The best students will learn English': Ultra-utilitarianism and linguistic imperialism in education in post-1997 Hong Kong

The best students will learn English': Ultra-utilitarianism and linguistic imperialism in education in post-1997 Hong Kong

• Choi, Po King Dept. of Administrative Administration and Policy, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Journal of Education Policy, 18(6), 673-694, 2003

Routledge

2003

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FE Medium of Instruction, Language of Teaching, Bi-& Multilingual Education, Problems of Bilingualism, Code-mixing & Code-switching
• R Educational Policy & Administration
  • RC Educational Planning & Decision Making Process, Educational Administration
• P Social Context of Education
  • PE Law & Education ; Politics & Education

Native Language & Education Language & Languages Education & State Hong Kong. Dept. of Education Hong Kong China

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Secondary Education

In September 1997, shortly after China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Education Department announced a policy which was widely seen as a restoration of 'mother-tongue education', but which, in reality, was an elitist language selection policy. This policy, which provided for the selection of the best primary school graduates for monolingual education in English, was designed to be a cost-effective way of training in English skills for those who had the economic and cultural capital to benefit from it. Meanwhile, the majority of students were barred from sufficient exposure to English, the language of power and wealth. In this paper, I shall show that this policy draws on a strong utilitarian discourse about the centrality of English for the economic survival of Hong Kong, which was engineered by business interests on the eve of the changeover in 1997, and which helped perpetuate a form of linguistic imperialism. Meanwhile, academics whose research was used to legitimize the policy, failed to problematize dominant language ideologies that have been used to justify pedagogically unsound practices and an inequitable language streaming policy. Through documenting the voices of individual educators, I am able to delineate counter-discourses which, albeit weak and isolated, nevertheless manifested much broader educational concerns than the narrow utilitarianism and the unquestioned privileging of the learning of English skills that underlay the current policy.
[Copyright of Journal of Education Policy is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0268093032000145917]

• English

Journal Articles

• 02680939

• 10.1080/0268093032000145917

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/a33c0094

2010-09-27