Ordinary Gweilo

Oh dear.  The SCMP is still publishing these ridiculous Pierce Lam letters:

Migrants in HK need a wake-up call

Thasbeeh Mohamed’s letter ("Cantonese-medium local system is unsuitable for expatriate students", December 19) is rife with errors and biased generalisations.

Cantonese has always been most local schools’ medium of instruction. If there has been any change since our reunion with China, there are now more English-medium schools. Expatriates who choose to come to work in Hong Kong should not entertain illegitimate expectations based on false memories of what it was like in the colonial age.

This is marvellous stuff: “illegitimate expectations based on false memories of what it was like in the colonial age”.  Yes indeed.

When Hong Kong people take up jobs in Beijing or Berlin, they won’t expect the host city’s government to provide Cantonese or English-medium education. Those who send their children to public schools accept that they have to study in the host city’s local language.

There is the inconvenient fact that English is an official language of Hong Kong, which is not the case in Beijing or Berlin, but do carry on.

To overcome the language problem and assimilate into schools abroad, migrant students from Hong Kong attend language tutorials after public school classes. Expatriate students who have problems assimilating into Hong Kong’s local schools should do the same.

Those who find local schools unsuitable for their children should either pay for private education or find work in places where their children could adapt.

Getting admission to a good school is never easy anywhere in the world. Students not of the right calibre for good schools shouldn’t expect special admission simply because their parents are migrant workers.

It is naive to ask for special treatment.

It is ridiculous that expatriates who find neither good jobs nor good schools back home should demand privileges as migrant workers in Hong Kong.

Contrary to your correspondent’s claim, Hong Kong parents tend to over-schedule out-of-classroom activities for their children. My own children’s outstanding academic results alone won’t have won them admission to the world’s top universities without their achievements in various co-curricular activities.

Every body politic must give first priority to its own people. Hong Kong’s education priorities are to further improve the quality of local schools, to popularise the indisputable fact of its schools’ high standard for international recognition, and to abolish the remnant of a colonial arrangement whereby our public education is segregated into local and expatriate schools.

Pierce Lam, Central

Ho hum.  He starts by complaining about “errors and biased generalisations” and then gives us all this nonsense about “colonial arrangement[s]”.  Has he been anywhere near an ESF school in the last few years?  Or perhaps he doesn’t want to see an example of local and expat children studying happily together.