Newsletter No. 23

W h e n I t W a s S t i l l t h e S c h o o l o f E d u c a t i o n i n Downtown K o w l o o n Diplomates of 1969 and their teachers. Photo taken inside the of Education in Mongkok Three old-timers whohave first-hand experience of working in the Mongkok Ofice：Mr. Hsia Yan San (left). Dr. Benjamin Chan(centre) and Mr. Wong Sik Yee (right). The School's second home on the Chung Chi campus. The building has already been demolished On 1st August 1991, the Faculty o f Education was formally established with f our constituent departments and elected dean. With some 60full-time teachers and a student enrolment o f over 800, thefaculty conducts its daily business in the spacious Ho Tim Building on the Chung Chi campus, occupying a total floor area of over 5,500 square metres Some 26 years ago when the faculty was still known as the 'School o f Education', the physical setting was entirely different, and so were the scale o f operation，the size of the staff force and student population. Whilegladtosee the significant expansion o f the school over the years, three old-timers who have witnessed its growth recount to the CUHK Newsletter how smallness can also be beautiful D e l v i n g into t h e P a s t A l l i n a Nu t she ll When first set up in June 1965， the School of Education was housed in rented premises in a commercial building in Mongkok. Packed in a space of less than 650 square metres were five classrooms, a language laboratory, an audio-visual teaching room, a reference library, offices for teaching and clerical staff, and a student common room. Far f r omcomplaining about the lack of sufficient space to work in and to move about, the 10 full-time and part-time lecturers and the six supporting staff much enjoyed the cosiness rendered by such a setting. Constantly moving in and out of various classrooms and laboratories were not only students of the School of Education itself, but also other undergraduates from New Asia, United, and Chung Chi, who had to attend integrated courses there. Colleagues from two neighbouring units in the same building, i.e. the Appointments Service and the Publications Office (the precursor of the Chinese University Press), were also frequent visitors. The place was full of life and j oy f ul bustling all the time. Easily Accessible a nd H i g h ly Conven i ent As can be expected, an office situated in the midst of downtown Kowloon is easily accessible. Not even during the riots in 1967 when roads were frequently blocked due to the discovery of bombs did staff members have any difficulty travelling to and from work. ' A l l roads lead to the School of Education'; that's what they used to say to describe the location of the school. Inside the office itself, communication was as easy. Partitions made of flimsy fibre boards might not have provided too much privacy for the office staff, but they allowed voices to travel far whenever required. Raise the voice a bit and one could reach any audience nearby, rendering telephone extensions superfluous. Keep very quiet and concentrate, and one could hear the interesting lectures being delivered inside the classrooms. Besides accessibility, the convenient location of the School of Education brought along pleasant surprises from time to time, which added much colour to the routine office life. Veterans of the school well remembered how they took their comfortable 'box seats' in the balcony of the office to watch the parade of festooned vehicles and colourful floats along Nathan Road, which was the highlight of the Hong Kong Festivals organized by the government in the early 1970s. Going out for lunch was another logical result of wo r k i ng in such a setting. There were simply too many restaurants around and it would be a pity not to try each and every one of them, especially when it was never difficult to find a table for a small group of diners. One thing the staff members never did, though, was to take French leave to haunt the numerous places of entertainment nearby. Their only pastime was playing table-tennis in the office, using a large hexagonal table in the student common room. Incidentally, the table can still be found in the student union today. 7