This paper explores how notions of race, ethnicity, and blood are mobilized in educational texts in Hong Kong. It elaborates how civic identity is racialized as part of a nationalist education operating beneath the surface of expressed commitments to global citizenship, human rights, etc., in curriculum and textbooks. Many have commented on how cultural and ethnic ties are prioritized over political principles as bases for civic education in Asian societies. These cultural/ethnic bases should be critically examined, however, as they imply racial/ethnic exclusions. Examining how race, ethnicity, and blood are used to justify cultural framings of civic identity leads to questions about how education can be used to unify some, while alienating others from a sense of belonging and community. I argue that racialization of Hong Kong civic identity is not a happy solution for all members of society, and for more inclusive visions of identity in education.
[Copyright of Discourse-Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education is the property of Routledge.]

After World War II, Chinese residents of Singapore demanded the establishment of local Chinese universities. The ruling regime, however, which was under the shadow of the neighboring Malay-dominated Malay Peninsula, was forced to suppress the development of such schools. In Hong Kong, the British needed to install a Chinese university to counter Beijing's and Taiwan's campaigns for recruiting students from the colony. As Hong Kong was a monoracial Chinese society, the government, not having to worry about the reaction of other indigenous groups, met this challenge by founding a fully recognized Chinese university. This research demonstrates that under diverse backgrounds of racial politics, state authorities have unequal latitudes to accommodate the educational institutions of subordinated racial groups. It also reveals that state education policies in small and dependent settings, unlike those in big and sovereign nations, are more susceptible to pressures from external powers and influences from the metropolis. These findings urge scholars to pay more attention to the factor of race and use comparative methods when employing the theories of state and hegemony to investigate education and power.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569042000294174]

Girls' education has been considered a site of struggle where ideals of femininity and domesticity are translated into curricula and practices that seek to shape and regulate. In colonial Hong Kong, British mission societies had a significant share in providing girls' education, which was predominantly in the hands of European missionaries in the nineteenth century. The dual mission of evangelising and civilising colonial subjects in the Victorian era of empire expansion constituted a pertinent focus of inquiry in the writing of history of girls' education. Drawing on selected texts on missionary literature and government reports, this article examines in what ways a domestic ideology framed within evangelical beliefs and the imperial gaze interplayed with the politics of race and class in shaping girls' education. It challenges the presumed impartiality in education policies and practices concerning both sexes, and discusses women's agency in re-defining identities and boundaries in a colonial society.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600802368715]