Schools in the city should serve as community hubs

believe that the school is primarily a social institution.” So wrote the American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey in his 1897 article My Pedagogic Creed.

Dewey’s creed, it seems, never reached the distant shores of Hong Kong, where a patchwork of government, subsidized and private schools — an enduring legacy of the colonial era — continues to provide an education predominantly centered around individual competition and academic results. Although overseen by a centralized government body, the Education Bureau, the system still affords a considerable degree of autonomy to the various sponsoring bodies that effectively run the subsidized and private schools.

The outcome is a fragmented education environment in which schools of all ilks fight tooth and nail for the best students every year, before preparing them to jump through a series of academic hoops culminating in the all-important matriculation exam at the end of Secondary 6. In such a system the schools are essentially functioning as “academic incubators”, and there is little scope for them to perform the role that Dewey envisioned for them as social institutions.

So what can be done? Well, there are many examples around the world where schools actually act as hubs for the local community. In the US, for instance, there are currently over 5,000 community schools which, in addition to serving as educational institutions, function as community centers for the surrounding neighborhood. The schools, which provide a range of services covering areas such as youth development, parental support and community welfare, are founded on a set of partnerships with local organizations, and are open beyond normal school hours, including at weekends.

Here in the Asia-Pacific region, meanwhile, the Department of Education for South Australia has created a “Schools as Community Hubs” initiative to encourage government schools to share their knowledge, resources and expertise with the local community during and outside of school hours. The The author is an educator, commentator and director of a company providing English language services in Hong Kong. initiative covers programs ranging from the hiring out of school facilities to the provision of on-site community services such as childcare and adult learning centers.

Both these examples — community schools in the US and schools as community hubs in Southern Australia — could easily be followed here, as Hong Kong has an abundance of service providers in the community. What these service providers often lack, however, is space — in particular safe and accessible locations like the ones provided by the average local school. Establishing schools as community hubs, therefore, would make perfect sense in the Hong Kong context.

But what services, exactly, would our schools provide as community hubs? Well, obviously, that would depend to a large extent on the needs of their individual communities. However, looking beyond the standard services provided by community schools elsewhere — extra-curricular activities, parent workshops, social outreach, and so on — they might want to address a number of social issues that are particularly pressing in Hong Kong today, such as the need for more student counseling, additional Chinese-language tuition for ethnic minorities, sports development programs for both youngsters and adults, and social centers for domestic helpers on Sundays.

By locating services such as these within local schools, the government would be not only assisting the community but also helping to lessen the excessive competition that currently exists among Hong Kong schools, since the schools would no longer be judged exclusively on the academic performance of their charges. As a result the pressure on every one involved in local schooling — principals, teachers, parents and, most importantly, students — would be radically reduced.

There would also be some additional benefits for students, as studies of community schools have consistently shown that their students have an altogether more holistic view of education, seeing it not so much as a one-off academic obligation but rather a lifelong social pursuit. Moreover community school students tend to think about their schools in a much more positive way — an important outcome for Hong Kong, where according to the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial survey of 15-year-olds around the world, students’ sense of belonging at school is extremely low.

To implement a change of this magnitude, however, the government would need to address the issue of fragmentation in the education sector. At present the EDB is restricted to a mission that requires it to “deliver professional services”, “ensure effective use of resources” and “forge partnerships to promote excellence in school education”. However, instead of merely forging partnerships, the EDB needs to be promoting excellence directly in Hong Kong schools, and not only in the realm of academic performance but also in the area of community service.

For it is only when schools throughout the SAR are required to position themselves at the heart of their communities and play an active role in their enrichment that they will finally be able to realize their full potential. For only then will they truly be functioning as social institutions.