Teaching in English in Hong Kong

香港英语教学

IT WAS an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things. On June 6th its education minister, Michael Suen Ming-yeung, lifted restrictions that forced four-fifths of the territory’s more than 500 secondary schools to teach in the “mother tongue”, ie, Cantonese, the main language of its residents and of southern China. Schools may switch to English, the language of the former colonial oppressor, from next year.

这的确是对文化失败的一个承认；但香港对这类事情的态度极其现实。6月6日其教育部长孙明扬取消了让其领地上500多所中学中五分之四的学校进行”母语”教学的限制。”母语”即广东话，是其居民和中国南方的主要语言。从明年开始，学校可能转向英语，前殖民压迫者的语言。

This reverses a decade-old policy adopted after Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997, in an assertion of independence from both former and present sovereign powers. Emotion may have played a large role in the decision. But it made some sense. Students speak Cantonese at home, and so using it is the easiest way to impart information and promote discussion. It is also the first language of most teachers: a study done at the time concluded that schools labelled “English-medium” were actually teaching in Cantonese but using English-language textbooks (with predictably chaotic results).

这一决定改变了一项长达十年的政策–1997年香港回归中国后，为了在前任和现在的统治权下维护自己的独立而采取的政策。情感在这一决定中扮演了很大角色。但是它有一些道理。学生在家中说广东话，因此传递信息及进行讨论的时候使用它也是最容易的。它也是大多数教师的第一语言：当时的一项研究得出结论说标着”英语教学”的学校实际上在用广东话教学，但是使用英语课本（其后果之混乱可想而知）。

After much bureaucratic shuffling, 20% of schools were permitted to continue teaching in English. That may have made sense to teachers and administrators, but not to ambitious parents. They know that their offspring will need English to get ahead. Those who could flee the public system for costly private schools, or for the eight semi-private schools run on the British system, did so. The rest made extraordinary efforts to enter the minority of English-language schools. They have huge waiting lists; Cantonese ones gaping holes.

经过多次的官僚敷衍之后，20%的学校被允许继续使用英语教学。对教师和行政官员来说这可能有意义，但是雄心勃勃的父母们可不这样看。他们知道：他们的后代为了出人头地将需要英语。那些能够逃离公共体制进入昂贵的私立学校，或者以英国体制运行的8所半私立学校的，已经这么做了。其余的付出额外努力想进入少数英语语言学校。他们得到的却是长长的等待入学名单；而那些用广东话教学的学校的生源则越来越少。

That helps explain Mr Suen’s change of heart, for which no reason was given. So does a survey published last year, which concluded that students from the Cantonese schools did far worse than their peers in getting into universities-a result that would horrify Hong Kong’s achievement-obsessed parents. And whatever the educators think, employers from coffee bars to banks either require people to be bilingual or pay more to those who are. Private schools offering supplementary English tuition have mushroomed.

这解释了孙先生为什么改变了主意–对此他没有给出理由。去年公布的一个调查也能解释原因：它说来自用广东话教学的学校的学生在进入大学的时候比他们的同龄人差很多–这一结果将会使香望子成龙的父母们恐惧不已。不管教育者们怎么想，从咖啡馆到银行，其雇主们或者需要双语人才或者给这类人支付更高薪水。提供额外的英语教学的私立学校如雨后春笋般涌现。

Hong Kong’s slow-moving educational bureaucracy has devoted much thought to how English could be offered without harming other studies, and without sacrificing a generation of teachers with a vested interest in a system based on their first language. Mr Suen has skirted these difficult issues. A much-debated but still undisclosed formula will allow an increasing number of subjects to be taught in English. Every step is controversial. As China’s most global city, Hong Kong needs skills in both English and Mandarin, or putonghua, China’s common language. Pragmatists want Hong Kong to drop Cantonese entirely in favour of the two more broadly used languages. But that may demand a level of cultural indifference which even Hong Kong cannot muster.

行动缓慢的香港教育当局花了很多时间来考虑如何提供英语教育，能不损害其它学科，又无需牺牲一代教师在一个以其第一语言为基础的体制中拥有的既得利益。孙先生避开了这些难题。一个多次讨论但仍未公布的方案将允许更多学科使用英语教学。每一步都可能引起争议。作为中国最全球化的城市，香港既需要英语又需要普通话（中国的公用语言）技能。实用主义者们想让香港整个地放弃广东话而转向两种更广泛被使用的语言。但那可能需要相当水平的”文化冷漠 “（cultural indifference），就算香港也无法达到。

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