TY - CHAP
T1 - Parallel and Diverging Paths
T2 - Hong Kong Higher Education and Ruth Hayhoe
AU - Post, David
N1 - Funding Information:
Figure 13.3 illustrates that the gap in secondary-school completion, between the working-class and white-collar Hong Kongers, has narrowed substantially. This gap has not narrowed in terms of access to the Bachelor’s degree programs funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC), however. Part of the reason for the failure to achieve greater equality of higher-education opportunity is from the mere fact that Bachelor’s degree financing remains very expensive for the government and so has not expanded as much as secondary education. It is also possible that some of the demand for Bachelor access was redirected to the Associate degree programs, which began to proliferate ten years ago. From analysis of the 1996, 2001, and 2006 census (see Figure 13.4), it does not seem that these associate degree programs had become a diversion for poorer families in particular. Given that all those paying for studies to the associate degree level would have preferred to enter a Bachelor’s degree program, there seems to be no great stratification between degree programs. That is, those who enroll in the Community College programs are not predominantly from the lower class, nor are those who are in publicly funded Bachelor’s programs predominantly from the wealthiest sectors of Hong Kong. However, among the children who pursued higher education outside of Hong Kong, wealthier families predominated. Only time will tell whether continued expansion eventually does result in increasing concentration of social origin by institutional type and increasing inequality between institutions within Hong Kong.
Funding Information:
Although Hong Kong’s world had, in some ways, been turned upside down by 1967, the basic charter for state–society relations had been retained and the government still interfered little in the provision of education. Just four years prior to Ruth Hayhoe’s 1967 arrival, the Chinese University of Hong Kong had been recognized and funded, thanks to the efforts by Hong Kong refugee intellectuals from the mainland and with political support from the Anglican Bishop as well as the Kuomintang of China (Nationalist Party of China) (KMT) in Taiwan, US missionaries, and the Yale-in-China Association. The British administration, rather than pushing either “manpower planning” or nation building, acceded only reluctantly to pressures from Chinese intellectuals. “Wrestling with its identity” perhaps overstates the self-consciousness and purposeful introspection within Hong Kong society in the mid-1960s. Hong Kong, heir to multiple spiritual and intellectual traditions, responded through its basic education system to demands from industrialists for workers and from parents for greater opportunities. Hong Kongers seemed to be at various crossroads in terms of their identity in education just as in their spirituality and their political allegiance. Although the history curriculum prescribed by the Education Department said little about China post-1949, everyone understood that, just across the border, the Cultural Revolution was in full swing. Ruth’s first-hand experiences with the generational conflict manifest in Hong Kong by this social movement—including the previously unheard-of disrespect to educators—left a lasting mark on Hayhoe’s view of China. The conflict was not only cultural: Many died in riots instigated by anticolonial and pro–Communist Party organizations.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2012, Karen Mundy and Qiang Zha.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Many universalists—humanists and monotheists alike—favor a common narrative template, one that Joseph Campell called the “mono-myth.” Many of us are drawn, like moths drawn to light, by the clarity of a universal archetype: journey out, journey home. Ideal protagonists return enlightened, and eventually they also enlighten their brethren with the journey’s song. At least, that is one ideal. In fact, however, many real lives look and are played only forward and not backward; despite the appeal of the return, there may be simply a journey out toward a new world. This template offers a less-reassuring myth. The worry over whether our path goes in any consistent direction, or toward what could be called individual “growth” or collective “progress” is, of course, a central dilemma both in world literature and psychosocial development.
AB - Many universalists—humanists and monotheists alike—favor a common narrative template, one that Joseph Campell called the “mono-myth.” Many of us are drawn, like moths drawn to light, by the clarity of a universal archetype: journey out, journey home. Ideal protagonists return enlightened, and eventually they also enlighten their brethren with the journey’s song. At least, that is one ideal. In fact, however, many real lives look and are played only forward and not backward; despite the appeal of the return, there may be simply a journey out toward a new world. This template offers a less-reassuring myth. The worry over whether our path goes in any consistent direction, or toward what could be called individual “growth” or collective “progress” is, of course, a central dilemma both in world literature and psychosocial development.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85145274188&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1057/9781137045591_14
DO - 10.1057/9781137045591_14
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85145274188
T3 - International and Development Education
SP - 245
EP - 264
BT - International and Development Education
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
ER -