Opinion | Want creative self-starters? Free Hong Kong youths from the classroom
- To better prepare the city’s young people for a brave new, technologically different world, education needs to change, starting with experiential, out-of-classroom self-learning
Technology is radically changing the way we live and work, and although figures vary, a common belief is that roughly half of all current occupations are vulnerable to being replaced by automation or artificial intelligence. And this raises the question of whether our education system is properly preparing our youths.
The call for change is nothing new and neither is the criticism of Hong Kong’s education system: too much rote learning, too little focus on critical thinking, too many exams, too much time in the classroom.
What we need is a method of teaching that produces adaptable individuals who are self-starters, who do not need to be spoon-fed. This realisation, of course, means that the education system needs to adapt. One effort in appreciation of the need to encourage initiative is known as experiential learning, a subject recently added into the curriculum in several local universities.
As it happens, I am offering one of these courses at my university this year as a pilot exercise. Starting next year, all undergraduates will be required to take one experiential learning course each as a graduation requirement.
In my course, I meet students on the first day and tell them the course requirements. Split up into groups of four students each, of mixed gender and native languages, each group has to visit a rural village in Hong Kong and create a website and short documentary about it.
Beyond a mid-term meeting in my office, the only time I see them after the first day of class is on the last day, when they present their websites and documentaries to the class and submit a written reflection.
