I couldn’t but thinking problem of humanities is the lack of demand of humanities Ph.D. Other than university or community college, who has the need to hire an specialized educated humanities Ph.D.? Maybe the market is the solution, let the humanities graduate program shrink according to market demand. Maybe we will have a lot less humanities Ph.D and some department won’t survive, but it will better for the school (financial)and for the graduates (less competition, easier to find job)

By PATRICIA COHEN, NY Times, April 8, 2010

Law students get a diploma in three years. Medical students receive an M.D. in four. But for graduate students in the humanities, it takes, on average, more than nine years to complete a degree. What some of those Ph.D. recipients may not realize is that they could spend another nine years, or more, looking for a tenure-track teaching job at a college or university — without ever finding one.
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Education Life

As the recession has downsized university endowments and departments, the sense of crisis that has surrounded graduate education for more than a decade has sharpened. “What’s worse than desperate?” asks William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Michigan, who writes a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education under the name Thomas H. Benton.

A graduate-school Cassandra, Dr. Pannapacker calls the graduate apprenticeship system bankrupt and warns students against the heartbreak of pursuing a Ph.D. While finishing his own degree in American civilization at Harvard in 1999 (another difficult job year), he helped organize a protest at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, an organization of scholars and professors of language and literature.

On a large reproduction of Goya’s bloody painting “Saturn Devouring His Son,” he wrote, “Enjoying your apprenticeship yet?”

First- and second-year Ph.D. students in, say, English literature may not face the same aching course load or backstabbing competition as their friends in medical and law schools, but they have a longer haul ahead. Doctoral students are expected not only to master a wide swath of material to pass general and oral exams, but to produce a nearly book-length dissertation of original research that, depending on the subject, may ultimately sit on a shelf as undisturbed as the Epsom salts at the back of the medicine chest. These students must earn their keep by patching together a mix of grants and wages for helping to teach undergraduate courses — a job that eats into research time. Third-year medical students may be bleary eyed from hospital rotations, but at least the work goes toward their degree.

This system of financing is partly responsible for the absurdly long time it can take to get a degree in the humanities, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. In many countries, the government pays students to complete Ph.D.’s within a certain time frame, perhaps three or four years.

In the United States, given that most students take time off, nearly a dozen years can pass between receiving a B.A. and Ph.D. About half who enter a humanities doctoral program drop out along the way. The average student receiving a Ph.D. today is 35 years old, $23,000 in debt and facing a historically bad job market. Adjunct jobs — with year-to-year contracts, no benefits and no security — may be the only option.

Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and another longtime critic of the Ph.D. production process, notes: “Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process.” In his new book, “The Marketplace of Ideas,” he writes, “Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get.”

In the spring issue of the Modern Language Association’s newsletter, Sidonie Smith, an English professor at the University of Michigan and president of the organization, resuscitated a proposal that had been swirling around blue-ribbon task forces and educational panels for years: to broaden the range of research options beyond the classic dissertation to include already-published peer-reviewed essays, research portfolios and digital publications and presentations. Aside from shortening the Ph.D. process, she argues, this would make scholarship less arcane and more relevant.

Despite high-level support for reform, educators say that wholesale change is not likely any time soon. For one, any meaningful transformation in doctoral requirements must be adopted universally, says Richard Wheeler, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs and former dean of the graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Who would want to attend a program that another university — and potential employer — doesn’t recognize as valid? “It hasn’t reached enough of a crisis point yet,” Dr. Wheeler says.

“It’s very hard to get through the graduate student experience,” he adds.

The union of graduate students at Illinois staged a brief strike in November over guarantees that their tuition would be waived. Dr. Wheeler attributes the protest to general discontent as much as specific employment issues. “There’s despair, anger, frustration,” he says. “A lot of people are unhappy.”

Dr. Wheeler, who received his English Ph.D. in 1969, took four years to finish. Graduate programs have since added more stringent requirements, he says, and expectations for what a degree holder is supposed to have accomplished have radically increased. He had not published anything when he was hired; today, applicants are expected to have a list of published research on their résumés.
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The job problem has been brewing for years. In 1989, William G. Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa issued a widely publicized report that forecast a huge turnover in faculty and suggested the creation of a federal program to increase humanities and social sciences Ph.D.’s. Many students — Dr. Pannapacker included — took that advice to heart. Ph.D. production in English and American language and literature grew 61 percent between 1987 and 1995; history Ph.D.’s rose by 51 percent.

By the late 1990s, though, the spanking-new degree candidates discovered just how mistaken the Bowen-Sosa report was. The end of mandatory retirement and the increase in the use of part-time and adjunct faculty meant there were many more exceptionally qualified job seekers than jobs. The current recession has only exacerbated the problem, with many institutions imposing hiring freezes or layoffs. The M.L.A., for example, reported that its total job listings dropped by a quarter in the 2008-2009 academic year, the largest single-year decline in the 34 years that the organization has been doing job counts. And these numbers don’t include postings that were subsequently canceled because of budget cuts.

At the same time, the practice of hiring off-tenure teachers is growing. According to a new survey of humanities departments by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, half of the faculty members in English and foreign languages — more than any other department — are not on a tenure track. Part of the reason for the large number is that freshman composition classes, which are often required, are taught by those departments, and adjuncts.

Unlike in life science or engineering, the number of doctoral degrees awarded in the humanities — the pool of fields that generally include languages, history, philosophy, music, drama and archeology — has actually dipped in the last few years, with 4,722 recipients in 2008 (down from 5,112 in 2007), according to the National Science Foundation.

But more than a third of those degree-holders had no definite job (part or full time, off or on a tenure track) or any postdoctoral study commitment.

The number of degrees may dip further. Some major universities, including Harvard, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Emory and Northwestern, reduced the number of doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences they admitted this past year. Much more radical cuts would be required to bring the supply of graduates and the demand for them into balance, and that would be a solution that stirs up its own problems. If enrollment drops too low, there may not be enough students to justify courses in specialized areas.

Other practical reasons exist for resisting reductions. Doctoral programs bring prestige to a university and help retain faculty members who want to mentor the next generation of scholars. They also provide the staff for courses offered to first- and second-year undergraduates — a task many tenured faculty members resist. Even graduate students on full scholarships are cheap labor if they are teaching enough tuition-paying undergraduates.

Dr. Wheeler would like to reverse that practice, at least. “Putting as many faculty in front of undergraduates as possible,” he says, would not only improve the quality of education but would also increase the demand for more tenured faculty members over time.

Funding to hire the professors in the first place has to be there, however.

Dr. Pannapacker has rebuked graduate schools for perpetuating a culture in which unattainable academic careers are portrayed as the only worthwhile goal, and for failing to level with students about their true prospects. With more transparency — if every graduate program published its attrition rate, average debt of its students, time to completion, and what kind of job its graduates got — undergraduates, he says, could make more-informed choices.

“Academe encourages students to think of what they’re doing as a special kind of calling or vocation which is exempt from the rules of the marketplace,” he says. Those who look to work outside the scholarly world are seen as rejecting the academy’s core values. “They socialize students into believing they can’t leave academe or shouldn’t, which is why they hang on year after year as adjuncts, rather than pursue alternative careers.”

A bad job market, too, tempts graduate students to stay even longer, since being out on the job circuit for more than a year tends to taint candidates.

As the number of tenure-track jobs shrink, Ms. Stewart of the Council of Graduate Schools says, the profession needs to address these failings.

“Humanities Ph.D.’s have focused exclusively on the academic job market,” Ms. Stewart says. “They don’t have anyplace else to go, or they don’t perceive that they have anyplace else to go.”

Credit shopping is nothing new. I did it when I was in high school many many years ago. I took my English OAC in a public school in summer because the English teacher in my school is really though. Buying the credit without studying is a bit too much, but it is natural that students will take the difficult courses with an easy teacher. For example, I got a 20% grade increase. That makes a huge difference in university application. The only fair admission system is public exam system like HKCEE.

By Sandy Farran | November 6th, 2009 | Macleans
If you need better marks, some private schools are happy to oblige—for a fee

One afternoon in the spring of 2007, teacher Peter Hill was recording marks when he confided to a colleague that one of his Grade 12 English students was in danger of failing. In fact, Hill explained, he’d been concerned about the grades of several of his English 12 students at University Hill Secondary School in Vancouver, and he thought it strange that none of them had come to him for extra help.

“I was used to handing back essays to kids and if they weren’t doing well they’d come to me after school and they’d want to know how they could improve,” says Hill. “But in this case I handed back the essays and they’d just sort of grin at me, throw the essay away or whatever. And I was like, ‘God, that’s different.’ ” His colleague, a guidance counsellor, told Hill not to worry: the student would likely get a good mark anyway because she was taking the same course after-hours at a nearby independent school. Hill was stunned: “I just said, ‘Huh? What other school?’ ”

It turned out that five of Hill’s students had been taking Grade 12 English at Century High, an independent school that catered largely to international students hoping to attend a prestigious university in Canada or the United States. The students would regularly attend Hill’s class during the day, then take the same class at Century in the evening or on Saturday. “The weird thing is that kids were enrolled here [at University Hill] taking English with me and they were going to Century High, and if they decided they wanted the Century High mark, then it would go on their transcript and it would appear as if the mark came from this school,” says Hill. In British Columbia, that was made possible a few years ago when the province introduced a new policy allowing students to take courses from different institutions. The change was intended to provide choice for rural students, who could take online courses not offered in their home schools and then choose their “best mark” to appear on their transcript. But the policy has led to so-called credit shopping, too.

It bothered Hill considerably that a student could be taking the same class at two schools at the same time, then use the higher marks on her application to university—so much so that he decided to do a bit of sleuthing. He found a B.C. government website that lists class marks and provincial exam results for every school—private and public—in the province. And he found some disturbing information: for the year 2006-2007, 101 Century High students (60 per cent of the class) received a B grade or higher in Grade 12 English; just three failed. When he looked at how the same group of 138 students performed on standardized provincial exams, the results were just the opposite: 108 had failed the exam and only eight students got a B grade or higher. He found similar differences dating back to 2003-2004, when the online records begin. And Century wasn’t the only independent school showing a large difference between marks awarded by teachers and provincial exam results.

Hill decided to blow the whistle. He reported his findings to the local media, and a few days later then-minister of education Shirley Bond ordered an inspection of Century and any other school—public or private—that had big discrepancies between class marks and standardized exam results. In March 2007, the B.C. government issued warnings to five independent high schools in Vancouver — Century, Kingston, Royal Canadian College, Pattison and St. John’s International— insisting they move quickly to address concerns about large disparities between English 12 marks on provincial exams and the marks awarded students for class work.

It’s long been common practice for secondary students to attend night or summer school to make up a missed credit or improve a grade. Among teenagers, some public schools are known to be more difficult than others, and some teachers mark easier than others. But that’s not new, and by all accounts the public system is still equitable. On the other hand, private schools, once the exclusive domain of the rich, have become more popular. Students from upper middle- and middle-class backgrounds, along with English-as-second-language students with excellent grades in math and science but lousy English marks, are turning to private schools because of their low student-teacher ratios, flexible schedules and specialized programs catering to learning disabilities or language instruction. The students’ goal is to get not just good marks, but outstanding ones. As the number of students attending university has grown over the past decade, competition for admission to choice programs has grown fierce, in some cases pushing average entering grades into the 90s.

Of course, most private schools are reputable. Yet some operations—often referred to as “credit mills” or “credit shops”—are using students desperate to get into university (along with their parents) as cash cows. As long as a student slaps down hundreds of dollars per credit—in some cases as much as $1,500—these schools are happy to oblige with marks in the 80s and 90s, whether the student earns them or not.

On May 18, 2009, at 8:25:35 p.m., a Toronto high school student using the handle Skeske1234 posted the following on a forum hosted by StudentAwards.com, a popular site that matches high school students with scholarship and bursary information at Canadian universities.

Skeske1234: I want to upgrade my grade 12 advanced functions mark this summer, but I am not sure what private school I should go to . . . there are many . . . many in Toronto. Name the one that you went to or that you know someone who went to that school and tell me about your experience there. Off the top of my head, some questions:

What mark did you end up getting?

How was the workload, exam and teachers?

How did the process go about and did it go smoothly for when the school transfers your mark back to our school—did the private school upload the mark on OUAC [Ontario Universities’ Application Centre] or did they send the mark back to your original school?

What did you specifically tell guidance counsellor when you knew that you wanted to upgrade or take a credit during the summer at a private school?

Later that evening, ZoSo471 replied with a name of a private school in Markham, Ont.

ZoSo471: I took it for English

I got 90 per cent

Absolutely no workload, exam was like 15 minutes, teacher was smart but naive

Process was smooth, I didn’t have to do anything

Guidance counsellor didn’t like it, especially with a course like English, but it was worth it.

It was basically a buy your mark, but we read a lot of books so that counts for something . . .

Unlike Vancouver’s Peter Hill, educators in Ontario, particularly in the Toronto area, no longer find this kind of disclosure from students surprising. For Joan Timmings, head of guidance at Joan Fraser Secondary School in Mississauga and past president of the Peel Guidance Heads Association, the issue started to bubble up about five years ago at “pockets of schools” in Peel Region, west of Toronto. Since then, Timmings says, the number of public high school students taking one or more courses at private school has grown rapidly. “We did a needs assessment with our group of guidance heads, and it was almost the No. 1 area of concern that they wanted to have addressed by the executive,” says Timmings.

Counsellors in Toronto and, to a lesser extent, in Ottawa and London express similar concerns. The problems they cite include students who are guaranteed A’s as soon as they sign on the dotted line and hand over the tuition, and students who do not have the course prerequisite (in some cases, they don’t even have the prerequisite for the prerequisite) somehow getting an 85 per cent or higher at a private institution. In the public school system, a principal can waiver a prerequisite, but it’s done only under exceptional circumstances. Suspicion has also been raised by the number of courses some students are taking and the amount of time required to complete a full credit course. “The Grade 12 year is a heavy year, and most students take three or a maximum of four courses at once in a semestered program,” says Timmings. “But we have students taking four, five, six, seven courses at the same time. They may be taking three or four here in day school and then taking two or three more at the private institution. There seems to be no limit, and they will get exceptional marks in those courses.” Furthermore, Timmings says, some students will actually drop out halfway through a semester and then finish their courses by the end of the semester at a private school. “I don’t know how, in let’s say two months, they’ll have finished four entire courses if not more,” she says. “If they’re supposed to be in a 110-hour course, what they’re doing there is theoretically an impossibility.”

In the spring of 2008, principals at several Toronto public high schools decided to track the number of their students taking one or more credits at private academies. As far as anyone knew, it had never officially been done. Anecdotally, everyone from the minister of education to the school board seems to know about the problem, but unlike British Columbia, Ontario does not have provincial exams, so comparisons are difficult. “We’re collecting the data. The data tell the story,” says Clara Williams, principal at York Mills Collegiate Institute in North Toronto. “There’s no question they [private academies] are popping up all over the place right across the province. In Scarborough, they are popping up everywhere. And if they close they just reopen at another place.”

Williams wouldn’t divulge the statistics for York Mills. But Beverley Ohashi, principal at Toronto’s Earl Haig Secondary School, did. During the 2007-2008 academic year, 101 Earl Haig students took a total of 136 credits at 30 private schools. Most took Grade 12 courses in English, followed by math, then a few courses in social science and sciences. “When [we] compared the mark to the mark in our programs, some of them [showed] such a big range that you wonder about the integrity of the program that is being offered,” says O’Hashi.

At Toronto’s Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, principal Peggy Aitchison said 140 students took credits part-time at private schools in 2007-2008, mostly in Grade 12 math or English; typically, they earned marks 15 to 40 points higher than at Forest Hill. (Several other schools were part of the group in Toronto that collected the data, but many of those contacted by Maclean’s did not return calls. Instead, Maclean’s was referred to Mary Jane McNamara, central co-ordinating principal, secondary curriculum, at the Toronto District School Board; she did not respond to a request for an interview.)

This is not just a concern for public schools. Some of Toronto’s most respected private schools, known for their tough academic programs, are grappling with the same issue. Vince Pagano, the principal at Crestwood Preparatory in northeast Toronto, first noticed his students taking credits outside Crestwood during the early 1990s. “My biggest problem is the marks that are coming back are, on occasion, completely out of line, and the difference can be huge,” says Pagano. “The example of a kid who got a credit over a three-week period actually floored me because, technically anyway, there is a 110-hour requirement for all high school courses. So I don’t know how anybody can have 110 hours in three weeks—or four weeks or five weeks, for that matter.” Pagano is worried that a few bad apples will give all private schools a bad rep.

At the end of June, Maclean’s interviewed via Facebook several York Mills students who agreed to speak off the record. All three have successfully finished Grade 11.

Sixteen-year-old Ben took Grade 12 English at a private school while he was enrolled in Grade 11 at York Mills last year. Ben gets marks in the 90s in math and science, but English was a problem. He was afraid that if he doesn’t get a high Grade 12 English mark, he won’t get into life sciences at McMaster. (He eventually wants to be a dentist.) “I took this route because some of the courses in high school are especially hard and you can’t get higher than 60 or 70 [per cent],” he says. “However, once you take it in private school, you can easily get 80s. Personally I would recommend it to other people, but some people take all their courses there [private school] because they think they could get into university. That’s true. But they’ll get kicked out after the first semester because they haven’t learned anything.”

Ben ended up with an 87 per cent in the private school course.

Sam just finished Grade 11 at York Mills and is seriously thinking of taking a course or two at a private school next year. “To be honest,” he wrote, “in this age it’s all about getting into university, and with all the competition, and an increasing number of immigrants coming from South Asia and East Asia with a lot more knowledge than what most Canadian-born students have, the competition gets a lot tougher.”

Seventeen-year-old Peter took an English 12 course at a private school this summer. At York Mills, his Grade 11 math and business marks are in the mid-80s; his computer mark is in the 90s.“The main reason I am taking English in summer school is to open up more space in day school to do other subjects,” he wrote. “I’m not looking for an easy mark. I’m a French immersion student; however, languages are my weakest subjects, and during the year, they are lowest priority. Having only one subject to deal with at a time will help divert all my efforts into that subject. I plan on going into math/business and I do not plan on submitting English 4U as one of my top six courses, so taking a course in summer school is just to get it out of the way for my last year.”

In Ontario, the problem first surfaced publicly in 2003 during the so-called double-cohort year, when the provincial government eliminated Grade 13. For one year only, Grade 12 and 13 students applied to university at the same time. To meet the increase in demand, the Ontario government poured millions into new infrastructure and new spaces at universities. Despite assurances that there would be enough spots for everyone who wanted to go, students and parents panicked. “There was a lot of finger-pointing,” says Queen’s University registrar Jo-Anne Brady.

Around the same time, a guidance counsellor at Toronto’s Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute went public after discovering that about 50 of the school’s Grade 12 students were taking one or two credits at private academies. In his view, students were essentially buying credits. Responding to the public outcry, between September 2004 and June 2006 government inspectors shut down 10 private academies, finding they weren’t meeting instruction standards set out by the Education Act.

In Ontario, all private schools are required to register annually with the government, but only schools that grant credits leading to the Ontario Secondary School Diploma are inspected—generally every two years, but more often if they are having problems, are new or are expanding. If registration is revoked, however, the school may reapply to the ministry to reopen as a credit-granting institution in the following school year. Today, some of the private schools that were closed in 2004-06 have reopened under new names, or under the same name but in a different location. No other private schools have been shut down since that time.

The Ontario government made other changes to try to address the problem. Under the Education Act, a student’s home school is responsible for recording grades on the official transcript. So when a student leaves the home school to take a couple of courses, she typically brings those results back to her home school for inclusion on the transcript. That practice angered guidance counsellors and teachers, because first of all the grades were suspect, and secondly—at least back then—it looked as if they themselves had given the marks.

The Ontario Universities’ Application Centre made some electronic changes that allowed home high schools to include their “mident numbers”—the official identifiers given by the ministry to every school, public and private, in the province—on the record of grades sent to OUAC, which in turn sends the record on to universities. “The change allowed high schools to report a separate mident number for [outside grades] so that it was clear to the application centre and to the universities receiving the marks that this was not one of their courses,” says Wilfrid Laurier registrar Ray Darling, who at the time of the change chaired the Ontario Universities Council on Admissions.

On the surface, the issue disappeared. The OUAC and universities could now identify where a credit has come from. But the system is far from perfect.

In a letter last December to Darling, Timmings explained why the current system is not working. “A few years ago, the OUAC made it possible for guidance counsellors to indicate the mident number associated with each credit. This is a cumbersome task in this day of electronic-grades-transmission, requiring guidance counsellors to keep track of which credits are earned at other institutions and change the mident number for each such credit manually. Cumbersome or not, however, some guidance counsellors have been following this process regularly with the hope that someone is keeping track of this data and perhaps noticing that the high grades earned from some of these private institutions do not predict the same level of success in university studies that do the grades from regular day schools. Knowing that such research is actually occurring would . . . encourage guidance counsellors in our area to continue and to increase their efforts to provide the mident data via the OUAC tool.”

In August, in response to concerns from educators that some private schools are still inflating grades despite the addition of the mident number to transcripts, the Education Ministry announced that beginning in 2010, credits earned at private schools will be marked with the letter “P” on transcripts. Timmings believes it’s a step in the right direction. But many educators aren’t convinced that it’s an answer—after all, a number or a letter doesn’t indicate whether a student deserved that grade.

In an interview with Maclean’s, Darling admits that until now universities have not done anything with the data. “Our whole system relies on ‘a grade is a grade is a grade,’ ” says Darling. “If we have to give in to weightings of different schools and delivery methods, summer school versus distance versus day school—boy, it would get pretty ugly and messy.” Furthermore, most decisions by far are made by computer. “You couldn’t go through them [applications] manually,” Darling says. He and Ken Lavigne, the registrar at the University of Waterloo, have agreed to undertake a joint study of the data sometime in the future—at the moment, it’s still in the planning phase. “I think that one of the fears when we first opened this can of worms,” Darling explains, “was people were saying, ‘Great, we can use this to shut down people who are abusing the system, but then are you going to take the next step and start examining all of us and see where our grades are at?’ ”

Tracking high schools using their government-issued identification number is not new. In the past, the University of Toronto’s engineering faculty did it until the province changed the curriculum during the double cohort. The University of Waterloo’s engineering faculty still makes minor adjustments to marks based on high school. But the practice has never really taken off, largely because it’s hugely unpopular among high school and university officials alike. “If I said I’m interested in School X, we could go back through our records and identify every student who has taken courses at school X,” explains Karel Swift, the registrar at the University of Toronto. “And if we accepted them, and they came here, we could then look at how they did. That would take years and it would not be useful unless you had a fairly large number of students from that school. It would be several years hence and the school could have disappeared or changed or changed its name.” And then there’s a practical reality: “No matter how good or not good a school may be,” Swift says, “a student could be legitimately a very good student and could do very well [at university] no matter what their prior circumstances.”

Students say regulating private schools is a good start, but more needs to be done to improve the education system itself in Ontario. Hailey Simpson, who is in first year at the University of Guelph, hasn’t taken a course at a private school, but she has friends who have and she’s somewhat sympathetic. “Obviously if students are seeking private school courses,” Simpson says, “there is something wrong with the regular high school system.” She also wonders why so many students stick around for another year after finishing Grade 12—the so-called victory lap, during which they repeat courses or take additional courses in an effort to improve their marks. Some even see it as a way to do extracurricular activities they never had time for before, such as running for student council or participating on a sports team. “I think the problem started [in Ontario] when they got rid of Grade 13,” she says. “It has compacted everything down on us and it makes our lives stressful because there is so much to do.”

York Mills student Sam also lays the blame on the system itself: “Students from my school cannot cope with the workload, and the problem starts with the high schools.” And like many other students, he laments the high marks required to get into universities: “It would be totally awesome if universities cared a little more about [other] criteria and less about marks.”

Meanwhile, in British Columbia, the 2007-2008 individual school results have recently been posted on the government’s website. It appears that Century, Royal Canadian, Pattison and St. John’s College International have aligned their grading practices more closely with provincial standards. One of the schools, Kingston High, has closed, citing a drop in student enrolment after the government issued its warning. For the remaining four schools, the differences between exam marks and classroom marks have shrunk. “It’s amazing how much closer the exam mark is to the school mark compared to those other years where the school marks as all A’s and the exam marks were F’s, in effect,” says English teacher Hill.

Deborah Robinson, executive director, strategic enrolment management at the University of British Columbia, has followed the issue closely. She says that UBC doesn’t adjust marks based on where a student comes from, but some of the government’s recent policies have made things more difficult for admissions people. “Has the ministry complicated our lives by opening up choice?” Robinson asks. “Yes, they have.”

For one thing, she’s recently seen discrepancies among students taking courses through distance learning. “As students are wont to do, they quickly learn which ones are easier and which ones are tougher,” says Robinson, whose university has recently introduced new rules about distance learning credits. “We had a counsellor report to us that a student signed up for a distance education course on Friday and completed it on Monday, and actually received a mark in the 90s,” says Robinson.

There isn’t a university admissions person in the land who wouldn’t want to use more than marks to assess student applications. Certain programs, such as music or drama, have their own admissions process, and some other programs ask students to write a personal essay. But for most applicants, that kind of personal attention is simply not possible. “As Canada’s top institutions start to attract more and more students, not only nationally but internationally as well, we have to start to deal with all kinds of different transcripts and credentials and marking schemes,” says Robinson. “What you try to do is get it right 95 per cent of the time. And you wish that it was more exact than that, but it’s not.”

So what happened to that Grade 12 student who was flunking English at University Hill, the one Peter Hill was so concerned about? The teacher chuckles when asked if his student graduated. “Oh, yes,” he says. “She got a 40 per cent class mark in my course and a 90 per cent course mark from Century. She failed the provincial exam, but after her exam marks were blended with her mark from Century she received an overall 70 per cent in the course.”

She ended up in a prestigious science program at UBC.

一﹕零

這個階段是知識的起點﹐正確點來說還未擁有任何知識。初次聽到一個陌生的詞語﹐完全不明白這個字的意思﹐這便是我們初次與這個知識的相遇。不要少看這似有還無的第一步﹐每個人的每一個知識也是從零開始學起。只有醒察自己的無知﹐知道有這一個知識的存在﹐我們才可以踏上學習之途。

二﹕知

當我們聽過這個知識後﹐引起我們學習的動機﹐下一個階段便是知。經過一輪學習後﹐我們大約知道這個知識是什麼﹐知道它在浩翰知識系統中的位置。我們還不能完全掌握知識的內容﹐不過當別人說起這個的時候﹐我們至少不會覺得一頭霧水。

三﹕考

很多學生讀書﹐看完課本溫完習後﹐以為自學懂了﹐豈料到考試時卻不合格。知是一個主觀的感覺﹐只有當事人才知道自己懂不懂。別人只能通過考試或考核﹐透過問答的方式﹐才能夠斷定我們是否真的懂得那個知識。這個階段比知的階段﹐學習又加深了一層。我們不單是自己知道﹐還能夠表達出來﹐讓別人也知道我們知道。通過與別人溝通那個知識﹐我們才能確認我們是真的知道﹐並非以為自己知道的錯覺。

四﹕用

能夠回答考試或別人的提問﹐我們至少知道我們擁有那個知識。不過那只是死知識﹐只是一堆記憶。那個知識要經過消化吸引﹐將之內化為自身經驗的一部份﹐我們才能夠靈活地把知識運用出來。我們不只能夠重覆學習過的方法﹐更可以舉一反三﹐或將知識應用在沒有教過的地方。

五﹕教

一般人以為知識能答能用﹐已經算是把知識學懂了。可是當我們要把知識傳授給別人時﹐老師和學生的立場換轉了﹐我們才會忽然發現自己原來有很多內容還未搞清楚。要成功把知識解釋給完全不懂的人聽﹐必先要徹底理解知識的一切﹐否則聽的人根本不知你在說什麼。當我們看到學生豁然開竅﹐忽然明白知識的內容﹐那刻我們才自已掌握的是什麼知識。

六﹕破

最後階段是最艱難的一步﹐絕大部份人只能走到教的階段﹐甚至不知道還有這最後一步。只有把知識內外看通睇透的人﹐才能夠突破這個知識的限制﹐修正這個知識的不足和錯誤。我們只有超越這個知識﹐我們才是完全的學習了這個知識。

中文中學與副學士是目前香港教育兩大難題﹐陶傑拿這兩個題目來開刀是容易目標。對著如此大個的目標﹐他竟然可以完全射不中紅心﹐不著邊際地打靶外的稻草人。他在文中說﹕「搞成今天這個亂局，關鍵在於提倡種種「教育改革」的人，嘴巴向平民宣傳，骨子裡自己也不相信。他告訴你母語教學如何好，自己的子女都往英美送。他告訴你副學士是一條通往天堂的光明之路，但高官的子女有哪一個留在香港讀「副學士」的呢？」

陶傑這番說話﹐可笑程度大慨等於問麥當奴的總裁﹐為什麼你不吃漢堡包﹐卻走去食法國大餐。中中和副學士﹐打從開始就是次等貨﹐給沒能力不及﹐不能升讀英中和大學的學生報讀。母語教學的好處﹐就只限於英文程度不夠的學生。副學生更是半吊子的學位﹐給沒有資格入讀學士的學生一個機會﹐總好過要他們做雙失年青。看高官對教育改革的宣傳﹐只要細心留意字裏行間的含意﹐就不難發現中中和副學士是次貨的事實。若有人對官方宣傳信到十足﹐走去讀中中和副學士﹐只好怪自己死蠢了。不過也很難怪他們﹐不是死蠢就不會淪落到要讀中中和副學士。高官理所當然地也會渴望子女成材﹐他們又怎會笨得子女受次貨教育呢﹖說起來香港的大學水平雖然不差﹐但與歐美的名牌大學還有一大段距離。若果高官子女天資優厚後天勤力﹐家境又豐厚付得起外國名校的學費﹐還留在香港讀書就肯定是腦袋不正常了。

陶傑在文中例牌地提出解決香港教育問題的方法﹐他在文中又說﹕「特區政府今天有一千多億盈餘，應該每年定幾十個獎學金名額，令機會平等，不論富貧，雨露均霑，這樣才可以為二十一世紀的香港培養真正的精英人才。」

說出這番話﹐大慨陶傑以為自己是真正的精英人才﹐借鏡自己留學英國後回港的經驗。很可惜在全球化的世界﹐真正的精英人才﹐會希罕香港這個彈丸之地嗎﹖送獎學金讓學子出國讀書﹐這張肯定是單程機票﹐一去無回頭。香港完全沒有科研沒有文化﹐讀文科理科的學生回港沒有出路﹐就算學成後不回港把獎學金嘔出來﹐計落可能還有著數。香港最引以自豪的金融業﹐可是若商科畢業生有得揀﹐你佔他會去華爾街還是去中環﹖醫生律師就更加不用說﹐外國讀書辛辛苦苦考了牌﹐竟然不能拿回香港用。要為香港培養真正的精英人才﹐就更加要搞好香港的教育﹐才可以吸引世界各地的精英來港工作定居。派錢送孩子出國讀書﹐只有陶傑才會想出如此白痴的辨法。他還要不是只說一次﹐不停重覆講完又講﹐足見他是個超級大白痴。

陶傑還批評現代的學童不長進﹐只懂追明星看獎門人刨八掛雜誌﹐說是香港學校的風氣有問題﹐家長要效法孟母三遷搬去外國讀好學校。不過他看錯了一件事﹐比起學校父母的身教更加重要。如果父母自己也煲電視劇集看獎門人刨八掛雜誌﹐搬去那兒讀書也沒有用。陶傑以為外國學生個個也看BBC就是太天真太傻了﹐外國學生不也是會沉迷搖滾樂隊﹐看些同樣是沒有營養的鬼佬電視劇﹐不看獎門人便看survivor。說不定獎門人的教育意義可能比survivor還好些。

人家陶傑是大才子﹐又怎會理我這些無名小卒的指指點點﹐插完他大慨對他不痛不癢﹐照舊在報章雜誌大講癈話批評香港的教育。不過狂插完陶傑一論﹐條氣總算順了點﹐哈﹗

母語教學支持者的第一個錯誤﹐是他們忘記了一個十分重要的事實﹐母語根本不是香港社會的成功語言。在低收入低智識階層﹐只懂得母語也許足夠應付日常生活所需。可是在香港社會若想出人頭地﹐不論是當乜師物師的專業人士﹐或是做金融物流旅遊業等行業﹐英文才是標準的共同語言。香港的大學使用英語授課﹐學生需要打好英語基礎﹐才能在港升讀大學。若選擇出國升學深造﹐學好英文更是不可缺少的基本條件。若果工作和學習環境主要是使用英語的話﹐使用母語教學的語言錯配﹐根本沒有好好訓練學生的語文能力﹐去準備學生應付未來的挑戰。

在美國和加拿大等移民國家﹐不論新移民的母語是什麼﹐教學語言也一律使用英語。因為英語才是社會使用的語言﹐只有使用通用語言去教學﹐才能好好準備學生投身社會。母語教學的學生初時也許比較易上手﹐除非他們打算整輩子也在低下階層生活﹐他們遲早也要經歷母語到英語的轉變﹐。年紀越輕就越易容從母語過渡到英語﹐到高中時才由母語轉英語就很辛苦。很多中中學生考取優成績入大學﹐但不要忘記他們絕大部份也要痛下苦功惡補英文。那些學生本身就天資優厚﹐若他們能從少接受英語教學﹐相信他們入大學之路會平坦容易得多。

母語教學支持者的第二個錯誤 ﹐是他們假定學生只能使用母語思考﹐知識可以輕易地從中文與英文間互相翻譯。若對香港精英的使用語文作細心觀察﹐就會發現大部人都不會用純中文交談或思考。有很多工作上使用的慨念﹐他們只懂得英文字彙﹐而不懂相應的中文解釋。若果懂的話也許要思索一番﹐從腦中某個被遣忘的角落找出中文解釋。他們在學校學習這些慨念時是用英文﹐工作上使用這些慨念是用英文﹐與其他人溝通這些慨念也是用英文﹐根本沒有需要用到中文的解釋。既然沒有使用中文解釋的需要﹐學校根本就不需要教中文解釋﹐倒不如直接教授這些慨念的英文詞彙。一來可以省卻學生中英翻譯的麻煩﹐更可以防止學生用錯誤的方法學習英文。

若果把一個慨念的中英詞彙同時教授給學生﹐很多學生會用記生字的方法去學習英文詞彙﹐這學習方法正正是犯了學習語言的大忌。若果是成年人學習新的語言﹐使用中英對照表去記生字﹐沒錯是很有效率的學習方法﹐因為成年人的腦袋已有龐大的慨念資料庫。可是這個學習方法有先天性限制﹐只能學習到勉強能寫能講的水平。兩個言語間詞彙不會有一對一的翻譯﹐若夾硬把一個英文字聯結一個中文字﹐英文永遠只會是隔層紗的第二言語﹐不可以成為思考語言的一部份。

可是學童的腦袋像一張白紙﹐他們沒有龐大慨念庫的包伏。當他們學習一個新的慨念時﹐不論先接觸的中文字或是英文字﹐對他們來說也只是一個新的符號。他們不是要把這個符號連結另一個言語的符號﹐而是把這個符號連結其他個簡單的慨念﹐從而組合理解新的慨念。若從小就只使用英語教導學生新慨念﹐久而久之學生就會建立起龐大的英文慨念庫。學生也許還不能完全掌握英文文法﹐但至少他們思考時能使用大量英語詞彙。在閱讀或聆聽英文資訊時﹐不用經過英譯中的一層功夫﹐可以直接地更有效率吸收新資訊。

當然香港的母語始終是中文﹐在最初學習最基本的新慨念時﹐那些慨念的英文字符號﹐還是無可避免連結去一些中文字符號的慨念上。隨著以英文為主的慨念庫不斷擴大﹐越來越來新慨念可以連結去英文字符號的慨念。也許英語水平與英語為母語的人還有一段距離﹐但至少也可以說是半個英語人。這個學習方法唯一的壞處﹐就是除了日常生活使用的中文外﹐中文在思考其他專有名詞或抽象慨念時就變成第二語言。不過既然那些慨念的中文解釋沒有用﹐不懂也沒有什麼損失。相信這點很多英中理科畢業的朋友也會認同。不論是物理化學生物電腦科的專有名詞﹐上到大學也要使用英文。若中學時用中文學習﹐入大學時就要從新學過一遍。反過來若中學時用英文學習﹐以後也沒有機會使用中文解釋。若果真的要用便查字典好了﹐反正英譯中比中譯英方便得多。

或有人會問﹐不是所有學生也準備升大學或出國﹐那麼他們使用母語學習不是更有效率嗎﹖對的﹐用英語學習是先苦後甜的策略﹐把中轉英無可避免的困難放在前面﹐越早面對就可以越早跨過這個障礙。若果學生無意晉身精英階層﹐學習英語對他們來說是多餘的投資。不是說鼓吹標簽效應﹐英中學生有升學優勢是不爭的事實。若從學生的成敗論英雄﹐中文中學只好淪為二等學校﹐努力提升一般學生的水平﹐卻無緣培訓以英語為主的社會精英。

申延閱讀﹕
葉一知 – 不重思考何須母語教學﹖
黃島主 – 母語教學﹐不能強迫 

香港教育學院的事件最近越鬧越大﹐從校長莫時禮不獲續約開始﹐到教職員因發表文章反對政府教策而被辭退﹐演變成教統局官員有否干預學術自由的風波。追朔事情的起末﹐整事件源於教院未來的發展方向﹐教統局主張把教院合併入其他大學﹐而教院本身則力爭升格改名為大學。可是不論是政府還是教院的爭論﹐妨忽認為除了合併與改名外﹐就沒有第三個可行的選擇。為什麼教院不可以安份守己﹐繼續發揮它專上學院的功用呢﹖

從政府的運用資源的角度去看﹐想把教院合併入其他大學﹐特別是沒有教育系的科大是很容易理解的。將教院變為科大的大埔分校﹐不單可以精簡行政架構﹐減少學校高層的開支﹐亦可以與科大其他學系互相調用資源。當然這個建議會損害教院高層的既得利益﹐一來飯碗可能不保﹐二來現在當土皇帝怎樣也好過將來寄人籬下﹐他們自然會強烈反對合併的建議。可是真實反對合併的理由沒有說服力﹐於是他們只好找各樣的藉口去反抗﹐由教育理念到為學生設想﹐說穿了也只是為保一己私利。以香港學生實際至上的性格﹐成績不好只能考入教院﹐卻抽條好簽拿科大學位畢業﹐對他們豈不會喜出望外﹐那有不支持之理。至於教育理念﹐反正科大沒有教育系﹐教學理念沒有既定立場﹐繼續現行路線也不是問題。

教院沒有大學之名的確可能令學生被看扁﹐可是把名稱冠上大學沒有解決問題﹐只不過僱主不說﹕噢﹗原來不是大學生﹐而改說﹕噢﹗原來是只間二流大學的大學生。單單改名字不會提升教育質素﹐亦不會吸引到成績優異的學生來報讀﹐二流學校就算改了名﹐也只會是間二流大學。好比八兩金走去把身份證上的名字改為劉德華﹐八兩金始終是八兩金﹐不會成為萬人迷金像獎影帝的劉德華。香港只有三間一流大學﹐其他大學或許有個別學系辨得很出色(如浸大的傳理系)﹐但論名氣認受性始終和三大差一截距離。普通大學生畢業出來少不了會吃虧點﹐誰叫你當年不努力讀書考不入三大﹐這就是讀次一級大學的代價。不要以為同樣都是大學學位就可以平起平坐﹐現實就一流大學的畢業生一般比讀二流大學優勝。不過世界是公平的﹐天外有天人外有人﹐三大的畢業生與外國超級名校﹐如哈佛史丹福牛津等﹐相比之下立時相形見拙﹐見工面試時也會相對地吃虧。

教院爭取改名的事件﹐反映出香港專上教育一個奇怪現像﹐所有大專院校都一窩蜂爭排名爭升格﹐不肯安分守做好自己的教育工作。在外國的大專教育生態很健康正常﹐在最高級的有研究型大學﹐負責培養最頂尖的研究人材。次一級的是教學型大學﹐為培訓社會各行業需要的人材。最下層是大專學院﹐給考入不到大學的人專上教育的機會。三種大專學校互相配合因材施教﹐把教育資源發揮最有效的運用。最重要是學生在三種院校間的流動性﹐學分互相承認﹐成績好的大專學生可以轉讀大學取得學位﹐教學型大學的學生亦可以憑努力考入研究院﹐而成績跟不上的學生不用完全輟學﹐可以轉到大專補回學分追回進度﹐才回到大學繼續完成學位。現下香港所有專上學校都想做研究型大學﹐若香港有程度足夠的學生入讀﹐倒可以大幅提升香港人的教育水平。不過精英學生的供應有限﹐次一等的大學只好削足就履﹐降低大學的入學標準﹐於是做成大學學位乏值﹐普通大學畢業生一蟹不如一蟹的惡果。加上大學的運作成本比專上學院昂貴﹐為不合水平的學生提供大學學位是浪費社會資源。成績比較差點學生﹐由學術成就低人工便宜的教授任教很公平。明星教授的寶貴時間留來指導優資生才回乎成本效益。

獨立運作不合併不改名為大學的教院 ﹐正好可以提供低層次專上教育。若教統局再把那幾間只有大學之名而沒有大學之實的大學降格(如樹仁﹐嶺南﹐公大)﹐變回傳統專上學院﹐不單可以減少不必要的教育開支﹐保持大學生的質素﹐亦可以使香港大專教育生態更加健康。當然最重要是建立師生在專上學校間流動的橋樑﹐不論是學生或教授只要能力優異出眾﹐就可以升級轉住更好的學校﹐享用更多的教學資源。新的制度比現在各院校每年與政府講數﹐各自心懷鬼胎地爭取更多撥款﹐更能夠善用香港的教育資源﹐亦能更有效培養出社會需要不同階層的人材。

去年陳易希在Intel的IESF比賽中獲獎﹐取得一顆小行星的命名權﹐一時間這個發明小天材給捧了上天﹐被譽為香港科研的明日之星。科大校長朱經武使用特別酌情權﹐收取陳易希在中五畢業後直接讀大學。可是會考放榜﹐陳易希竟然只取得十二分﹐令很人質疑這個超級拔尖的決定﹐到底陳易希有沒有足夠資格和能力升讀大學。

每年在香港的學生中﹐也有不少人能夠在海外的學術比賽中獲獎。陳易希的最大成就不是獲獎﹐而是有個小行星用他的名字夠噱頭。要獲取小行星這個獎品﹐說難不難說易不易。我上過Intel的IESF的網站﹐看過陳易希參加那一個屆的報告﹐入面隻字沒有提過他的名字和作品﹐畢竟只是拿個毫不起眼的二等獎。再上MIT Lincoln Lab的網站﹐發現陳易希小行星的推薦只不過是The Ceres Connection的一環﹐MIT本身沒有評核陳易希的科學成就。Intel捐錢給MIT﹐MIT就賣小行星名給Intel當獎品﹐美其名表揚年青的傑出科學家。一年大約有幾十人通過這個計劃取得小行星命名的資格。香港的媒體看見MIT的鍍金招牌﹐不明裏底蘊就以為陳易希很勁﹐這樣一個少年發明天材就吹捧誕生出來了。

香港會考其實只要肯用功讀書﹐考取升中六最低十四分的標準不算很難。陳易希竟然連最低要求也達不到﹐不禁讓人懷疑他是靠小聰明獲獎﹐還是貨真價實的科學天材。大學的課程比會考更加艱深﹐若果連會考也應付不好﹐根本沒有可能在大學中生存。拔尖培養人材是好事﹐但尖子也要至少乎合有升讀大學的最基本要求。若尖子最後因程度不足而讀不上﹐不單浪費教育學位的資源﹐更加可能白白糟撻一個尖子。更大的問題就是向全香港芸芸學子﹐傳達一個錯誤訊息﹐只要夠出名夠威﹐就連最基本的學習條件也不需要。這與美國大學常為人詬病用學位買運動員的政策有什麼分別﹖

說回話來﹐到底科大校長朱經武是真的認同陳易希的材能﹐還是賭一舖大小﹐想借陳易希星的聲名滔光呢﹖他大慨是最想陳易希以第一名譽畢業的人了﹐不然他這個破天荒的超級拔尖計劃﹐最後只會淪為賠上校譽學校質素的笑柄。

那陳易希本人呢﹖他的志願是入讀科大﹐他算是暫時達到了﹐不過能否畢業還要靠真本事。在新聞報導超級拔尖的成就時﹐記緊要加句字幕說這是萬中無一﹐家中的小朋友千萬不要亂學。他放棄會考心醉心發明﹐好彩贏了個小行星就可以直升大學﹐不好彩輸了就可能會變雙失青年。反觀其他和他有差不多可能性的人﹐像曾與陳易希較量的蔡騰飛或同校戰友丘德志﹐他們選擇備戰會考﹐考取優異的成績﹐循正常途徑升讀大學﹐則穩陣安全得多了。陳易希選擇的這條路道﹐付出的風險獲得的利益不成比例。若他選擇參加比賽放棄會考﹐最後拿獎學金去MIT升學或許有賺﹐但最後卻要屈在間二流大學讀書﹐冒這個風險並不值得。

當然我可能看錯﹐陳易希只是香港填鴨教育下的犧牲品﹐他上到大學可能會大放異彩。不過讀過大學的人也知道﹐本科教育只是考試制度的申延。 教學變化多了但本質上還是相似﹐主要是以知識傳授為主﹐最終還是以考試或報告作為測試學生的準則。若果有有莊家開盤的話﹐我會賭陳易希不能讀至畢業﹐就算畢到業﹐也拿不到一級榮譽學位。不是我黑心﹐我也想我看錯﹐香港會有第一個諾貝爾獎得主﹐但這是最合理的預測。其實也不要求陳易希會考十優﹐若他有二十分達中上的成績﹐相信沒有人會對他超級拔尖有異議﹐但十二分真是太過失禮人了。

第二個數據是說用中文應考的學生成績有進步﹐因此肯定母話教學的價值云云。我沒有確實的數字﹐所以只能夠用簡單的邏輯﹐去指出這個結論不一定可靠。報章說用中文應考的學生﹐在其他學科的及格率比以往有明顯上升。這其實是一個統計學上的錯覺﹐整體學生的成績根本沒有明顯進步。只不過以前中等程度的學生可以讀英中﹐現在則沒有選擇被迫讀中中﹐中中的平均成績自然會上升。若以英語應考生的學生作比較﹐就會發現英中的成績遙遙領先中中﹐怎麼又不見有人出來肯定英語教學的價值。

有一點值得留意是化學科的成績下跌2%﹐讀過化學的人也知道﹐化學這一科用英文教一定好過中文教﹐看見那些中文化學名稱就頭痛了﹐還是英文名稱易學易記。不是所有科目也適合用中文教學﹐特別是數理電腦科﹐大部份理論和專有名詞也是以英語為本﹐用中文反而詞不達意事倍功半。其實香港人的母語不是純中文﹐也不是純英文﹐而是中英夾雜的港式語文。一個受過高等教育的香港人﹐基本上是沒有可能不以中英夾雜的句子交談﹐這個中英夾雜的語言系統﹐在網上有人甚至記錄文法規則以供參考。所以我認為讓學生最有學習效率的教學語言﹐是香港中英夾雜的教學法﹐課本試卷寫答案用英文﹐上課時用中文輔助解說﹐專有名詞盡量用英文﹐方便學生銜接大學﹐特別是到海外升學。這其實是當年我讀中學的教法﹐尤其是物理課的印象特別深刻﹐會考全班四十個同學二十六人拿A。誰說純中文教學一定比掛羊頭賣狗肉的混合語教學優勝﹖

香港的法定語文是中文和英文﹐請教署不要再以政治理由插手教學語言的選擇。考試局只需要提供中英對照的試卷﹐指明考生只可以一種語言作答以方便改卷。其他的事就讓學校﹐學生﹐家長﹐以及教育市場去作出最有效率的選擇。如果順便取消中學派位改行學卷制﹐讓學生家長自由選擇學校﹐就更加理想了。

原本香港中學制度的改革和我已經沒有多大關係﹐畢竟會考也是十多年前的事。但上星期女朋友和我說起﹐她在新聞中聽到了中學將會推行通識教育﹐引起了我對這個題目的興趣﹐看過教育處有關通識教育的廿五頁資料後﹐我認同通識教育的出發點是良好的﹐但在實行上有著根本性的問題。可以簡單的分為三個層次﹐先從影響最少的方便說起。

一﹕
通識教育的成績計算中﹐校內評估佔了很重的比例﹐當中包括了日常課堂表現﹐作業成績﹐以及校內測驗考試等。這做法不單加重教師和學生的負擔﹐在忙於應付公開試之餘﹐還要花精神時間去寫作和批改報告。校內評核沒有客觀畫一的準則﹐會形成學生之間的不公平對待。學生的工作量以及評分標準﹐在不同學校之間可以有很大的分別。而學生家庭背景之間的差異﹐亦會因校內評核而擴大。由於制作報告所需要的資源指導﹐比應付一般公開考試的需求大得多﹐這會讓家貧沒法聘請私人補習老師﹐或父母繁忙而疏於管教的學生處於劣勢。

二﹕
通識教育的其中一項目標﹐是提升學生的學習趣興﹐讓他們自發性的終生學習。可是在一個強迫性學習的必修科目中﹐提出這個學習理念就顯得很可笑了。在外國的教育制度中﹐通識教育Liberal Studies是大學才開辨的課程﹐目標學生是有趣興擴闊知識見聞的成年人﹐是非作為向上升學的踏腳石。在香港中學的學習環境中﹐僅靠每個星期幾個小時的通識課﹐又如何能夠培養出學生自主學習的興趣呢﹖我個人認為﹐通識教育是不可能在學校中﹐以系統化的方法去大量教授的。通識教育目標的學習思考能力﹐很大部份是要由家長以身作則﹐日積月累地對學生作出潛移默化。而學生在學校中遇到教師的質素﹐亦對他日後在這方便的發展有一定的關係。但是事實是沒有辨法可以保證﹐負責通識課的老師具被這些資質﹐而事情上擁有這些資質的人﹐除了少數有心投身教育事業者外﹐早已另謀高就﹐根本不可能會當上教師。

三﹕
我仔細看過在建議中提出通識教育的課程設計﹐給我的第一個感覺﹐就是這一科其實是在掛羊頭賣狗肉﹐說是訓練學生自主獨立想考﹐培養他們建立自己的價值觀﹐而暗地裏成為政府對學生進行洗腦的工具。課程的結構分為三個學習範疇﹐自我與個人成長﹐社會與文化﹐以及科學科技環境。在每一個範疇中﹐分為數個必修和選修單元。而然在每一個單元的題目上﹐已隱隱看見某一套價值觀的取向﹐在建護書的附錄例出各單元的探究問題中﹐竟然問如何的是佔大多數。而非是問某些事情為什麼是非這樣不可。這些問題雖說是引導學生思考﹐但潛意識中已給學生定下了思想畫的框框。我就不信教師或考試局可以接受﹐有學生以合理和有根據的思考推論﹐把這些命題的意義作出全盤否定。而這些單元項目以社會學上的應用倫理為主﹐並沒有教授更深層次的學術知識。若我作為課程的設計委員﹐我不會把這些有時效性相對上比較通俗﹐在一般報章評論可以看到的題目放在課程之內。反而會以中西哲學為主幹﹐教授學生批判思考的方法﹐以及自古以來引發人去思考的終極哲理問題。在給學生在打好思考的基礎後﹐才引導他們把所學到的應用在社會命題上。

資料來源﹕香港教育統籌局 http://www.emb.gov.hk

這政策引起了全港家長的強烈反對﹐中中學生被標籤為次一等而飽受歧視。而誤信教署官員游說母語教學的好處﹐自願選擇由英中轉中中的學校情況更慘﹐在中一收生時好學生避之則吉﹐原本是band 1成績優異的區內名校﹐在兩三年間淪落為專收band 5蘿底橙的學校。為了改變這個不公平的情況﹐讓不幸成為中中的學校有機會翻身﹐政府推出一系列母語教學的新政策。但是這些把學校篩選的政策只是治標不治本﹐因為坐在辦公室中的官員﹐以及注著語文純正的教育學者都忽略了一個根本的問題﹐就是香港人的母語﹐既不是純中文亦不是純英文﹐而是一套中英混集活生生的獨特語言。在香港的知識份子和普遍受過高等教育的那一群﹐沒有多少人在日常生活中﹐是完全的只運用單一的語言﹐大部份也是因應情況而使用中文或英文的詞語。為什麼教署不可以面對這個事實﹐讓每一個中學因應學生的程度﹐彈性的使用不同組合的中文和英文去授課呢﹖

我自己讀是讀理科出身的﹐在文科中用純母語教學成效如何我不敢說﹐但憑自己和同學之間的經驗﹐英文是學習理科最合適的語言。不單只理科中很多慨念很難用中文去表達﹐而將來在學生在升大學亦較易銜接。理科中所應用的英文是很淺易的﹐而答案也主要是以計數為主﹐所以只要學生看懂題目的英文就沒有什麼問題。至於在授課方便﹐用全英文可能對某些學生有一定的困難﹐那可以用英文詞彙為主附中文講解﹐這就可以兼收中英教學兩家之長。有的教育學者或會反對這教學方法﹐認為中英混雜使用會教壞學生。但是他們忘記了在學術科目中﹐學生要學習的是各科專門的知識﹐而不是如何正確的運用語文。混合語言教學的學生在語文科是需要加強培訓﹐正如英文中學的中文科﹐或中文中學的英文科一樣。希望政府可以細心聽取家長學生的意見﹐不再一意孤行以所有學子的幸福為賭注﹐取消成效起疑的強制性語文政策。