Opinion | How best to include national security education in Hong Kong schools
- Allowing schools to devise their own strategies to teach national security not only puts the burden on overworked staff, but could also lead to varying outcomes
- A single-subject solution concerned with civic education would be better, even after the botched roll-out of a national education curriculum in 2012
Of course, the focus of the programme is the national security law itself, but the broader context presented here is important to note.
National education, or education for national identity building, has a long history in Hong Kong’s post-handover period. National identity discourse was present in the early discussions of curriculum reform at the turn of the century.
There were multiple voices with different agendas. In civil society, there was an effort to build democratic education into the reform process. Within the government, and particularly on the part of the chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, there were concerted efforts, often stated publicly, to ensure that a key aspect of civic education was developing a “passion” for China.
This tension between those who supported Hong Kong’s democratic development and those who wanted closer integration with China has continued to the present day. National security education brings us back to these early debates with its focus on China. There are lessons to be learned here.
