Originally posted by sillyboy at 12-7-2010 19:51
It all sounds very confusing!
What I wanted to know i guess is, ok, students say in early age will go to school, so parents get to choose which school?
I ask, because i know the language your taught ...
Why confusing?
Yes, parents have SOME degree of choice over which school. Admission to a school is determined by three factors:-
1. Where you live, do you live within their "catchment area". Some schools are so full they only take kids who live nearby, regardless of how much money you have.
2. Budget. Money talks. You can buy your way into the most prestigious schools, but it may cost you up to $2-3 mio to do so. If you don't have money, you're very limited in only choosing from locally-available government-funded or subsidised schools.
3. Academic ability. Schools pick smart kids first because their results make the school look better.
Those are the constraints that parents face, and the limitations they face in choosing a school.
Within those constraints, parents DO excercise their preference and choice, in particular they may choose based on
Language of instruction
Religious background
Reputation
"Band" - the quality of schools is assessed according to Band 1 / Band 2 / Band 3, pretty much defining price vs quality.
The 4th factor you're asking about - native language - is not a big issue for young kids, but it does start to matter over about 6yo, when reading and writing start to be an important medium of education.
In Hong Kong a LOT of parents then go on to supplement the basic (statutorily mandated) education with extra-curricular activities: extra math, extra language, music, arts, dance, etc. You only have to walk a short way in any residential area to see many many private Tuition Centres, including some big-name brands like Kumon. HK parents still have a memory of what it's like to be a refugee (either themselves or their parents) and they are very competitive about educational achievement and academic results.
It's ironic that they push their kids so hard, chasing precisely the dream that their kids should have an easier life than they themselves are having ... 
What that means is there's a lot of pressure both in school and outside school to learn fast, including language. It's a no-win situation, since learning a language is primarily a matter of exposure to that language, building both fluency and vocabulary. Kids who put a high priority on English ability will learn less Chinese, and kids who put a high emphasis on Chinese will learn less English. For example I know a number of Chinese guys who speak fluently but can't write, because they were immersed in an English teaching environment.
Generally speaking there are two phases to language learning:-
before 7 years old
after 7 years old
It's been shown that people who learn a language (any number of languages) before their teeth start falling out use a different part of the brain compared to languages the learned after their teeth fell out. This means young kids do have a natural ability to learn languages which is lost later on. Nothing to do with parental choice or the education system, young kids just absorb languages naturally whenever they hear them. Later, if you stop being exposed to a language, your ability sticks at that level (you may get rusty but you don't lose what you learned and it soon comes back when needed). When you return to that language environment (country / school / social group / etc.) you start learning again.
So if your friend is having difficulty with English, all that means is the people around them worked harder at English than they did, and they're in catch-up mode. Very probably, your friend will have learned something else that his peers did not learn. All the time his peers were studying English, he was (obviously) doing something else and learned from whatever it was he was doing.
Conclusion: Different parents approach the question of language learning differently, and in Hong Kong they do have a lot of choice. Whatever their choice, it will be a compromise, partially sacrificing ability in one language or academic area in order to invest more time (and money) in another. In Hong Kong they do have a very wide influence, including home-learning, private tuition, and choice of school. As a result the precise blend of % English vs % Chinese vs % academics is a highly individual choice, based primarily on the parents' economic circumstances and their personal prejudices.
What was your question again?? |
