Ordinary Gweilo

I know I’m very late on this, and in fact I can no longer find this letter on the splendid SCMP website so I have resorted to copying it from Spike’s blog (Breaking News: Pierce Lam Still Hates White People)

The American Chamber of Commerce claims that Hong Kong’s status as a “world class” city depends on its meeting the demand from expatriates for international school places (“AmCham warns of schools ‘crisis’”, December 5).

This assertion is misleading, tendentious and absurd. It misleads with the weasel words “world class”, which refer to various qualities of questionable desirability.  If international school places were a measure of a city’s world-class status, Hong Kong is undoubtedly No1 among world-class cities.

There are much more public resources for a much greater variety of foreign schools with a much larger number of international school places in Hong Kong than the combined offers of New York City and Geneva, where the United Nations’ headquarters are located. But New York and Geneva are world-class cities in their own right, with local institutions that command foreigners’ respect.

In Hong Kong, our universities are world-class, and our pre-college pupils are famous for their outstanding performance in international scholastic assessments. But the city’s expatriates shun local education for their children and show no respect for local institutions.

As has been pointed out many times, it’s actually the case that local schools shun expatriates.  Even if parents would like their children to attend local schools they find that they are not welcome.  There is no incentive for local schools to welcome families who don’t speak Chinese and they find it much easier to deal with local families. 

They have no qualms making what is absurd sound serious, alleging that the city’s international standing depends on their presence so it had better invest more public resources to satisfy their children’s need for privileged education in effectively segregated “international” schools.

Again, this is nonsense.  Local schools are far more segregated than ESF schools, several of which have large majorities of local Cantonese-speaking students.  Other international schools are also very popular with local parents, who feel that they offer a better education than local schools. 

Ironically, the demand of this community of privileged minorities for unfair advantages is blindly and forcefully promoted by the city’s self-styled democrats, who supposedly should represent the majority’s interest and fight for equality.

As Alex Lo observes, there is neither economic nor moral justification for granting public resources to expat children’s international schools (“No place for apartheid in our schools”, December 3). That’s why the city’s foreign residents have to resort to the silly idea of world-class status, which they claim is what Hong Kong should pursue.

Expatriates who have come for economic reasons should thank the city for the opportunities available here and learn to engage in fair competition with the indigenous majority. They must learn to respect local institutions and not to expect the unrealistic privileges of the bygone colonial era.

Pierce Lam, Central

The last paragraph strikes me as the most absurd.  Not all expats are here “for economic reasons”, and all that the American Chamber of Commerce is asking  is for the government to allocate land for international schools – which will then (almost certainly) be overwhelmed with applications from local parents. 

Alex Lo was arguing that the government should focus its efforts on local schools to make them a more attractive option both for local parents (who currently choose ESF & International schools) and non-Chinese speakers.  But Pierce Lam is reluctant to admit that there is anything wrong with local schools, and therefore tries to argue that it’s those pesky foreigners who are being difficult.