Plans by the Hong Kong Government to introduce moral and national education (MNE) as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in 2010 encountered strong opposition. The controversy over the plans has lasted for two years, with the government and its supporters claiming that the subject will help to instil a stronger sense of national identity in children and critics deriding it as biased and constituting a form of brainwashing. The subject is also seen as posing troubles or a considerable threat to local Christian schools because most of them have had their own religious education programmes for years. Most Christian school-sponsoring bodies and parachurch organisations oppose the subject's introduction, urging the government to scrap its curricular guidelines, and many say they will boycott its implementation. To bring the issues surrounding MNE into sharper focus, this article traces the development of Christian education in Hong Kong and analyses how local Christian communities perceive and have responded to the official proposal. Three prominent themes commonly emphasised in the Christian discourse are plural identities, conditional patriotism and universal values. These themes could shed light on wider theoretical discussion about the positive roles of religion and religious education for citizenship education.
[Copyright of British Journal of Religious Education is the property of Routledge.]

This study investigated differences across four countries in the amount and nature of above-average ability and average-ability pre-adolescents' everyday life, scientific, moral, spiritual and religious questions. The participants (N = 975) of this study were fifth-and sixth-grade elementary school students from different schools in Finland (N = 367), the USA (N = 164), Hong Kong (N = 169) and Bahrain (N = 275). Approximately half of the students in each country came from special programmes or schools serving above-average-ability students. The results showed that above-average-ability students from each participating country asked more scientific and moral questions than their average-ability peers. This finding was not found to be gender-related. Furthermore, in each country the average-ability students asked more everyday life questions than their gifted peers. The Christian influence in the Finnish and US data, and Muslim influence in the Bahrain data were seen in the spiritual and religious questions asked by pre-adolescents. Additionally, in all the data sets girls asked more spiritual and religious questions than boys. The results point to the need for teachers to discuss moral, religious and spiritual questions influencing pre-adolescents' futures.
[Copyright of British Journal of Religious Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01416200500141181]