After World War II the Singapore government, wishing to blend the island's several ethnic communities into a national whole, endeavored to replace Chinese schools, which imparted students with cultural-linguistic traits sharply different from those promoted in other schools. This policy, nevertheless, elicited tough resistance from Singapore's ethnic Chinese population. The government, finally, was forced to recognize Chinese schools as a discrete and integral section within the educational system. This approach reduced the tension between the government and the Chinese masses. However, it allowed Chinese schools continue to produce social fragmentation and slowed state formation. In contrast, although the government of Hong Kong had never aimed to replace Chinese schools, many of its policies unintentionally Sinicized non-Chinese schools and blurred the cultural distinctiveness of Chinese institutions; this, consequently, prevented Chinese schools from becoming a catalyst of social disintegration and helped consolidate state domination. This study suggests the connection between state formation and the educational system is reciprocal and interactive. It also urges scholars to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of state intervention when examining state formation and education.
[Copyright of International Studies in Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620210701433761]

The philosophy and practice of lifelong learning has a long history in China, being traceable to Confucius's idea (circa 500 BC) of 'education for all'. However, very little research has been done on the development of the Confucian idea of lifelong learning in ancient China, or on its influence on current practices of lifelong learning within the wave of educational globalisation. This paper contains three parts that explore these topics. The first describes how Chinese people perceive and practise lifelong learning in the Confucian tradition. Apart from an updated review of Confucian ideas and practices, the development of Confucian tradition in selected dynasties is also examined. The second analyses characteristics of Confucian heritage learning cultures and their strong impact on present-day Chinese learners, including: pursuit of lifelong learning, teacher authority, collaborative learning, and the function of effort in successful study. The final part discusses negotiation and integration of Chinese and Western learning cultures in a globalising world.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02601370802051561]

This paper reviews the Chinese culture in Hong Kong curriculum from the mid-1880s to 1980. The author finds that British administrators and Hong Kong educators use Chinese culture to foster an abstract Chinese identity and a sense of being on the periphery of both Chinese and Western worlds in students. The author regards that these attitudes help consolidate outside rule.

At the turn of the millennium, the term 'spiritual' began to gain more prominence in the educational discourse in Hong Kong, both in official policy documents and in religious schools' descriptions of their own mission. Addressing each of these two cases in turn, a description of the context in which the increased use of the term has occurred leads on to the question of the extent to which this increased rhetorical emphasis on the spiritual is matched by the actual substance of education policy and the reality of religious education. It is found that the match is much less than perfect, and the reasons for this are explored.
[Copyright of International Journal of Children's Spirituality is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13644360500347359]

A brief review of the social and educational context of Hong Kong shows that the publication of the General guidelines on moral education in schools in 1981, by the Hong Kong Education Department, marked a milestone in the development of moral education. The Guidelines explicitly asserted moral education as one function of schooling, whilst also formally recognizing the home and the community as two main influences. This paper narrates how three moral sources of influence - namely Confucian-parental, Christian-religious and liberal-civic - have shaped the development of moral education in Hong Kong from 1973 to 2003. It then examines in more detail: parental influence at home - the Confucian moral source in Chinese family; schooling influenced by religious sources - taking Christian schools as an example; and the Independent Commission Against Corruption as an official agency for moral education - a liberal source calling for civic morality. In conclusion, the post-colonial emergence of nationalistic influence in the recently constituted Chinese Special Administrative Region, advocating national identity as the new core value, is traced and the implications for future moral education in Hong Kong are considered.
[Copyright of Journal of Moral Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305724042000315626]

As a former colony, Hong Kong's education system has been powerfully influenced by ideas from the West. However, these influences have been mediated by a number of factors of contingency - the most important of which is culture - which shapes implementation, particularly of what counts as successful practice. The aim of this paper is to trace the interpretation and implementation of key ideas about school leadership and to offer some analytical projections into the future based on current trajectories. It explores three broad sets of constraints on the development of leadership practice: the features of the Hong Kong school system, the influence of a Confucian cultural tradition, and the process oriented nature of the professional practice of effective school leadership. The paper concludes by offering an analysis of how this dynamic process view of leadership can be used to understand current attempts to build a school-based approach to educational leadership.
[Copyright of Journal of Educational Administration and History is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220620802507268]