Nationalistic education and indoctrination

Nationalistic education and indoctrination

• Leung, Yan Wing The Hong Kong Institute of Education

Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 6(2), 116-130, 2004

Symposium Journals

2004

• P Social Context of Education
  • PE Law & Education ; Politics & Education

Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning Secondary Education

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Secondary Education

The Guidelines on Civic Education in School (1996) for Hong Kong recommend that there should be five foci in school civic education, namely education for democracy, human rights education, education for the rule of law, nationalistic education and global education. After the return of sovereignty to the People's Republic of China in 1997, Hong Kong became the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) and the SAR government has singled out nationalistic education as the sole focus of civic education. This paper is a report of case studies focusing on the understanding and practice of nationalistic education of three civic educators whose understanding is inclined towards education for totalitarian nationalism in Hong Kong secondary schools, using the concepts of indoctrination. The findings show that because of the teachers' inability to separate the nation from the ruling party and their strong mission of sending a positive image of the party to their students, they have tended to adopt particular teaching strategies, which might suppress the students' ability to reflect critically. According to the criteria of indoctrination, namely relationship, intention, content and teaching method, their teaching approaches tend to be indoctrinatory, rather than educational. This is certainly unacceptable to those who believe education is concerned with the development of independent, critically thinking individuals. Hopefully, this paper will enhance the awareness of the potential indoctrinatory nature of nationalistic education of teachers and shed light on the development of school-based nationalistic education aiming at the cultivation of the 'critical patriot'.
[Copyright © 2004 Symposium Journals Ltd.]

• English

Journal Articles

• 20471734

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/3cce454e

2015-03-26