face, means that students like Michael, whose style of learning does not conform to local classroom norms, struggle to make headway.

Yet Michael is of above average intelligence. He recently passed the Grade 8 exam of the UK’s Royal College of Music in violin. However, his interest in and talent for music have also landed him in trouble: his mother frequently scolds him for listening to music while studying, even though he finds it useful because it helps him to remember key pieces of information by association with the music he is listening to.

What Michael needs is a sympathetic teacher or, since this is most unlikely in his present circumstances, an experienced mentor. This is where Paula entered the picture. His parents were worried about his academic progress, and a friend of Paula referred them to her. Her initial meeting with Michael was scheduled to last an hour but lasted three. Michael described, in quaintly unidiomatic English, the weekly ‘brain-draining’ that he received at the hands of his parents. They wanted to know what he’d learned in school that week, thus unwittingly piling even more pressure on him. However, most of the discussion was in Cantonese, and it is clear that Michael needs more practice if his command of English is to be raised to the required standard for entry to university.

When Michael recounted how his mother disapproved of his listening to music while studying, he was surprised (and delighted) to learn that Paula had always listened to rock music while studying at university, and that I frequently do the same when writing, although in my case I do have to be selective. I will have no problems if Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll or Deep Purple’s Highway Star is thumping away in the background, but something like Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues would be disastrous. Too many words.

Anyway, Michael went away happy, and his parents were also delighted when Paula told them that he already thinks like a university student. This remains a work in progress at the moment, however, and Paula will be successful only if she can educate Michael’s parents in the best way to encourage their son. As for all those questions, no one has said it better than Jacob Bronowski, in his landmark BBC television series on the history of science, The Ascent of Man:

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

lock, stock and barrel

For the past two years, Paula has run a series of workshops for newly qualified teachers on behalf of the extramural department of one of Hong Kong’s leading universities (see above). In the first of these, she starts by showing three short video clips of teachers in action and asks her students which of the three deserves an award for good teaching.

Professor Lock is an eminent German physicist at MIT, and the first video shows him explaining some fundamental concepts in electricity while drawing diagrams and writing formulae on a blackboard. Although he does turn to face his audience from time to time, usually to ask a question that he immediately answers himself, for much of the time he is scribbling on the board and talking simultaneously. He jokingly suggests that everything he is explaining is so simple that his audience will wonder why any explanation is necessary.

Dr Stock is an economist at the Harvard Business School. He is seen using all the latest multimedia gadgetry to augment his performance. Assessing the three teachers, Dr Stock’s style is most akin to that of a business presentation, and, like a typical businessman, he reads his PowerPoint slides aloud rather than using them as an aide memoire, something to be developed in greater detail.

Dr Barrel is a Chinese lecturer at a Hong Kong university who is seen addressing his students in heavily accented English. He is reading from a prepared script, and unlike in the first two videos there are shots of the students, all Chinese, who are writing furiously in an attempt to get everything down.

Alert readers will have spotted that Paula had set a deliberate snare here. None of the three represents a paradigm of good teaching, because what is missing in all three clips is any form of interaction between teacher and students. In the video of Professor Lock, at one point a small window opens in the corner of the screen, and the professor, apparently watching himself in action, suddenly realizes that he has made a basic error.

“Oh my God!” he exclaims, “I’ve got Ohm’s law wrong.”

And so he had. Instead of writing that the voltage in a circuit is equal to current multiplied by resistance, he had written that voltage is equal to current divided by resistance. The interesting point to make here is that no one in the audience ventured to point out the error, although whether this was because no one was aware of the mistake, or because, out of deference to the professor’s status, no one dared to challenge what everyone knew was incorrect, can only be guessed.

Two years ago, Paula ran this same series of workshops in China on behalf of an international NGO. Students there unanimously selected the professor as being worthy of the hypothetical award, because, they said, he was knowledgeable. As an aside, the NGO decided to dispense with Paula’s services and instead place all the materials online, thus missing the point of the exercise, which is to provoke discussion.

The students in China were clearly unused to being asked for their opinions, but one student did point out that the professor had started with a simple example and worked towards greater complexity. Hong Kong students are much more analytical, although they are invariably taken in by the deliberately misleading inclusion of examples from prestigious American institutions like Harvard and MIT.

The problem, as Paula encourages her students to work out for themselves, is that the majority of teachers in higher education do not understand the other side of the coin, the learning process, so they follow the worn-out paradigm of the ‘sage on the stage’, and the majority of students fail to notice that they are being short-changed, lock, stock and barrel.