There have been several Radio and TV talk shows about changing the current school class size to smaller number of students per class in order to provide better quality education as well as to curb the government’s way of forcing schools to close down the entire 1st grade for any school having less than 23 1st grade applicants due to the ever decreasing in the population of the younger generation.
In one TV talk show a couple of days ago, two callers called in and expressed their doubts to the Headmaster guest’s intentions of calling for smaller classes was for the teachers’ own benefit of having less to do than for the good of providing better quality education. They argued that changing to 25 students per class from 30 makes little difference.
For the life of me, I have no idea that 30 student classes exists in HK. All the schools I knew have at least 38 students per class in any grade. There may very well be so that I am just not aware of but smaller classes definitely has more advantages than disadvantages. I for one am a perfect example of the result of both size classes.
In a Form 3 Chemistry class here in HK, I had a question for the teacher. I seldom raise questions if any at all. The teacher said to me that if I didn’t know the answer to that question at that point, I would never know the answer; and he continued the class without answering my question! Ain’t that the truth though, for I have forgotten the question and I can’t remember if I ever did find out the answer. However, I doubt he knew the answer either.
Needless to say, in HK, my grades were quite a disaster. I learned very little but managed to talk my way thru a supposedly 15 minute overseas school application interview entirely in English with a foreign former Headmaster in over one and a half hour and got accepted!
After just 3 months in the overseas school with just 25 students per class, my grades were among the top half of my class. When students asked questions, we didn’t have to raise our hands first like we did in HK. We just asked and there could be a class discussion on the question if necessary. We learned the knowledge, not how to match the standard answers on test papers regardless the standard answers themselves are correct or not.
Those who do not want smaller classes argued with the feasibility of the financial status - more students per class means more students taught for lesser costs. That’s extremely short sighted like most other local business decisions. Better education means better educated citizens. The benefits are unquestionably enormous for a much broader future.
That said, I am however forever grateful that I didn’t learn much when I was studying in HK. For I’ve found out now that more often than not, what some of the teachers taught here were utterly wrong! Like Mr. Kan from Form 1 History class said that the word “Arts” should be “Art” for there is no such word as “Arts“. As well as Mr Lam, my Primary 6 Form-master, who said that word “badminton” is spelled with a “g”, for the word is “badmington”!
With teachers like these, it makes GWB a spelling bee champ.
To Mr. Kan and Mr. Lam, I am still forever learning by researching, writing, and self correcting blogs here at the very least. What have you been doing all these years?
WhaUSay?!