It provides comprehensive coverage of developments in formal and informal education in Hong Kong from the end of 1941 to the beginning of the new millennium. As was true of its predecessor, each Part of this book is subdivided into three sections: Commentary, Chronicle, and Evidence. Such an organization facilitates flexible reading. Readers primarily interested in analysis, interpretation, and the identification of themes are likely to focus initially on the Commentary sections and to move, as they feel stimulated, to the relevant entries in the Chronicle and/or items of Evidence. Readers who seek either more encyclopedic understanding or detailed answers to specific questions may well wish to focus primarily or at least initially on the Chronicle sections, and then to search for substantiation in the Evidence section or for amplification in the author's Commentary. At times, some readers may wish to browse through the Evidence sections, reaching possibly serendipitous discoveries. Academic and general readers are likely to be particularly interested in Part I of the book, which deals with education in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, a topic that has received only very rare and generalization-bound treatment in other publications. The author offers insights into all levels of education. His conceptual scope incorporates many types of education - including the mainstream academic education, technical education, teacher education, special education, physical education, civic education, education that focuses on morals, that which focuses on culture, and the various sorts of non-formal and informal education.

Since 1997 when Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, a string of education reforms have been introduced to improve the quality of education and maintain Hong Kong’s economic competitiveness in the age of globalization. This book provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of major issues and challenges faced by the education system, ranging from pre-school to higher education. It analyses the prospects for educational development in Hong Kong. It further addresses how the Hong Kong government has responded to the perceived challenges of the external environment and internal forces and explains the rationales for the actions taken. Not only does it review how the reform initiative challenges have been dealt with, it also reviews how effective these initiatives are and its implications on future directions.

Education reform has become a highly political issue in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) since the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Lo and Hung focus on the political struggles among stakeholders, including the government of Hong Kong, the Catholic Church, parents, students, teachers, the central authorities of Beijing, and even the bureaucratic politics between Beijing, the Hong Kong government and the Examination Authority. They examine the key elements of education reform in the HKSAR, including language and curriculum reform, national security education, civic and patriotic education, the rise of the pro-Beijing education elites and interest groups, and the revamp of examination questions and examination authority. The entire education reform in the HKSAR has pushed the Hong Kong education system toward a process of mainlandization, making Hong Kong’s education system more similar to the mainland system with emphasis on political "correctness" in the understanding of Chinese national security, history and culture. Highlighting the political struggles among the various stakeholders, this book is essential for scholars of Hong Kong and China, especially those with an interest in the relationship between education and politics.

Hong Kong's Chinese History Curriculum from 1945: Politics and Identity investigates the ways in which Chinese history has evolved as a subject in Hong Kong secondary schools since 1945, and the various social, political and economic factors that have shaped the curriculum, through an examination of a wide range of primary and secondary source materials and interviews. This book examines how the aims, content, teaching, learning and assessment of the Chinese history curriculum have evolved since 1945. It describes how Chinese history became an independent subject in secondary schools in Hong Kong despite the political sensitivity of the subject, how it consolidated its status during the colonial period, and how it has faced threats to its independence since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. An important element of the book is its in-depth analysis of the major socio-political and socio-economic forces that have been involved in the development of Chinese history. This book will be of interest to all who are interested in history education and curriculum development, and readers who are concerned with history education.

The story of Hong Kong’s New Asia College, from its 1949 establishment through its 1963 incorporation into The Chinese University of Hong Kong, reveals the efforts of a group of self-exiled intellectuals in establishing a Confucian-oriented higher education on the Chinese periphery. Their program of cultural education encountered both support and opposition in the communist containment agenda of American non-governmental organizations and in the educational policies of the British colonial government. By examining the cooperation and struggle between these three parties, this study sheds light on postwar Hong Kong, a divided China, British imperial ambitions in Asia, and the intersecting global dynamics of modernization, cultural identity, and the Cold War.

Young people in East Asia are increasingly experiencing a prolonged transition to adulthood. They are spending longer in school, entering the labour market later, and getting married later still. This protracted young adulthood interacts with forces of both tradition and modernization, as social and economic changes generate profound effects on the transition from school to work, on family formation, on personal relationships, and on subjective well-being. Journey to Adulthood explores the special characteristics of young adulthood in East Asia. It uses Taiwan as illustrative example, with comparative findings from its East Asian neighbours Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. It describes the particular growth context of a millennial generation, and the challenges they face as they attempt to balance family formation, personal development and entry into a market economy. Edited by Chin-Chun Yi and Ming-Chang Tsai, this collection helps us to understand the structural configurations East Asian young adults collectively represent. Taking a cross-cultural and comparative perspective, it enables meaningful policy suggestions on family dynamics, educational strategy, and health and well-being across the globe. Dr Chin-Chun Yi and Dr Ming-Chang Tsai both work within the Institute of Sociology, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

The last half century has seen a dramatic expansion in access to primary, secondary, and higher education in many nations around the world. Educational expansion is desirable for a country's economy, beneficial for educated individuals themselves, and is also a strategy for greater social harmony. But has greater access to education reduced or exacerbated social inequality? Who are the winners and the losers in the scramble for educational advantage? In Growing Gaps, Paul Attewell and Katherine S. Newman bring together an impressive group of scholars to closely examine the relationship between inequality and education. The relationship is not straightforward and sometimes paradoxical. Across both post-industrial societies and the high-growth economies of the developing world, education has become the central path for upward mobility even as it maintains and exacerbates existing inequalities. In many countries there has been a staggering growth of private education as demand for opportunity has outpaced supply, but the families who must fund this human capital accumulation are burdened with more and more debt. Privatizing education leads to intensified inequality, as students from families with resources enjoy the benefits of these new institutions while poorer students face intense competition for entry to under-resourced public universities and schools. The ever-increasing supply of qualified, young workers face class- or race-based inequalities when they attempt to translate their credentials into suitable jobs. Covering almost every continent, Growing Gaps provides an overarching and essential examination of the worldwide race for educational advantage and will serve as a lasting achievement towards understanding the root causes of inequality.