True Education Should Put Life-and-Death First
Matthew Lau
In 1983, a US report on education titled as A Nation at Risk was published. It was not
educational in any true sense but was out of the fear that the American nation-state is
losing out in its ability to compete with others, military and economically. The report
saw the primary task of the schools to be that of restoring America's competitive edge,
and to do so by increasing the emphasis on the courses devoted to calculative,
technological, utilitarian skills [1].
Now in 1999, we also have our own version report on education titled as Aims of Education
(AOE), which is also out of the fear that Hong Kong is losing out in its ability to
compete with others economically. By putting the craps and the fancy words aside, this
report simply sees the primary task of the schools to be that of enhancing HK's
competitive edge, and to do so by increasing the emphasis on making "every student to
acquire a basic level of competence in knowledge and skills, including biliteracy and
trilingualism, basic mathematical concepts and computational skills, and IT" [2].
In short, here is a list of some of my opinions to share with you:
(a) True education should put Life-and-Death first, but neither economy nor patriotism.
However, the underlying assumption of AOE as stated in ¡± 3.1 plainly advocates the
opposite.
(b) Thus, a new sensibility of Life-and-Death should be introduced as an integral part of
our school education. Otherwise, the meaning of "a full and happy life" [3] can
be read, in fact, has already been, as "a full and happy materialist livelihood"
easily.
(c) The way(s) we learn to perceive this world, more or less, in general, materializes the
world that we want. The Newtonian clockwork's worldview has separated human beings from
the Nature by seeing the world as the other, more specifics, as a machine. Then the
Nature, the other, has been suffered an unprecedented devastating assault from us once the
clockwork's worldview was incorporated with the ideology of winner-and-loser. And now we
proclaim we are in the Age of Information, so we are told to perceive everything, or the
whole universe, as a flow of information. Thus, if we are clever enough to learn from the
past mistake, then an attempt of a thorough and critical study on this worldview must be
initiated as part of our school education before the Nature has been completely
digitalized for sale via the so-called knowledge-based economy.
(d) Since the time of the proclamation of "the Death of God" by Friedrich W.
Nietzsche a century ago and then the proclamation of "the Death of Man" by
Postmodernism decades ago, people, more or less, have been lost in the middle of nowhere.
Thus, it is my deep conviction that part of the school education should be devoted to
encouraging our kids to develop an insight on what's next, if there is any, after
"the Death of Man" so that our next generations may be less "panicked"
and more "settled" in dealing with the rich yet unpleasant, so far, dynamics of
identity crisis of human beings (human becomings sound more appropriate) or any such
situation.
[1] Douglas Sloan, A Postmodern Vision of Education for a Living Planet ( SUNY Series,
1993).
[2] EMB, Aims of Education, p.17.
[3] EMB, Aims of Education, p.10.