Chapter 10

Conclusion

Introduction

The development of the school subject of History in

Hong Kong cannot be explained by reference to simplistic

or deterministic notions of ‘culture’ or ‘colonialism’,

although, as has been noted in previous chapters, the

uncritical acceptance of such notions continues to

inform much public discussion of history teaching. After

summarising the main findings of the present study, this

concluding chapter therefore addresses their

implications for interpretations of the roles of

‘colonialism’, ‘culture’ and identity in the history

curriculum. The present state of the History subject

tradition is analysed, highlighting the tensions and

problems within it that remain unresolved. Many of these

tensions involve the long division between History and

Chinese History, and the poltical and cultural

assumptions which both produced that division, and have

been reinforced by it. The ‘colonial’ origins of both

history subjects are demonstrated, and it is argued that

Hong Kong’s return to China has in fact strengthened,

rather than removed, the collaborative imperative that

characterised the ‘colonial’ process of curriculum

development. Demands for ‘post-colonial’ history

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teaching to be made more culturally ‘authentic’ are

anyway shown to be something of a red herring, since

they wrongly assume the existence of a single,

monolithic, homogenous Chinese culture. The difficulty

of promoting a critical, liberal vision of history

teaching in Hong Kong has had, it is argued, less to do

with ‘culture’ or ‘colonialism’ conceived in

essentialist terms, than with a political context that

has been and remains illiberal and undemocratic.

Summary of Findings

This summary, like Chapters 6-8, discusses the

findings of this study as they relate to the three

principal areas of enquiry outlined in Chapter 1: the

nature of and influences on the official curriculum, the

curriculum development process, and perceptions of

curriculum implementation.

1. The Official Curriculum

It has been emphasised throughout this study that

the nature of the History curriculum cannot be

understood without reference to the existence and role

of the separate subject of Chinese History. This

division, which for some has come to symbolise the

essential incommensurability of ‘Chinese’ and ‘world’

cultures, was in fact a product of the colonial politics

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of 1950s Hong Kong, as outlined in Chapter 6. It arose

in part out of a recognition that, while most other

school subjects were taught through the medium of

English, it made little educational or political sense

to use English to teach the history of China to Chinese

students – particularly when, in contrast to the

situation in some other colonies, there was a long and

proud indigenous historiographical tradition. However,

the government was also anxious to prevent the spread in

local schools of the destabilising ideologies of

Communism and Guomindang Nationalism, and to promote

instead a sanitised version of Chineseness, quarantined

from the modern world. Classically trained, and mainly

Nationalist scholars, refugees from the turmoil on the

mainland, willingly collaborated in the production of

syllabuses, both for Chinese History and for the

Chinese-language subjects generally, that encapsulated

an idealised and homogenised vision of Chinese culture.

This separation effectively denied to the History

subject the principal function performed by school

history curricula worldwide – that of teaching students

about their national past. In the 1950s and 1960s,

History at all levels of the curriculum for the elitist

Anglo-Chinese schools provided students with a

perspective on world history which was almost entirely

European, and largely British. Some Asian, Chinese and

even Hong Kong history was included in syllabuses, but

here too the focus was primarily on the ‘discovery’ of

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these areas by Europeans, and on the influence of

Europeans on their subsequent development. The history

of Hong Kong, though included in syllabuses, was seldom

taught, and was equated with the history of the British

administration of the territory. Hong Kong history was

widely seen as colonial history, reflecting the weakness

of any distinctive Hong Kong identity amongst the

largely refugee population.

There was therefore until about 1970 a certain

symmetry or even symbiosis about the official curriculum

for the two history subjects: Chinese History was

unapologetically sinocentric in its coverage of ancient

China, while History was almost equally Eurocentric or

Anglocentric in its approach to the more modern global

past. One subject recounted the triumph of the modern

West over everyone else, while the other salved

indigenous pride by celebrating the glories of

traditional Chinese civilization. Neither subject

encroached significantly on the territory of the other.

Official syllabuses for Chinese History were to

remain virtually unchanged until the 1990s. Language and

politics contributed to the insulation of the subject

from developments that were taking place in history

teaching outside Hong Kong. Chinese History teachers

were also able to claim a role for themselves as the

defenders of Chinese culture within a school curriculum

otherwise heavily influenced by overseas models. The

furious allegations of a colonial conspiracy to ‘erase

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Chinese culture’, which in 1975 greeted a proposal to

include elements of Chinese history in a Cantonese-

medium Social Studies course, were sufficient to deter

the government for the next quarter of a century from

any further attempt to impose change on the Chinese

History subject.

The subject of History has, by contrast, witnessed

a series of efforts since the 1970s to reform both the

content and aims of its curriculum. These attempts at

reform reflected a feeling, on the part of some

administrators and academics, that the advent of mass

secondary education required a new justification of

history teaching in utilitarian and pedagogic terms.

There was a consciousness that History teachers would no

longer be able to rely to the same degree on a captive

audience of highly-motivated ‘elite’ students, happy to

study academic subjects geared principally to the

requirements of university entrance. Reforms to the

History curriculum therefore sought to make the content

of syllabuses more relevant to students, while at the

same time placing a new emphasis on History’s utility in

training students in transferable ‘skills’ such as the

critical analysis of evidence.

As was the case with the introduction of Social

Studies, discussed in Chapter 3, much of the inspiration

for these changes to official History syllabuses came

from developments overseas, particularly in Britain and

America. Hong Kong’s History subject owed its origins to

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a British history-teaching tradition, and British

practice continued to be regarded as a natural point of

reference by those involved in developing the local

History curriculum. Faced with a need to re-assert the

importance of their subject in a changing educational

and social context, officials and academics responsible

for History looked to the curricular and pedagogical

innovations being attempted in Britain and America,

where mass access to secondary education had already

given rise to problems resembling some of those which

now confronted them.

At the same time – from the late 1960s and early

1970s onwards – the most obviously ‘colonial’ features

of Hong Kong’s History syllabuses began rapidly to

disappear. Coverage of British history was drastically

reduced, and the history of Hong Kong was removed almost

entirely. Syllabuses, though they remained largely

Eurocentric, began to reflect and advocate a more global

and thematic approach to history. In Chapter 6 it was

remarked that in Britain itself a triumphalist attitude

to the national past, and in particular to the history

of the Empire, was giving way, amongst many teachers of

history at any rate, to feelings of embarrassment and

guilt regarding the record of British imperialism. In

Hong Kong, meanwhile, the riots of 1966 and 1967 served

to underline the weakness of the colonial government’s

legitimacy, and gave rise over the following decade or

more to a policy of downplaying the colonial nature of

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the administration, while fostering a sense of

identification with and commitment to Hong Kong.

However, the new taboo regarding ‘colonialism’, and the

sensitivity of Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland

China, meant that the study of Hong Kong’s history would

for many years play no part in developing a sense of

local belonging amongst secondary school students.

Official syllabuses for History thus came

increasingly to espouse liberal values of tolerance for

different points of view, and a belief in the importance

of cultivating a capacity for critical, independent

thought. These were allied to the promotion of

pedagogical techniques such as the use of role play,

discussion groups, exercises in the analysis of sources,

and project work. In this respect, Hong Kong syllabuses

were similar to British ones, and reflected the extent

to which local curriculum developers both looked to

overseas precedents when drafting syllabuses, and shared

many of the liberal attitudes of their foreign

counterparts. The realisation of this liberal vision of

history teaching in schools was constrained by many

factors – some common to Britain and America, but

others, such as those associated with teaching through a

second-language medium, more peculiar to Hong Kong.

However, besides such hindrances to implementation, the

existence of Chinese History, and the changing

relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China,

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placed local syllabus drafters under a quite unique set

of pressures.

While the new fashion overseas for emphasising the

importance of ‘skills’ in history teaching provided

curriculum developers with a strategy for defending the

status of their subject within the local curriculum, the

need to distinguish its nature and purpose from that of

Chinese History led them to place special stress on this

as the principle raison d’etre of History. It was noted in

Chapter 3 that history syllabuses in in Britain have

continued, in addition to the new emphasis on ‘skills’,

to acknowledge the role of history teaching in providing

students with an awareness – albeit an increasingly

critical one – of their national identity. In Hong Kong,

by contrast, the subject of Chinese History existed to

supply students with an uncritical, depoliticised vision

of their national-cultural identity. In default of any

similar role for History in fostering a sense of

identity, other than a vague and rootless concept of

global citizenship, the rhetoric of official syllabuses

came to adopt what, in international terms, was a rather

extreme reliance on justification-by-‘skills’. This is

not to imply that curriculum developers’ belief in the

importance of ‘skills’ was insincere, but the

peculiarities of Hong Kong’s political situation and

education system prevented them from balancing their

emphasis on ‘skills’ with other aims.

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In Chapters 7 and 8 it was noted that moves afoot

by the late 1980s to re-introduce local history into

History syllabuses marked a significant change in this

respect. Local history was promoted by its advocates

primarily as a means of providing more and better

opportunities for the practice of teaching and learning

methods – such as the analysis of primary sources and

project work – that curriculum developers had long been

encouraging. It was also seen as a means of introducing

students to aspects of social and economic history which

had traditionally been neglected in local syllabuses, as

in English ones. However, the decision to proceed with

the development of a Hong Kong history syllabus

coincided with the emergence of an increasingly

assertive and distinctive sense of local identity

amongst the population at large during the territory’s

transition to Chinese rule. For this very reason, the

inclusion of local history in what was generally

regarded as a ‘World History’ course, rather than in

Chinese History, outraged those who insisted that Hong

Kong had always been and forever would remain part of a

monolithic ‘Great Chinese National Family’.1

The previous two chapters have shown how the fear

of provoking controversy has had a very noticeable

impact on the character of syllabuses published over the

past decade. The extent to which the political climate

1 This phrase, a staple of PRC propaganda, appears in the excerpt from the Chinese History curriculum package on local history, quotedin the previous chapter.

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has continued to define the parameters of acceptable

curriculum content has been particularly evident in the

treatment of topics relating to Hong Kong and mainland

China. While the most recent draft syllabus guidelines

have shown signs of a greater willingness to deal openly

with the issue of Britain’s role in Hong Kong’s

development, the relationship with mainland China, along

with all aspects of post-1949 Chinese history, is still

a minefield of political sensitivity through which

curriculum developers pick their way with extreme

caution. In addition, the greater coverage of social and

economic issues has generally not encouraged a critical

approach either to Hong Kong’s capitalist system, or the

mainland’s communist one. Therefore, although the re-

introduction of local history had been planned partly

with the intention of providing students with more

opportunities to exercise their critical and analytical

skills, in official syllabuses it is with respect to

local and mainland Chinese history that a critical

approach has been least in evidence.

The treatment of Hong Kong and mainland history in

syllabuses, and the relationship between the two

subjects of History and Chinese History, need to be seen

in the broader context of official representations of

the local and Chinese past. The return of Hong Kong to

Chinese rule has brought with it the expectation on the

part of pro-Beijing elements that history should be used

to promote an uncritical, state-centred patriotism

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amongst local people. This view has been aired, for

example, in discussions over what approach should be

followed in selecting content for Hong Kong’s new Museum

of History, discussed in Chapter 9. While those

responsible for Chinese History have appeared keen to

meet this expectation, and have revised their syllabuses

accordingly, developers of the History curriculum, with

their more liberal and internationalist outlook, have

been reluctant to follow. Though they appear to have

seen the omission of controversial issues as prudent,

given the prevailing political climate, they have

apparently felt that the promotion of uncritical

patriotism would run directly counter to the overall

ethos of their subject.

Nor has the new administration given a clear lead.

On the one hand, the Chief Executive has repeatedly

referred to history’s usefulness in stimulating

patriotism, while on the other he and his advisors on

education policy continually stress the importance of

teaching students to be creative and analytical. The

current ‘New History’ initiative is thus both a

testament to the confused educational priorities of the

post-handover government, and a test of which of these

priorities will ultimately take precedence. Which vision

of history teaching will receive official sanction: a

critical, liberal and more global approach; an approach

which promotes a predominantly happy, patriotic vision

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of the local and national past; or some kind of uneasy

compromise between the two?

2. The Curriculum Development Process

Political considerations have clearly played an

important role in setting the parameters of acceptable

content in official syllabuses, but there is no

evidence, certainly over the past thirty years, of

direct interference in the syllabus drafting process by

the senior levels of the government’s bureaucracy. In

the more politically turbulent period of the 1950s and

1960s the colonial authorities intervened to ensure that

syllabuses for Chinese History and Civics (later EPA)

promoted a thoroughly depoliticised sense of Chinese and

local identity. By the 1970s, depoliticisation appears

to have become so institutionalised in the local

education system that interventions of this kind became

largely unnecessary. It is possible that confidential

documents yet to be released from the government’s

archives may reveal a greater degree of active

government manipulation of school syllabuses than

currently appears to have been the case. However, the

available evidence indicates that the agencies and

officials responsible for developing the History

curriculum have enjoyed considerable formal autonomy.

In Chapters 6 and 7 it was shown that the power of

such officials has tended to grow with the increasing

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bureaucratisation of the curriculum development process

since the 1970s. The recognition by the government of

its responsibility to provide mass education brought a

new drive to rationalise and bureaucratise the

previously more informal arrangements for consultation

over syllabus and examinations policy. A highly formal

consultation process, involving most of the major

stakeholders – teachers, university academics, and

officials from the ED and HKEA – was established, making

the curriculum development process appear more open and

inclusive than before. The organisation by officials of

teacher seminars, and the canvassing of teachers’

opinions on curriculum changes through questionnaires,

also became increasingly common. The process nonetheless

remained highly centralised and top-down, and the

initiative for curriculum reform stayed firmly in the

hands of the ED and HKEA subject officers.

The fact that officials potentially wielded such

influence did not determine whether or how they would

use it. In Chapter 7 it was noted that officials

responsible for Chinese History continued for almost

three decades to defer to the authority of Professor

Chiu of HKU, whose main concern seems to have been the

preservation of the existing curriculum. If certain

academics at the History Department of HKU had been able

to maintain a similar level of authority, the

development of the History curriculum might have

exhibited a similar inertia. However, the activism of

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several key officials, and the sympathy of a number of

academics, helped to ensure that this was not so.

Whereas conservative academics retained control over the

Chinese History curriculum, by the late 1980s the

influence over History syllabuses of those who saw the

school curriculum first and foremost as a preparation

for their university courses had been greatly reduced.

In Chapter 7 it was also shown how the decline of

the influence of academic historians as a group over the

development of the subject was linked to the impact of

the shift to mass secondary education on History’s

popularity and status. This shift affected History far

more severely than Chinese History, and led to growing

concerns about a decline in candidatures for the

subject. Attempts to halt this, as noted earlier,

focused on the promotion of a more ‘skills’-based and

student-centred approach, the re-introduction of local

history, and the teaching of more modern periods of

world – and increasingly also of Chinese – history. The

use of English for teaching the subject was identified

by curriculum developers as a key reason for History’s

declining popularity amongst a student population whose

level of proficiency in that language was also perceived

to be falling. However, as explained in Chapter 5,

societal demand for English-medium education deterred

the colonial government, always conscious of its weak

legitimacy, from compelling schools to teach in English,

and attempts by the ED to persuade schools to switch to

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mother-tongue instruction proved ineffective. This

situation changed in 1997, when the incoming

administration felt sufficiently confident to opt for

compulsion where persuasion had failed, but a ‘final

solution’ to the language problem continues to prove

elusive.

There was little that individual subject officers,

still less academics or teachers, could do to influence

overall policy on the medium of instruction. By

contrast, individuals, and especially officials, could

and did play a highly significant role in shaping the

curriculum for the subject of History. The introduction

of DBQs, which was aimed both at promoting the teaching

of ‘skills’ and at limiting the linguistic demands on

examination candidates, would almost certainly not have

happened when it did had it not been for the energetic

efforts of Patrick Wong. The re-introduction of local

history was also the result of a personal initiative on

the part of D.C. Lam and, more particularly, Jane Cheng

of the Advisory Inspectorate. The support given by

academics such as Anthony Sweeting and Elizabeth Sinn to

these initiatives, and their assistance both in lobbying

for their adoption and in producing teaching materials,

was also crucial. Personal, informal connections amongst

these individuals, such as the friendship between Sinn

and Cheng, the teacher-student relationship between

Sweeting and Wong, Cheng and Lee Chi-hung, or the

relationships established between Sweeting and Cheng,

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Julian Leung or Flora Kan as fellow teacher educators at

HKU, also helped to build and shape the consensus for

change. The interviews conducted in the course of this

research, and my own peripheral involvement in the ‘New

History’ controversy, mentioned in the previous chapter,

illustrate the continuing importance of such informal

networks.

What the interviews also revealed was the extent to

which most of the individuals involved in the

development of the History curriculum shared very

similar backgrounds and values. Almost all of them were

graduates of the older Anglo-Chinese, and often

Christian, schools, which they had attended in the

period from the 1950s to the 1970s when secondary

education was still the privilege of a relatively small

elite. Most had also studied history at the University

of Hong Kong, and had done their teacher training there

during the 1970s or 1980s, under the supervision of

Anthony Sweeting, Julian Leung or Jane Cheng. The high

value they placed on critical and independent thinking

was reflected in a generally liberal-democratic

political outlook. However, as already noted, this has

not generally led them, at least in their syllabuses, to

adopt a very critical approach to the political history

of Hong Kong or modern China, to Hong Kong’s capitalist

system, or to the mainland’s communist one. Anthony

Sweeting has been more willing than most to push openly

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for a more unreservedly critical attitude to local

history in History syllabuses.

Sweeting’s comparative radicalism is not, I would

argue, a reflection of any essential ‘cultural’

difference between him and his local Chinese

counterparts, nor does it imply that their espousal of

liberal values has been hypocritical or false. As noted

in Chapter 8, Lee Chi-hung has suggested that the social

and educational background of many key players in the

curriculum development process helps account for the

cautious, conservative, pro-status quo orientation of the

local history package of the early 1990s. However, the

fact that Lee himself, while possessing a similar social

and educational background to other members of the Local

History Working Group, has tended to adopt a rather more

daring approach to content selection (as demonstrated in

the recent draft syllabus for Secondary 4-5), serves as

a warning against the assumption of any deterministic

link between socio-economic status or educational

background and political stance. Similarly, any

expectation that Sweeting, by virtue of being British,

would automatically favour a more pro-British slant on

local or world history than his local colleagues, is

contradicted by the evidence. The contrast between the

radicalism displayed by Sweeting, and the relative

caution exercised by local educational officials,

including Lee, may be best explained by the

understanding on the part of the latter of their

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inescapably collaborative role – a role which Sweeting,

largely because of his expatriate status, might not have

felt so obliged to perform. The relationship between

curriculum development and the politics of collaboration

in Hong Kong is examined further below.

Those responsible for the development of the

History subject have been educated in a liberal

tradition of history teaching which has its origins in

Britain. However, their relationship to this tradition

has neither been one of simple dependence, nor of

unquestioning deference. The HKEA has continued

periodically to send examination papers and scripts to

London for vetting, but the main concern has been to

secure wider overseas recognition for local

qualifications. The advice proffered by London’s

examiners has routinely been criticised or ignored by

the local subject committees, and dissatisfaction with

the vetting arrangements led in 1998 to a decision to

switch from the London to the Cambridge Examinations

Board. Reforms to the local curriculum, such as the

promotion of a thematic, global approach, and the

introduction of DBQs, have been largely inspired by

practice overseas, especially in England. Nonetheless,

the use made of ideas from overseas has been selective

and, as in the case of DBQs, they have been picked up as

ready-made solutions to problems faced in the local

context, not simply copied from or imposed by overseas

agencies. Local curriculum developers have looked to

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English or American practice with an eye to adopting or

adapting whatever in that practice might help to boost

the effectiveness of history teaching in Hong Kong, and

the popularity of the History subject.

At the same time, officials have looked to a far

lesser extent to local teachers for suggestions as to

how the curriculum might be reformed and, when they have

done so, the response has not generally been very

constructive. Although, since the 1970s, teachers have

been increasingly involved on official curriculum

committees and working parties, and have been informed

and consulted more thoroughly regarding the nature of

proposed changes, the role of the History teaching

profession in general has remained passive and reactive.

The highly centralised, administrative pattern of

curriculum development established since the 1950s has

helped to produce, and has in turn been reinforced by,

an expectation on the part of teachers that any major

initiative for change would come from the ED. No subject

association for History teachers existed until 1999, and

it remains to be seen whether the new ‘Association for

History Educators’ will be able to establish itself.

Though, as noted in Chapter 8, teachers, and teacher

members of subject committees, have in recent years

tended to become more assertive and outspoken, their

main concerns have usually been to shorten syllabuses,

minimise content change, and secure more support in

terms of teaching resources from the ED and HKEA.

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The position of these institutions regarding the

provision of such resources has been ambivalent. On the

one hand, officials have lamented the poor quality of

many commercially-produced textbooks and the

ineffectiveness of the quality-control mechanisms at

their disposal. At the same time, the ED has sought to

maintain a strict division between the work of drafting

official syllabuses, and that of writing textbooks –

partly out of a desire to reduce the opportunities for

corruption, and partly in order to maintain an posture

of political neutrality or ‘laissez-faire’ regarding

textbook content. Officials have also been reluctant to

‘spoon-feed’ teachers, and have insisted that the latter

should produce more of their own teaching materials.

When DBQs were introduced at A’ level, a government-

funded programme of in-service training for History

teachers was organised, aimed largely at encouraging

them to develop more materials of their own. The ED has

nevertheless played an expanding role over the past

decade or so in producing curriculum packages – the main

example being that for local history – especially for

use with junior forms. This increased intervention in

the provision of teaching materials has reflected

growing concern regarding the problems of curriculum

implementation.

3. Curriculum Implementation

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Official syllabuses for History have over the past

three decades promoted a vision of the subject as a

critical discipline suited to the cultivation of

analytical skills and liberal-democratic values.

Meanwhile, those responsible for producing these same

syllabuses have perceived a gulf, if anything widening

rather than narrowing, between the aims they have

proclaimed, and the way in which History has in practice

been taught and learnt in most local classrooms. Part of

the reason for this gulf may be attributed to the

increasingly ambitious and complex nature of the

objectives set by curriculum developers, in their

enthusiasm for ‘skills’. However, the attempt to

redefine History’s utility in these terms has largely

been a response to the quite rapid shift to mass

provision of secondary education during the 1970s. The

problems associated with this shift – in particular of

teacher professionalism, medium of instruction, and

provision of suitable textbooks – have received most of

the blame from officials and curriculum committees for

what they have seen as the generally unsatisfactory

state of History teaching.

The evidence of candidates’ performance in public

examinations shows that, while a small minority appear

to have mastered the analytical skills promoted in

official syllabuses, the majority have continued to rely

largely upon the memorisation of ‘model answers’. In

addition, the range of topics covered by most candidates

430

has shown little variation, with questions on

nationalism, war and diplomacy in nineteenth-century

Europe, late Qing China and Meiji Japan consistently

proving the most popular. Teachers of senior forms have

appeared unwilling to experiment with local history, or

to extend their coverage to the post-1945 period. There

is also, as noted in Chapter 8, some evidence to suggest

a continuing reluctance on the part of teachers to deal

with the more controversial topics within this period,

such as those relating to the history of China after

1949.

Many teachers of History to junior secondary forms

over the past thirty or more years have not been subject

trained, and have tended to rely particularly heavily on

textbooks. Teaching at this level appears often to have

consisted, as it largely did at the school where I

taught in the mid-1990s, of drilling students in

vocabulary items in preparation for frequent tests and

examinations. Jane Cheng, Alice Ho and others have

traced the tendency of students to equate the learning

of History with the memorisation of ‘model answers’ to

the particular prevalence of this sort of teaching

method in the junior forms. The various History teaching

packs prepared by the ED for use at junior level over

the past decade have attempted to tackle this problem by

showing teachers how to approach the subject in a more

stimulating and ‘skills’-oriented way, but there is so

far no indication that the provision of these materials

431

has had a significant impact on teaching practice in

most schools.

Much of the blame for problems with the teaching

and learning of History at all levels of secondary

schooling has been attributed to the use of English as

the main medium of instruction in most schools, and by

most candidates sitting public examinations. Examination

reports have consistently stressed the detrimental

effect that poor English has had on candidates’ ability

either to understand questions, or to write a coherent

answer in response to them – a point reinforced by

comments in the triennial Comparability Studies

conducted by the London Schools Examination Board. As

access to senior secondary and tertiary education has

expanded over the past two decades, so the severity of

this problem appears to have increased. In Chapters 7

and 8 it was shown how concerns over declining language

standards were part of the rationale for the

introduction of DBQs at A’ level and HKCE, the retention

of MCQs for the latter examination, and the consequent

reduction in the weighting of essay questions at both

levels. Despite these assessment reforms, language

difficulties have continued to be blamed for undermining

the promotion of critical thinking. This has led

officials and others involved in the development of the

History curriculum to press, with very limited success,

for more schools to switch to the use of Chinese for

teaching the subject. The government’s decision in 1997

432

to force most schools to switch to mother-tongue

instruction would therefore appear to be welcome news.

However, evidence of the effects of the mother-tongue

policy on performance in public examinations will not

become available for several years.

The perception of declining levels of English-

language proficiency amongst the student population

would appear to be borne out by the increasing

simplification of the language used in History

textbooks. The simplicity of the language used in the

most popular textbooks helps to account for the

unsophisticated nature of the interpretations which many

of them have contained. Nonetheless, the poor standard

of many of the DBQ and MCQ exercises in both textbooks

and supplementary workbooks cannot be explained solely

by the language factor. It would appear that many

textbook authors, almost all of whom have been

experienced local teachers of History, have not fully

understood either the nature or purpose of DBQs.

Neither language problems nor simple ignorance

account for the practice by authors and publishers of

self- censorship. The avoidance of controversial issues,

particularly those relating to recent Chinese history,

has long been a feature of textbooks as well as

syllabuses. Although there is no evidence of outright

censorship of textbooks having been practiced over the

past thirty years, authors and publishers have generally

avoided testing the limits of ED tolerance, and textbook

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interpretations have tended to closely match those

suggested in official syllabuses and teaching guides.

This pattern has remained largely unchanged through the

period of transition to Chinese rule, and as the

parameters of acceptable syllabus content have shifted,

so those of textbook content have followed. However, the

approach of the handover brought with it an intense

politicisation of local and Chinese history that

contrasted with the avoidance or depoliticisation of the

previous two decades. In this uncertain and somewhat

menacing political climate, some publishers or authors

have appeared especially concerned to ensure that the

content of their textbooks conforms to a rigid

interpretation of the ‘one China’ principle. The same

pressures, as well as a concern to limit the extent of

textbook revisions, has prompted the ED to issue

guidelines to publishers making more explicit the

parameters of acceptable content, as regards topics

relating to Hong Kong’s (and Taiwan’s) relationship with

the rest of China. ‘Guided self-censorship’ therefore

more accurately characterises the nature of political

influence over textbook production in particular.

History has been almost unique amongst mainstream

school subjects in both advocating and, through public

examinations, attempting to test critical thinking

skills. However, the way the subject has actually been

studied has in many respects been closer to the approach

of Chinese History than to the vision set out in

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official History syllabuses. Problems with teaching

methods, second-language instruction and the quality of

textbooks have, probably rightly, taken much of the

blame for this. In addition, some curriculum developers

have suggested that the nature of the rival subject of

Chinese History, as well as the prevalence across the

school curriculum of a pedagogy that encourages

uncritical rote memorisation, have not helped their

efforts to promote a critical approach to history.

However, the failure of both textbook writers and

curriculum developers themselves to adopt a truly

critical approach to many of the most crucial episodes

and issues in the local and national past suggests that

these explanations of the gulf between syllabus rhetoric

and classroom practice are inadequate. What is lacking

is an account not only of how the nature of Hong Kong’s

two history subjects relates to the local educational

culture, but of how those subjects and that culture have

been shaped by an illiberal political climate that

discourages the free expression of critical ideas.

History teaching, culture and colonialism

The failure so far of a critical, liberal tradition

of history teaching to take root in Hong Kong’s schools

may appear to lend credence to the view that the

approach which the History subject has promoted is, in

435

some fundamental way, incompatible with the ‘Chinese

culture’ of Hong Kong. The British origins of the school

subject of History, and the continuing overseas

influence on its development, are undeniable. This fact

alone might lead some believers in ‘cultural

imperialism’, dependency theory or ‘world systems’

theory to argue that the subject has represented a

‘hegemonistic’ attempt to foist a ‘Western’ approach to

history onto people from another culture.2 What post-

colonial Hong Kong needs, they would contend, is a more

authentically Chinese approach to history teaching – one

which, by reconnecting local students with their Chinese

cultural roots, will liberate them from the intellectual

shackles of colonialism. Chapter 9 has demonstrated that

just such arguments have indeed been put forward in

defence of the division between Chinese History and

History in local schools.

The remainder of this chapter attempts to counter

interpretations of this type by relating the findings of

this research to the critique of determinist views of

history, culture and educational development described

in Chapters 2 and 3. An alternative interpretive

framework is suggested, placing the relationship between

colonialism, culture and the History curriculum in the

context of the discussion, in Chapter 5, of Hong Kong’s

politics, education system and popular culture. The

validity of the concept of an ‘authentic’, homogenous

Chinese culture is then re-examined, in the light of a2 For a discussion of such theories, see Chapter 3.

436

comparison between the recent furore over the fate of

Chinese History in Hong Kong, and the ongoing debate

over history and national identity in Taiwan. Finally,

an assessment is made of the major practical and

political tensions affecting efforts to promote a

liberal, critical vision of history teaching in Hong

Kong’s schools.

Politics, colonialism and Hong Kong’s two histories

The school subject of History originated in Hong

Kong’s highly elitist Anglo-Chinese schools, and thus

began life very much as a colonial British import. The

development of its curriculum up to the present day has

continued, as this study has shown, to be very much

influenced by overseas precedents, and especially by

reforms to history teaching that have taken place in

Britain. Does it therefore follow that this subject has

conveyed a ‘colonial’ conception of history that

threatens the preservation of Hong Kong’s cultural

‘Chineseness’? Moreover, is it possible to distinguish

meaningfully between those influences that are the

product of ‘colonialism’ and those which result from the

free exchange of ideas across borders and between

‘cultures’, however defined?

As was noted above, curriculum developers have been

selective in their adoption of overseas-inspired

innovations, and their main purpose in looking to

437

history teaching practice abroad has been to find ideas

that might help in adapting Hong Kong’s own History

curriculum to the requirements of mass schooling. Their

efforts might be seen, up to a point, as part of a

struggle for curriculum territory and resources, of the

kind which Ivor Goodson has seen as fundamental to an

understanding of the history of school subjects.3

However, whereas Goodson has, as noted in Chapter 3,

described a sequence whereby subjects which have their

origins in idealistic campaigns for pedagogical

innovation later prostitute those ideals in a scramble

for academic status, in the case of History – in Hong

Kong, Britain and elsewhere – the sequence has been the

other way around.4 The advent of mass secondary education

has seen developers of History curricula in many

countries attempt to make the subject less ‘stuffy’ and

academic, and more appealing to generations of students

who take schooling for granted, and are less inclined

than perhaps their parents were to suffer boredom in the

pursuit of academic credentials.

Goodson tends to explain the history of school

subjects principally as a struggle for status, control

and resources between various ‘stakeholders’ in the

school curriculum, including politicians, teachers,

academics, inspectors – or even social ‘classes’. His3 Goodson has, it is true, not undertaken research into the history of school subjects in colonial contexts. However, as was pointed outin Chapter 3, very few people have – which is one of the reasons forthe significance of this research.4 A pattern which Kliebard has suggested might be true for other traditionally academic subjects such as Mathematics. See Chapter 3.

438

‘social constructivist’ analysis sometimes verges on the

deterministic in suggesting that the behaviour of these

stakeholders is primarily informed by an obsession with

the pursuit of ‘power’. Thus the success or failure of

school subjects in establishing or defending their

status is seen in terms of the effectiveness of their

‘discourses or legitimating rhetorics’,5 whose

relationship to actual policy, let alone classroom

practice, may be largely or even intentionally illusory.

The present research has shown that, in the case of

History in Hong Kong, the social and educational

background of curriculum developers, their desire to

preserve their curricular territory, and an official

vision of history teaching far removed from classroom

reality, have all played an important role in the

development of the subject. Nonetheless, what tends to

get neglected in interpretations of curriculum

development which focus on the pursuit of ‘power’ is the

issue of whether those involved actually believed that

they were doing more than furthering their own personal

or class interests and, more importantly, whether there

are any grounds for judging whether or not they were

deluding themselves.

Many of those who have promoted new approaches to

history teaching in Hong Kong have done so, like their

counterparts in Britain or America, out of a genuine

belief that the study of history ought to foster

5 Ivor Goodson, ‘The Making of Curriculum’ (Falmer Press, 1995), p. 194

439

critical and analytical skills. They have also seen

critical thinking skills, and a sceptical attitude to

sources, as useful to discouraging intolerance and

building values associated with liberal-democratic

citizenship. As was discussed in Chapter 5, such values

have in recent years commanded increasingly broad

allegiance from Hong Kong’s expanding middle class.

However, curriculum developers have been and continue to

be faced with a political climate which is far from

liberal or democratic. The political situation has led

to little obvious or crude official interference, but

has rather been reflected in a general fear of provoking

Communist China or ‘rocking the boat’ locally. This fear

has been evident in the especially cautious treatment of

Hong Kong and modern China in History syllabuses and

textbooks.

Teachers of Chinese History and their supporters

have emphasised the throroughbred Chineseness of their

subject, explicitly or implicitly contrasting this with

the ‘foreign’ or ‘colonial’ nature of History’s approach

and perspective. This ignores the fact that the stigma

of ‘colonial’ origins attaches to Chinese History just

as much as to History. Although its proponents see it as

the essential embodiment of Chinese tradition, the

Chinese History subject represents, if not an ‘invented

tradition’, then at least a particular approach to

China’s past tailored to suit both the political needs

of the colonial government and the ideological

440

preferences of the conservative scholars who wrote it.

The curriculum for Chinese History is simply one amongst

many possible approaches taken by Chinese people to the

history of China. Others have been and are being

explored by teachers and curriculum developers in

Taiwan, mainland China and, as this study has shown,

amongst Chinese teachers of History in Hong Kong.

It would therefore be wrong to see the division

between Hong Kong’s two history subjects in terms of a

division between a ‘colonial’ version of the past on the

one hand and a ‘Chinese’ version on the other. On the

contrary, the nature of both subjects and the division

between them are explicable by reference to Hong Kong’s

collaborative political and social order, discussed in

Chapter 5. During the last half-century of British rule,

and especially from the late 1960s onwards, the

authority of the colonial government was acknowledged to

depend on the collaboration of Hong Kong’s Chinese

inhabitants, in particular the business and official

elites, and on the acquiescence of the mainland

government. Morris and Sweeting have shown how awareness

of this situation led to the conscious depoliticisation

of the school curriculum by the colonial authorities.6

Most curriculum developers and teachers, like the bulk

of Hong Kong’s largely refugee population, accepted this

depoliticisation because, like the colonial government

6 Paul Morris and Anthony Sweeting, ‘Education and Politics: The Case of Hong Kong from an Historical Perspective’ (Oxford Review of Education 17, no. 3, 1991), pp. 249-67. See also Chapter 5.

441

itself, they knew that serious instability within Hong

Kong, or any provocation of the mainland authorities,

might bring about the replacement of British rule with

rule from Beijing.

This collaborative imperative was crucial to the

development of both history subjects, though it took the

form of a tacit contract whose existence was seldom if

ever acknowledged either by the government or by those

directly involved in curriculum development. Chinese

History existed to foster in local students a sense of

pride in their Chinese cultural identity, but in a way

which would involve no challenge to the legitimacy of

the colonial authorities. The curriculum for Chinese

History, as for the other Chinese subjects, therefore

purveyed an idealised vision of an ancient and

essentially changeless Confucian civilisation, ignoring

the crisis which that civilisation was undergoing in

modern China. Meanwhile, the History subject came by the

1970s to embody a vision of the modern world beyond

China which, by avoiding substantial coverage of issues

such as communism and colonialism, and offering instead

a narrative of the progress of nationalism, liberalism,

democracy, and international harmony, provided an almost

equally idealised account of the recent global past.

While the development of the subject drew its

inspiration from American and British attempts to make

history more challenging and stimulating, the promotion

in Hong Kong of this new, more critical approach was

442

effectively neutered by the requirements of

depoliticisation. Other factors, such as the medium of

instruction, the low level of teacher professionalism,

and a deeply entrenched view of education as the

transmission of received knowledge rather than ‘skills’,

all contributed to the difficulty of promoting such an

approach to history in local schools. However, the

neglect in syllabuses for both subjects of the history

of modern China and of Hong Kong, and of communism and

colonialism more generally, betrayed the crucial role

played by politics in constraining curriculum

developers. The avoidance of these topics exposed

particular tensions within the History subject, since

its developers claimed to place far more emphasis both

on modern history, and on the adoption of a critical

approach to it, than did their Chinese History

counterparts.

Hong Kong’s transition from British to Chinese rule

witnessed the emergence of a more assertive sense of

local identity, while the expansion of the middle class

brought with it the growth of a more vibrant civil

society. Increased popular and scholarly interest in

Hong Kong’s past helped to create some support for the

re-introduction of local history into History

syllabuses, though the initiative of individual

officials rather than any popular demand determined the

timing of this move. However, despite significant

reforms to syllabus content and assessment practices

443

over the past ten years, what is most striking is not

the extent of the changes to History, but their

limitations. Hong Kong’s gradual ‘decolonisation’ has

not liberated curriculum developers from the fetters of

collaboration. On the contrary, as was noted in Chapter

5, local elites have had to adapt to the necessity of

collaborating with the new sovereign power. For

developers of the History curriculum this has meant that

topics relating to the history of Hong Kong and China,

which they have tried to place at the core of recent

History syllabuses, have had to be treated with extreme

caution. The very public pronouncements of Hong Kong’s

post-handover leadership regarding the importance of

‘patriotic’ history, and the highly politicised debate

surrounding the new Museum of History, show how the

parameters of acceptable content have become far more

explicit and rigid than was previously the case.

While the necessity of collaboration with the post-

colonial regime has thus imposed more obvious

constraints on those responsible for History curriculum

development, it has been seen by their Chinese History

rivals an opportunity to reassert the special status of

their subject. Chinese History teachers and curriculum

developers in Hong Kong have never demonstrated any real

interest in the history of either Hong Kong or modern

China, since their whole approach has been predicated

upon a homogenous, state-centred vision of Chineseness

to which both Hong Kong and Communist China are

444

peripheral. Their preference for a traditionalist,

ethno-centric, moralistic account of Chinese history was

originally at odds with the Marxist interpretation

favoured in mainland China. However, as noted in Chapter

2, by the 1990s Beijing’s own propaganda had toned down

its Communist orthodoxy, and the new official vision of

the national past combined a celebration of the

achievements of Chinese antiquity with an interpretation

of the ‘one China’ principle that stressed China’s

immemorial homogeneity. In these circumstances, many of

those involved with Chinese History appear to have

accepted it as natural that their subject should assume

the role of promoting Hong Kong’s cultural and spiritual

re-integration with the ‘motherland’.

To talk of the end of British rule as bringing a

‘decolonisation’ of the local education system therefore

obscures the fact that Hong Kong’s autonomy – in

education policy as in much else – remains circumscribed

by an unwritten collaborative contract underpinning the

entire political system. Theories of neo-colonialism,

cultural imperialism, or the ‘hegemony’ of Western

‘discourses’ do not account for the way in which the

political climate has helped to shape the curricula for

History and Chinese History over the past thirty years.

As was noted in Chapter 5, some recent studies on Hong

Kong’s history have drawn upon Ronald Robinson’s

‘excentric theory of imperialism’ in stressing the

essentially collaborative foundations of colonial rule.

445

Robinson himself also emphasised that ‘collaboration

theory provides a measure for the post-colonial era’.7 If

this measure is applied to History curriculum

development in Hong Kong, what is most apparent is not

any perpetuation of neo-colonial domination, but the

gradual assumption by China of a colonial authority far

stronger than that exercised by the British over recent

decades. Whereas collaboration with the British

authorities involved tacit acceptance of certain taboos

– especially concerning colonialism and communism – the

new regime is seen as demanding more than the observance

of negative prohibitions. In other words, while the

British were more concerned with what was not taught, the

PRC is more interested in what is taught. The

‘repoliticisation’ of national history for the purpose

of promoting uncritical patriotism has been particularly

apparent in recent changes to Chinese History syllabuses

and textbooks, but has also influenced the treatment of

topics in History relating to Hong Kong and China.

While there is evidence that political pressures

have caused some unease amongst developers of the

History curriculum, the government’s sweeping programme

of educational reforms has also thrown up the New

History proposal (involving a merging of History and

Chinese History), thus alienating the Chinese History

teachers who have emerged as some of the most

enthusiastic supporters of ‘patriotic education’. The

7 Ronald Robinson, ‘The Excentric Theory of Imperialism, with or without Empire’, p. 273 (See Chapter 5)

446

more interventionist stance adopted by the government in

education policy as in other fields has reflected its

greater confidence in its own authority, but, as was

suggested in Chapter 5, there are growing signs that

this confidence is misplaced. The new regime has felt

itself to be representative of Hong Kong people in a way

that its colonial predecessor was not, and did not claim

to be. However, the incoherence or incompetence that has

characterised some of the administration’s recent

schemes – perhaps reflecting the ‘disarticulation’ of

the post-handover political system identified by Ian

Scott –8 has led to the increasing disaffection of a

number of groups (including civil servants and teachers)

on whose collaboration the government has traditionally

depended. Hong Kong’s new rulers have ignored Robinson’s

adage that ‘the less the pro-consuls demanded of their

mediators in the way of reform, the safer they were’.9 It

remains to be seen whether this popular disaffection

will grow or subside, or whether it will lead to any

significant political changes, which, if they came,

might produce a climate more conducive to the promotion

in schools of a critical, liberal approach to history.

Chinese History, identity and culturalism – ‘One China’,

or many?

8 See Chapter 5.9 Robinson, op. cit., p. 272

447

As was noted in Chapter 3, liberal-democratic

political institutions by no means guarantee the triumph

of enlightenment and the banishment of bigotry in

official representations of the national past. History’s

importance to attempts to define national identity

ensures that history teaching, and public debate over

history more broadly, can often become highly

politicised. For example, governments or political

parties in democratic states as far apart as Britain,

Australia and India have in recent years attempted, with

varying degrees of success, to direct or manipulate

public discussion of history in order to project a

particular vision of national identity. However, despite

such attempts, debate over history and history curricula

in these countries remains significantly freer than

under more authoritarian regimes such as those of

Pakistan, Burma or China. In the latter, state ideology

sets strict parameters within which historical debate

must be conducted, so that history textbooks are

compelled to accept a common vision of the nation’s

historical origins, and to promote a homogenised sense

of national identity, whether rooted in race, religion,

political ideology, or a combination of all three.

Perceptions of national and cultural identity on

the part of Hong Kong people, discussed in Chapter 5,

have been complex and in some ways contradictory. On the

one hand, Hongkongers have appeared increasingly eager

to differentiate themselves from ‘mainlanders’. Greater

448

wealth, a distinctive Cantonese-based popular culture,

and a liberal, cosmopolitan vision of Hong Kong as an

‘international city’ have been key elements of this

growing sense of local identity. Interest in local

history has also risen, though the sense of

‘Honkongeseness’ has generally been predicated more upon

pride in Hong Kong’s present prosperity than upon any

particular interpretation of the local past.

Nevertheless, it is this vision of Hong Kong, as a

prosperous, liberal, cosmopolitan ‘international city’

that the History curriculum, despite political

constraints, has come closest to reflecting.

On the other hand, as was also noted in Chapter 5,

there is a widespread acceptance in Hong Kong of a

vision of China as a monolithic ethno-cultural bloc.

Attempts by Beijing to demand the unquestioning

allegiance of Hong Kong people on the basis of ethnic

loyalty alone may be largely ineffective, given the

strong local antipathy to communism and to mainlanders

in general. However, on issues such as the Diaoyutai and

the Belgrade Embassy Bombing, which involve tension

between China and ‘foreigners’, many local people and

much of the local media have demonstrated a strong

residual attachment to what is frequently defined as

‘the Chinese race’. Being Chinese for many Hong Kong

people appears to mean being part of what David Brown

terms a ‘cultural nation’ (as distinct from a ‘political

nation’) –10 a concept of nationhood which has also been10 See the discussion of Brown’s ideas in Chapter 5.

449

at the heart of the curriculum for Chinese History in

local secondary schools.

In Chapter 2 it was shown how this ‘primordial’

conception of national-racial identity has its roots in

the vision of China as an ‘awakened’ nation-state

promoted by nationalist leaders such as Sun Yat-sen.

This was a blend of more traditional ethnic prejudices

and political practice with neo-Darwinist conceptions of

race and nation, which a century ago were still in vogue

in Europe. For early Chinese nationalists, as for many

of their European contemporaries, racially-defined

nationalism was part of the natural order of things.

Since history was widely conceived of as an epic racial

struggle in which only the strongest would survive,

nationalist ideology tended to emphasise the importance

of unity, solidarity, and military strength. Their

consciousness of China’s weakness led Chinese

nationalists to give unity and strength all the greater

priority, and this was reflected in their educational

policies, and in particular in the promotion of putonghua

as the national language.

This approach to nationalism has, as noted in

Chapter 2, remained prevalent in mainland China. Indeed,

in the form of the ‘one China principle’, it has become

the central tenet of PRC state ideology. In Chapter 8

the generally uncritical treatment of the Italian and

German, as well as the Chinese, national movements in

History textbooks was taken as an indication of the

450

influence which this view of nationalism as a ‘good’ in

itself has had on the teaching of History. Developers of

the History curriculum have nonetheless been conscious

of the way in which rigid adherence to the ‘one China

principle’ can involve twisting history – for example as

regards local archaeology, the issue of ‘population

influx’, or references to Taiwan – even while they have

felt compelled to connive in such distortions.

Those responsible for the Chinese History

curriculum have demonstrated no similar misgivings. On

the contrary, as was shown in Chapter 9, they have

actively promoted a primordialist, essentialist view of

Hong Kong’s Chineseness, proclaiming, for example, that

‘from time immemorial’ the region has been part of ‘the

Great Chinese National Family’.11 In the current debate

over ‘New History’, defenders of the separate status of

the Chinese History subject have appealed to a

culturalist conception of Chineseness, arguing that only

a subject that teaches China’s history in splendid

isolation from the global past can truly reflect China’s

cultural uniqueness. At the same time, they emphasise

that in giving priority to the use of history for

fostering ethnic loyalty they are merely doing what

every other nation does. This not only ignores how far

some states have in fact moved away from the nineteenth-

century nationalism that still informs official

historiography in China; it also contradicts the

assertion that there is a single authentically Chinese11 See Chapter 9.

451

approach to history. If China’s cultural essence is seen

as determining that only one approach to the past

qualifies as ‘Chinese’, then any attempt to justify this

approach by reference to what happens elsewhere is both

irrelevant and incoherent.

The criticisms made by Brown, Hoffman and others of

this kind of determinist or ‘essentialist’ view of

culture have been discussed in earlier chapters,12 and so

are not repeated in detail here. However, the belief in

China’s cultural homogeneity and uniqueness is so widely

held, and so central to arguments over how history

should be taught to Chinese students, that it is worth

reinforcing this critique with a brief discussion of

attitudes to history, ethnicity and identity in a

Chinese society other than Hong Kong: that of Taiwan.

In Taiwan, the Nationalist view of a monolithic

cultural Chineseness was the state orthodoxy throughout

most of the period of Guomindang rule. The government

12 See Chapters 2, 3 and 5.

452

staked its claim to legitimate authority over the whole

of China (including, in its definition, Outer Mongolia)

partly on the assertion that it, rather than the

Communist regime, was the more faithful heir to ‘the

5,000-year-old civilisation of which Taiwan has always

been a part’.13 History lessons in Taiwan, like Chinese

History lessons in Hong Kong, taught the whole 5,000-

year narrative from a state-centred perspective, without

any recognition of local variations. The history of

Taiwan itself, like local history in Hong Kong, was seen

as peripheral and was not taught. Taiwanese were taught

to see themselves, and their ancestors ‘from time

immemorial’, as members of a racially and culturally

homogenous Chinese nation. Chinese languages other than

Mandarin, which formed the native tongues of most of

Taiwan’s Chinese inhabitants, were suppressed. The

aboriginal Austronesian tribes, who until the

seventeenth century had had the island to themselves,

and who by 2000 were officially reckoned to number just

over 400,000 (i.e. almost as numerous as Australia’s

aborigines), were forcibly assimilated.14

The democratisation of Taiwan over the past fifteen

years has been accompanied by an increasingly open and

vigorous public debate over Taiwanese history and

identity. There are still those, particularly among the

13 Sin-ming Shaw, ‘Big China, Little China’ (Time Magazine, March 27, 2000). Shaw, a Taiwanese writer, appeared to be defending what used to be the orthodox Guomindang view of Chinese culture.14 Fiorella Allio, ‘The Dynamics of the Identity Issue in Taiwan’ (China Perspectives, No. 28, March-April 2000), p. 46

453

ageing mainlanders who came to the island with the

Guomindang, who maintain that ‘Taiwan is an integral

part of a single and indivisible Chinese nation on the

basis of a shared cultural and even biological

heritage’.15 While their influence remains substantial,

however, it is in steep decline. Whereas until the 1980s

Mandarin was the only official language in Taiwan, and

the use of minanhua16 or other languages was forbidden in

schools and other government institutions, nowadays the

increasingly widespread use of minanhua has come to

symbolise the assertion of Taiwanese distinctiveness.

Just as striking has been the growth of interest in the

history and culture of the Austronesian tribes, with

many Taiwanese now eager to rediscover (or perhaps, in

some cases, to invent) their aboriginal roots. In the

past few years, Taiwanese history, from pre-Chinese

settlement times, through the incorporation of the

island into the Qing Empire, to the Japanese colonial

era and the period of Guomindang rule, has begun to be

taught in schools.

This new interest in Taiwanese history has of

course been stimulated by the ongoing debate over the

island’s political status. Identity has continued to be

defined in largely ethnic terms, so that, for example,

the keenness of many Taiwanese to establish their

15 Ibid., p. 48. See also Stephane Corcuff, ‘Taiwan’s Mainlanders’ (China Perspectives, No. 28, March-April 2000)16 The language spoken in Southern Fujian, Taiwan, and by many Chinese communities in South-East Asia. Its Taiwanese variant is often referred to as ‘Taiyu’.

454

aboriginal ancestry has been linked to a desire to

assert a new ethnically-based Taiwanese nationalism in

opposition to the claims of Chinese nationalism.17 The

Democratic Progressive Party, which won the recent

presidential election, has traditionally promoted

another variety of ethnic nationalism based on the

claims of the Hoklo-Hakka majority to represent

‘authentic’ Taiwaneseness.18 There thus remains a certain

‘ambiguity or incoherence’ in much of the debate over

identity in Taiwan, as seen, according to David Brown,

elsewhere in South-East Asia, since many parties and

politicians ‘claim somehow to offer equal citizenship

rights to all citizens irrespective of cultural

attributes, but… also define the nation in cultural

terms so as to give priority of some kind to those

possessing the attributes of cultural nationhood’.19

However, another popular notion of Taiwaneseness –

President Lee Teng-hui’s formula of the ‘New Taiwanese’

– comes closer to political or liberal nationalism in

taking as its principle rallying point not ethnic

origin, but ‘commitment to an island bent upon progress

and exchange’.20

The rediscovery of Taiwanese history, and the open

and vigorous debate over Taiwanese ethnicity and

17 See Gunter Schubert, ‘A New Rising Nation: The Discourse on National Identity in Contemporary Taiwan’, in ‘China Perspectives, No. 23, May-June 1999, pp. 54-6418 Allio, op. cit., p. 4919 David Brown, ‘The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia’ (Routledge, 1998), p. 26120 Allio, op. cit., p. 50

455

identity, has its origins, according to Allio, in ‘the

maturing of the democratic system’ there.21 The fact that

this interest has been influenced by political

ideologies and interests, and specifically by the

problem of how to define Taiwan’s relationship with

mainland China, does not invalidate the inquiry into the

extent and nature of Taiwan’s distinctiveness. As Allio

points out, ‘ethnic groups…do not exist a priori, but are

interdependent realities that have been socially and

symbolically constructed’.22 The notion of a culturally

and racially homogenous Chinese nation was developed and

elaborated a century ago by intellectuals concerned

above all to strengthen a sense of unity and solidarity

in the face of the threat posed by the modern West and

Japan. Their vision of a monolithic ethno-cultural

China, which forms the basis of PRC claims to

sovereignty over Taiwan, is now being challenged in its

turn by Taiwanese determined to show how their history

and culture, as well as their wealth and their political

system, set them apart from the Chinese mainland. The

fact that this is no longer a staged debate between two

authoritarian regimes, but a free one conducted in an

open society, has meant that multiple conceptions not

only of Chineseness, but also of Taiwaneseness, have

emerged. There are signs that a recognition of ethnic

diversity, previously seen as threateningly divisive by

both Nationalist and Communist regimes, is giving rise

21 Ibid., p. 4922 Ibid., p. 45

456

in Taiwan to a more tolerant, democratic, multi-ethnic

nationalism.

By comparison with the Taiwanese controversy over

history, culture and identity, debate over such issues

in Hong Kong has been muted. The assumption of a

monolithic cultural Chineseness not only goes

unchallenged in history syllabuses and textbooks, but is

also largely unquestioned in the local media, as

coverage of the ‘New History’ proposal has demonstrated.

A number of factors may help to account for the relative

strength of this belief in Hong Kong. As was noted in

Chapter 5, the development of a strong sense of local

identity has been quite recent in Hong Kong, which until

the 1970s was a largely refugee society. By contrast,

most of Taiwan’s population has roots on the island

stretching back well over one hundred years. In

addition, the isolation of Hong Kong from broader

Chinese politics – Communist or Nationalist – and the

experience of colonial rule, encouraged the adoption of

a cultural ‘Chinese identity in the abstract’,23

epitomised by the secondary school curriculum for

Chinese History. This tended to foster a highly

sentimental identification with an idealised Chinese

nation, most dramatically expressed in the massive local

pro-democracy demonstrations organised in support of the

‘patriotic democratic movement in China’ in 1989.23 Bernard Luk, ‘Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism’, in Stimpson and Morris ed.s, ‘Curriculum and Assessment for Hong Kong’ (Open University of Hong Kong Press, 1998), p. 74

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However, the crushing of the student movement in

that year shattered much of this idealism, and in

sealing the alienation of local people from the mainland

regime, helped, as noted in Chapter 5, to further

reinforce their sense of Hong Kong’s distinctive

identity. The setback to local hopes of democratisation,

and the subsequent rise in tension between Britain and

China, were also crucial in shaping the political

climate of Hong Kong during the 1990s. It has been

emphasised throughout the present study that an

appreciation of this tense and uncertain political

situation is essential to an understanding of why the

developers of the History curriculum acted in the way

that they did. It explains why, despite their evidently

liberal and democratic values, and their belief in the

importance of critical thinking, they nonetheless balked

at criticism of almost all the most contentious issues

in the history of Hong Kong and modern China. It has

been the political pressure to collaborate, and not any

mystic Chinese cultural essence, that has led museum

curators, textbook publishers, and developers of the

curricula for both History and Chinese History, to

maintain a taboo regarding criticism of the ‘one China

principle’.

Far more research needs to be done on the

development of history teaching and curricula in both

Taiwan and mainland China, and on Chinese historiography

more generally. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that

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when some supporters of Hong Kong’s Chinese History

subject appeal to a monolithic, culturalist vision of

Chineseness, they are being, so to speak, more Catholic

than the Pope. Not only in Taiwan, but in mainland China

too, there have in recent years been attempts to reform

history curricula, largely influenced by overseas

practice.24 While on the mainland the political climate

has prevented the adoption of a genuinely critical

approach to history in official syllabuses, textbooks or

classrooms, in Taiwan there is already, as noted above,

an open and critical public debate over history and

national identity. The fact that this debate is being

conducted freely and publicly between parties with

radically differing viewpoints makes it all the more

likely that Taiwanese curriculum developers, teachers

and students will feel free to adopt a similarly open

and critical attitude. By contrast, the way in which

Hong Kong’s political climate has set narrow parameters

for this debate continues to make it if not impossible,

then at least much less likely that officials, textbook

publishers or teachers will risk practising the critical

approach that they preach.

Democracy and the ‘craft’ of history in Hong Kong

24 Attempts at reform in mainland China are mentioned in Chapter 7 above.

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Although the division of the school history

curriculum into two entirely separate subjects may be

unique to Hong Kong, this has arisen out of a specific

set of historical circumstances, and is not a reflection

of any ineffable cultural schism between ‘East’ and

‘West’. Those who promote an ethno-centric, culturalist

approach to history are not expressing a purely or

essentially Chinese perspective, but are rather speaking

the international language of populist nationalism.

Conversely, the sort of critical approach to the past

that developers of the History curriculum have attempted

to encourage, far from being incompatible with ‘Chinese

culture’, is a reflection of the culture and values of

these Chinese Hongkongers. They are none the less

‘authentically’ Chinese for having been influenced by

ideas from overseas.

The concern with achieving cultural ‘authenticity’

in approaches to the past is far from unique to China.

As was discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, there has in

recent years been a growing tendency amongst historians,

educationalists and others in what is commonly termed

‘the West’ to ‘essentialise’ culture, and to accord to

it the sort of determining role that Marxists typically

give to socio-economic forces. Foremost amongst those

who have treated culture in this way have been those

influenced by postmodernist or post-structuralist ideas.

Following thinkers such as Foucault, they have reacted

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against attempts by Marxists and others to explain

history or culture ‘scientifically’ by proclaiming the

hopelessness of any search for ‘truth’, and adopting

instead the Nietszchean model of ‘genealogy’.

Postmodernists in Western countries have generally

adopted a left-wing stance, and have therefore attacked

historical accounts which they see as elite-oriented,

Eurocentric or otherwise tending to favour ‘hegemonic’

interests. However, some postmodernist approaches to

‘multi-culturalism’ have themselves been criticised by

Brown and others for fostering an intolerant ‘micro-

fascism’, while postmodernist arguments have also been

deployed by scholars in mainland China seeking to

reinforce the case for the incommensurability of Chinese

culture. In Chapter 9 it was noted that such ideas have

also influenced arguments in defence of the separate

status of the Chinese History subject in Hong Kong.

The challenge posed by postmodernism has forced

historians, philosophers and educationalists in

countries such as Britain, America and Australia to

reflect upon and defend their practice in a way in which

historians, in particular, have not previously been

prone to do. It was argued in Chapter 2 that Alasdair

MacIntyre’s model of a craft tradition, also implicit in

R.G. Collingwood’s philosophy, provides the best model

of what history is and what it is for. This vision of

history as a ‘craft’ differs not only from the

genealogical approach of Nietszche, Foucault and their

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intellectual heirs, but also from the ‘encyclopaedic’

tradition of positivist social science. It conceives of

truth and best practice not in absolute terms, but in

relation to a living tradition of enquiry concerning

‘the good’. History is, in this view, not just one

amongst many academic disciplines, since a historical

perspective is integral to any and every ‘craft

tradition’. Nor is history simply a mountain of

accumulated ‘facts’ which, taken together, provide us

with a true picture of the past. Discovering the truth

about the past may be the ‘telos’ of history as a

discipline, but what the student needs most of all to

understand is how knowledge of the past is possible, why

it is important, and what is involved in being a good

historian.

Despite the fact that relatively few historians and

educationalists make reference to Collingwood or

MacIntyre, or even appear to have read them, the

challenge of defending history against the postmodernist

critique, and that of justifying its status as a school

subject, have resulted in the articulation of a vision

that closely approximates to that of a ‘craft

tradition’. This has been evident, as outlined in

Chapter 3, in the growing emphasis over the past thirty

years in North America, Australia and parts of Europe on

the importance of teaching students to exercise

analytical ‘skills’ when studying history. In addition,

since the practice of citizenship is perhaps the most

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important ‘craft’ of all, the role which the critical

study of the national and global past can play in

preparing pupils as liberal-democratic citizens has

often been accorded particular importance.

It is no accident that the critical, ‘skills’-based

approach to history has been elaborated and promoted

most extensively in liberal-democratic states. This does

not mean that the teaching of history in such countries

is entirely consistent with the craft-based conception

of the discipline, or that official history curricula

are entirely philosophically coherent. As was indicated

in Chapter 3, pressures exist in most countries for

history to be taught in a nationalistic, triumphalist

manner – or, which in some ways the other side of the

same coin, for the history of allegedly persecuted

minorities to be taught in a similarly celebratory,

uncritical fashion. Even in democratic states, such

demands may need to be accommodated or mediated in an

effort to achieve a politically viable consensus. At the

same time, the right balance needs to be found between

teaching historical ‘skills’, and providing students

with a basis of information sufficiently secure to

enable them to begin to exercise such ‘skills’. For

example, research comparing history teaching in Britain

and Japan,25 and some of the comments made by London

examiners vetting Hong Kong examinations, suggest that25 Martin Booth, Masayuki Sato and Richard Matthews, ‘Case Studies of History Teaching in Japanese Junior High Schools and English Comprehensive Secondary Schools’ (Compare, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1995), pp. 279-301.

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striking a suitable balance between the teaching of

‘skills’ and information remains a problem for British

history teachers. Debates over teaching methods and

curriculum content in Europe, America, Australia and

worldwide look set to continue.

The ongoing controversy over ‘New History’ in Hong

Kong may similarly force local historians, teachers and

curriculum developers to reflect more profoundly upon

their practice, and to articulate more clearly and

forcefully the rationale which underpins it. The present

study has shown that some of the most formidable

problems they face in attempting to promote a critical,

‘skills’-based approach to history have been and remain

the use of English as the main language of instruction,

and the generally low level of teacher professionalism.

Of these, language has been perhaps the most intractable

problem, and must take much of the blame for the

popularity of poor-quality, over-simplified textbooks

and cramming aids. The poor standard of English, as well

as lack of confidence in teachers, have also to some

extent handicapped efforts to reform examinations.

Assessment reform remains central to attempts by History

curriculum developers challenge the prevalent

‘encyclopaedic’ educational culture, with its

overwhelming emphasis on the accumulation of facts at

the expense of analytical training. Recent shifts in

medium-of-instruction policy, and talk of introducing

project work and school-based assessment, therefore hold

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out the prospect of some progress towards a more

critical, ‘skills’-based approach to history teaching.

However, even if the language problem is tackled

effectively, and assessment reform is forthcoming – big

‘ifs’, given the current confusion of educational

policy-making in Hong Kong – there remains another issue

that such reforms on their own cannot address. This is

the influence of an illiberal political climate upon the

curriculum policy-making process, and in particular on

the willingness of curriculum developers to take the

lead in promoting a genuinely critical approach to the

local and national past. Even in the absence of direct

governmental interference in their work, officials and

others involved in History curriculum development have

felt obliged to work within parameters of political

acceptability which have meant the exclusion from

syllabuses and textbooks of many of the most important

and controversial issues in Hong Kong and Chinese

history. At the same time, the political climate has

increasingly encouraged the active promotion,

particularly in the Chinese History subject, of a ‘one

China’ orthodoxy with its roots in an ahistorical,

culturalist nationalism. The present study demonstrates,

as studies of history curricula elsewhere have done,

that the development of the history curriculum in Hong

Kong must be seen in its social, cultural and, in

particular, its political context. This context, itself

the product of man-made history and not of any ineffable

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cultural essence, has made it especially difficult for

those who have attempted to promote a liberal, critical

approach to the study of history. Whether their liberal

vision, or a more nationalist, chauvinist one, will in

future come to dominate Hong Kong’s history curriculum,

depends very largely upon what sort of political

community Hong Kong wants, or is allowed, to become.

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