Bulletin Spring 1977

Mr. N.M. Ho delivering the keynote address; looking on is Mr. T.C. Cheng, Director o f School o f Education Keynote address by Mr. N. M. Ho, Deputy Director o f Education For today's talk I have chosen a topic which I consider to be fundamental to the quality of education; that is, the broad aims of education and the function of the school. Modem education must adapt itself to modem needs Let me say first of all that certain aspects of life in the 1970's have assumed a greater importance than they had earlier in the century. In the modern world education must take account of leisure no less than work. It will not be necessary to enlarge upon the fact that life is a less simple affair for all of us today. The citizens of tomorrow will be citizens of a more com plex world than that of yesterday. Social contacts are becoming more frequent and more varied, and children will need to learn to mix with a greater variety of types of individual than their parents probably knew and to understand the point of view of people in other lands besides their own. They will need, moreover, to accommodate themselves to sudden changes of process and method in the occupations they are likely to take up, and even to be prepared to transfer themselves from one occupation to another. The individual, therefore, must not only become more adaptable as a worker, but must also be in a position to select for himself some worthy and useful way of occupying his free time. The average citizen must be a man or woman of common sense and breadth of view. Obviously the schools must offer every possible op portunity for serviceable talent to manifest itself, whatever direction it may take and however limited in range it may be. Further, they must do all they can to ensure that their ablest pupils may pass on to suitable forms of higher education. It follows, then, that the aim of education should be to develop to the full the potentialities of every child at school, in accord always with the general good of the community of which he is a member. Various factors in the educative process However, education is not so simple a business as is often supposed. It is certainly not synonymous with teaching. It is not enough for the teacher to collect together a mass of knowledge and retail it to his class. Nor is it enough for his personality to be strong enough to make the children do what he wants them to do. No subject is such that the mere teaching