Is the Education Reform in Hong Kong Privileging Middle Class Origin Students?

The Motives of the Changes in Education Systems--the Education Reform

“Changes in the fundamental principles of a curriculum are always relaying response of the pedagogic machinery to the changing principal of social integration in the wider society.”(Cheung, 2002:5) As the social integration of the Hong Kong society changes from the Mechanical Solidarity to the Organic Solidarity, the pedagogic machinery such as the curriculum and teaching methodology in the education system also changes: teachers changes from a solution-giver to a teacher-problem poser and creator; the clearly defined subjects in the existing curriculum changes into topic-centered units. In the changes, some critics suggested that the dominant status groups and social classes use their power to maintain and create structural conditions to protect their interests. Accordingly, schools are fashioned to guarantee the success of students from these privileged groups. Students who hold the dominant linguistic styles, aesthetic preferences, and styles of interaction (habitus) are positively sanctioned by their teachers. These cultural elements of family life facilitate compliance with the requests of higher education (Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997; Lareau 1987).

When the HK educational system changes and rewards highbrow cultural elements of family life, such as linguistic styles, aesthetic preferences, and styles of interaction (habitus), social background can remain an important factor in predicting educational outcomes.

The New Diversified Curriculum,

Under the new curriculum in Hong Kong, there are no distinct boundaries between subjects. Instead, all the subjects are re-grouped into 8 Key Learning Areas. The reform in curriculum does not only involve a change in content, but also a shift in the curriculum structure from Collection Code to Integrated Code. As a result of the shift, there is an increase of the power of students in learning process and the roles of teachers become vague. These are followed by the emergence of Invisible Pedagogy (IP) as suggested by Bernstein (1971). Bernstein identifies two features of IP: 1) teachers are more concerned with making references of the state of development for each child. The teachers need a “concept of readiness” to help them to make such reference; 2) teaching approach requires the children engaging in the learning context pre-arranged by the teachers. These two features show that the shift in the curriculum structure from Collection Code to Integrated Code can be considered to be a social class movement towards the middle class since teachers may only come from middle class and so the “concept of readiness” and the context pre-arranged are always based on the values and interests of middle class.

Under the education reform in Hong Kong, multiple assessments on students’ abilities in different non-academic aspects such as communication skills and co-operation are introduced into the education system. These types of assessment are abstract and the judgments depend greatly on the “concept of readiness” of the middle class teachers. As a result, the middle class origin students may have an advantage in the scoring system as their personal values and qualities inherited from their family culture are always close to those processed by teachers. Underlying the middle class value, the way which the middle class students act or behave is considered to be a higher standard performance by the middle class teachers.

The diversified curriculum focuses on all-rounded development in different areas such as sports and music also privileging middle class over the working class origin students as the working class students usually have less opportunity in exploring to the extra-curricular activities. This can be explained by the theories of cultural deprivation between the two classes. Parents from the middle class can always successfully create an atmosphere at home to arise the interest of their children in different cultural and sports activities. They provide their children with a stimulating learning environment at home and act as examples for their children.

Since the new curriculum also emphasizes on self-learning which requires students to read a lot of books and seek for information by themselves out of the classroom, I am going to demonstrate an example of cultural deprivation privileging middle class students with the reading habit. Parents who read frequently provide a cultural home environment that has an affinity with and resembles the cultural school climate. The cultural connection makes for the positive impact of having parents who read, so that children who are used to having books and to reading at home are not startled by common reading practices at school. Moreover, those parents have linguistic and cognitive skills that were rewarded in school and can pass these educational skills on to their offspring. More specifically,. In addition, parents who read frequently have more cultural literacy and are probably better informed on how their children's functioning in school can be improved. Also, the availability of books and other reading materials at home is helpful to children's scholastic performance.

Second, parents who read more frequently not only have more educational skills at their disposal, but they This explanation is much more in Bourdieu's line of reasoning. It holds that it is not so much the skills of parents who read frequently, but

This view of social class movement is further confirmed by the concept of space and the concept of social control brought up by Bernstein. Under the concept of space and social control, Bernstein suggests that IP is based on weakly classified spatial relationship and social control is exercised through negotiation of social roles and personal interaction that has its origin in the homes of new middle class. Therefore, the changes in the code of curriculum arrangement in the Hong Kong curriculum reform contain the elements of a social class movement privileging middle class origin students.

The Changes in Learning Modes

As mentioned before, one of the identified features of IP is the teaching approach requires the children engaging in the learning context pre-arranged by the teachers. Bernstein argues that the pre-arranged learning context is again based on the values and interests of middle class teachers in the way that flavours middle class origin students. Some of the changes in learning modes such as group discussion and presentation in class under the curriculum reform in Hong Kong can be identified as those pre-arranged learning context. Here, I am going to illustrate Bernstein’s point of view by a research on students’ experiences in a discussion intensive seventh-grade Mathematics classroom conducted by Lubienski (2000). The research suggests that some characteristics of discussion-intensive classrooms might be more aligned with middle class cultures. In the research, Lubienski finds that although middle class students generally viewed the discussion as a helpful forum for exchanging ideas, more working class students said they became confused by conflicting ideas and preferred more teaching direction. Additionally, working class students more often focused on giving correct answers to specific, contextualized problems, whereas middle class students seems to make good use of discussions to explore the abstract mathematical ideas.

The above findings can be explained by the class cultural differences. Studies have suggested that differences in the nature of work play a part in creating differences in class cultures. Working class jobs usually require obedience to authority and conformity to rigid routines, middle-class occupations tend to allow more creativity, autonomy, and intellectual work (Kohn, 1963, 1983). These differences are believed to affect the ways in which adults interact with their children. Heath’s (1983) work in middle class and working class finds that middles class parents emphasized reasoning and discussion; they tend to ask their children questions beginning with “what explanations” before giving absolute answers or comments on the events. Through this way of interaction, children learn to decontextualize ideas and generalize principles which they can later apply. In contrast, working class parents emphasized conformity, giving their children materials that conveyed the message, for example, a colour-filling book and ask them to stay in the lines for colouring. They also tend to give absolute comment on an event like telling the children, “do it like this” while demonstrating a skill instead of discussing the principles underlying the skills. Working class students in these ways learn to be passive knowledge receivers, and they did not learn to decontextualize knowledge and transfer it to other context. Decontextualization is the way of reasoning in group discussions and also a key feature in the Integrated Code which has a weak classification among the subjects. In the curriculum reform in Hong Kong, the curriculum is shifting to the Integrated Code while a lot of decontualization practices like group discussion will be included in teaching the curriculum. Therefore, the working class students may find difficulties to cope with the new learning code and the new way of reasoning which is completely different from their family environment.

In addition to the differences in the way of reasoning between the students from two classes, Bernstein argues that there are also significant differences in the language system used by the students between the two classes. He suggests that the working class families are likely to be positional families where interaction is made in accordance to the role system within the family. Therefore, the interactions between the family members are always authoritative and context dependent; the middle class families are likely to be person-orientated family where interaction depends upon individuals’ unique attributes and so their language is more explicit and independent of context. The differences in the way of interaction have generated two different language system: the restricted code which is used by the working class and the elaborated code which is used by the middle class.

The new teaching modes such as the group discussions and presentations introduced in the Hong Kong curriculum reform involve a lot of communication skills based on the elaborated code. Students are required to present their ideas in context independent circumstances and this language feature is only present in the elaborated code. This leads to a great disadvantage to the working class students who do not frequently expose to the elaborate language code at home. They may find difficulties in expressing their point of view and be understood by the other students or teachers. When middle class students are dominated in a classroom, the working class students may be underrepresented and will soon lose confidence in speaking or interacting with others. This seriously hinders their learning process and affects their academic achievements.

Curriculum under Mechanical Solidarity has definable subjects where subjects under Organic Solidarity are topic-centred;

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