Wednesday 19 November 2014

Seven myths about education

In her Seven myths about education (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), Daisy Christodoulou discusses "seven widely held beliefs which are holding back pupils and teachers." They are:


  1. facts prevent understanding
  2. teacher-led instruction is passive
  3. the twenty-first century fundamentally changes everything
  4. you can always just look it up
  5. we should teach transferable skills
  6. projects and activities are the best way to learn
  7. teaching knowledge is indoctrination


E.D. Hirsch writes, in his foreword, that the seven myths "have one enormous drawback." "They are," he explained, "empirically incorrect." They do not correspond to how our minds work. They are "disastrous conceptual mistakes."

Sunday 21 September 2014

first few weeks 2014-15

the notes below were written in the first and third weeks respectively. one English lecture, many Chinese lectures and tutorials

---   ---   ---

the first week of teaching is over.
to me, it's one of the many first weeks in university; it is meant to be forgotten
to a freshman, it's his/her first week in university; it is meant to be remembered.

in a college core lecture of 200 freshmen, I saw the potentials and future of this generation (90s).

It is only the first week of school but I have already seen the signs of hard work among these young people.
Some people paid full attention to their laptops and looked very focused;
some people formed in groups and began their discussion;
some people looked exhausted lying on the seat;
some people started to exchange ideas;
some people seemed to start a debate.

their hard work made me feel ashamed to break it by saying "guys, as you are moving to a new learning environment, I hope you can learn to respect the speaker please." (I was not the speaker at the time and I forgot to add that it is a skill that you should have for the rest of your life)

Silence. Instantly I felt the guilt. It's a big day to them. First happy Friday as a freshman. And I ruined it. They are our future. I swear I would never do that again.


---   ---   ---


過去一個星期,上左好幾堂lectures同tutorials,遇上五百個undergrads,發覺自己生活喺大學係可以幾咁離地,有六:


一、說出羅汝謙三個字,學生好驚訝,而我不知道羅汝謙是誰。

二、學生唔知道邊個係貪曾,所以我都冇提老董。
三、好多人好似唔識廣東話(或者係我懶音多),定係只識聽英文,索性唔聽,全程用laptop,或者低頭用手提。我諗,係時候開多啲英文班,創造平等機會。
四、從奧地利學生口中得知,香港學生以為佢來自澳大利亞。佢連帶向一個喺香港讀歷史既我強調佢唔係來自澳大利亞。為左俾佢知我懂,我索性問佢係咪講德文。
五、入大學第一件事係報O camp,第二件事係退會(退學生會)。我以前得閒冇野做就去成日好多人既SU co-op逛,folder同notebook都係個度買,到而家仲用緊。利申:立場上,我認我好多時多都企SU嗰邊。
六、好似冇乜人知陶傑係阿水,遑論陶傑經常放係口邊既小農,所以都唔講咩口腔期,慳返啲口水。

以上種種,足以證明係象牙塔既人幾咁離地。

深深感受到「村民唔係咁諗」既意思。

Monday 4 August 2014

summer, examination, and discipline

Watermelons are ripe but the summer semester of my university has quietly come to an end. 

My colleagues are marking students' term papers or waiting for late submission since last week. 

Writing a term paper is painstaking while some students prefer a one-off examination.

Although examination is not a norm in my department, writing a term paper is not entirely different from it.

It makes me recall Foucault's insights, in his Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, about examination:

"The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth."


Like the museum in many ways, as argued by Terry Eagleton, the examination sets rules and regulations to discipline, normalize, and classify candidates. Power plays between the assessor and the assessed. The ritual symbolizes an exchange of knowledge, effort and grades. Foucault says:

"The examination enabled the teacher, while transmitting his knowledge, to transform his pupils into a whole field of knowledge... the examination in the school was a constant exchanger of knowledge; it guaranteed the movement of knowledge from the teacher to the pupil, but it extracted from the pupil a knowledge destined and reserved for the teacher."


In the process of exchange, pupils are to be disciplined and normalized to receive good grades in the examination whereas markers give As to those who demonstrates a high degree of discipline and normalization. Similarly teachers graded pupils according to a set of rules and regulations pre-approved by the institution. Grade distribution is highly regulated and respected in order to promote success and punish failure. In other words, the exchange of knowledge in the form of examination reduces the roles of teachers and pupils into self-discipline and self-normalization.

Wednesday 12 March 2014

讀研究院是一種生活態度

剛讀過從前明史tutor Vichy所寫的別浪費時間去讀研究生(一),勾起讀研究生時的種種。

---   ---   ---

讀研究院是一種生活,一種態度。

我猶記得,做tutor的時候,不止一次,

上完tutorial,發表過自我感覺良好的偉論,離開後文藝復興風格的main building,乘坐22號小巴到中環天星碼頭。

踏上前往尖沙咀的天星小輪,挑一個近船邊的座位坐下,

放好書包,翹起二郎腳,解開外套鈕扣,展開雙臂在背椅上,朝向對岸的文化中心,迎著微微吹來的海風,撥一撥被海風吹亂了的頭髮,望著維多利亞臉頰上的夕陽,呷一口在碼頭Pacific Coffee買來的Latte。

This is life.

小輪靠岸,安靜地看著人潮爭解纜,慢步離船上岸,沿途聽著輕快的藍色多瑙河,朝向星光行走去。走上星光行的商務,面對朝向維多利亞的風景,打打書釘,消磨一句鐘是常事,買幾本書是責任,十數本是本份。

This is life too.

太陽落山,時候不早,娘親來電,「幾點返黎食飯?」

掃興,不識趣。倖然,歸去。

This is real.

所以說,

研究院的人不是自戀,就是自閉。

Sunday 12 January 2014

Lazy Sunday reading: Japanese South Polar Expedition, 1911-2

In a lazy Sunday I was seating by the window to feel the breeze of winter in Hong Kong with a cup of English Breakfast tea and dark chocolate left from the Christmas.

I picked up something to read, or I should say just to occupy my attention and hands a bit to get along with a cosy afternoon.


Without any difficulty I found an interesting book catalogue in my bag (I love book catalogues!). In the next minute I was consumed by the Royal Geographical Journal catalogue of Henry Sotheran, the oldest antiquarian booksellers in England and the world since 1761.


An entry was intriguing to read and muse for quite a while. It was an article titled "The Japanese South Polar Expedition of 1911-1912" published in 1933.


I am a Chinese historian not Japanese but the expedition came no surprise to me. Having defeated China and Russia in only one decade between the nineteenth century and twentieth century, Japan became the most powerful country in Asia and was a rising power in the world stage. Japan was like China today.


In 1911, when the Chinese revolutionaries were trying to overthrow the Manchu rule in China, the Japanese explorers sailed outside Asian waters for scientific quest. Why Japanese scientists received the first Nobel prize in science in Asia? It explains it all.


The entry provide a brief note of the expedition:


"The 1911-1912 Antarctic Expedition under Nobu Shirase was the first Japanese expedition to the continent, and one of the first outside Asian waters. They sailed abroad the Kainan Maru, a vessel only 100 ft long. The party reached the ice on 26th February 1911, and explored the Ross Sea during their first season. They returned the following season to examine King Edward VII Land, although bad weather held back much of their work. At the Great Ice Barrier they encountered Roald Amundsen's Fram, waiting for the return of his South Pole party. They moved on to the Alexandra Range, before returning to Japan, having travelled a total of 27,000 miles. They hadn't reached the South Pole, their southernmost point being 80o05'S, but their scientific work was of immense importance."


Following Russia and U.S.A to land in the moon after nearly four decades, China is reckoned to join leading developed countries in scientific exploration. Perhaps we should stop a minute and hold our breath.


Over one hundred years after the Japanese expedition, a Chinese icebreaker lately went there to rescue a Russian research ship trapped in Antarctica. To the dismay of over a billion Chinese people the Chinese explorer joined his comrade and got stranded. Finally an American icebreaker came to help out. Ain't the American public through the Cold War happy to see this?