Bulletin Report of The Commission on The Chinese University of Hong Kong March 1976

(i) that The Chinese University of Hong Kong should adopt an arrangement which offers the students a balanced diet of each of these two types of teaching ； and (ii) that the "student-orientated" teaching should be nourished into full vitality by being implanted in the Colleges. We believe that "student-orientated" teaching needs the protection and sustenance of its own institution, just as "subject-orientated" teaching flourishes through the faculties and departments of the University. Only thus can a true balance between the two kinds of teaching be struck and, in the long run, preserved. 57. Under the arrangement we envisage, responsibility for the whole of the formal, structured, "subject-orientated" teaching within the range of the University's curricula would lie with individual departments organised within faculties under the control of the Senate (or with schools of studies if the University finds, as we think it well may, greater flexibility and benefit in schools of studies comprising groups of subjects closely linked by ties of academic or geographical affinity). Whichever organisational pattern is adopted, the Senate and its subordinate academic units would be responsible for ensuring that all the various course syllabuses necessary to prepare students for University examinations were suitably covered by lectures, seminars, laboratory teaching and so on. And it would be the University's duty to ensure that an adequate supply of teachers was deployed upon the task. The Colleges on the other hand would have the complementary responsibility for organising and conducting small-group, “student-orientated" teaching for all the students within their membership, and it would be their duty to ensure that their teaching strength was adequate for the purpose. 58. We hope that the University will turn its inheritance of the three Colleges to good account and regard them as the base upon which to build a system of “student-orientated” teaching to complement the existing lecture courses and other formal teaching arrangements. Properly regarded, the system is an internal reinforcement, not merely a safety-net to avert failure or an ambulance service for those who fall by the way, but a valuable means of raising the level of performance of every student whatever his ability and of helping him to overcome difficulties which commonly are found to impede his progress. There are, for example, the difficulties experienced in making the transition from school to university 一 the bewildering range of choice and opportunity, the challenge of new methods of study and learning and, most important, the task of establishing solid habits of work. Left to himself and confronted with hard intellectual problems, it is all too easy for the student to leave them unresolved until a more auspicious day. Here are sown the seeds of tension, when too much ground is left to be covered as examinations draw near. Yet, if in his university career ， which falls between the compulsions of school discipline and the hard necessity of earning a living, he can learn to work because he chooses rather than because the requirement to do so is imposed from outside, he will have achieved something which will enrich his whole life. And it is in small-group teaching that the student will find the greatest help in achieving that end; for the structure of small-group teaching provides freedom in the context of order - the freedom which characterizes the relationship between those taking part in group discussions and the framework of discipline set by the need for the student regularly to produce work of his own. 59. Our recommendations in paragraph 56 set before the whole University a crucial decision of principle: whether the Colleges are to become the vehicles of the kind of ''student-orientated" teaching we have described. If the University decides to take this step its implementation will still depend on the willingness of enough members of staff to undertake this kind of