HKIER

Abstract

This paper gives a critical analysis of the aims of prevocational education of Hong Kong along with a historical account of its development over the last twenty years. The analysis takes as its point of departure the official statement of its aims as they were explicitly and implicitly embodied in the Report which gave birth to prevocational schools of Hong Kong. After an in-depth analysis with respect to the explicit statement of aims and the implicit or hidden aims that went into its curricula and inter-institute relations, it reveals that the aims of prevocational education was very narrowly conceived and aimed to cater more for the social and economic need than the educational development of the students. It is thus a kind of semi-skilled labour training and dead-ended schooling. Some critical observations are presented against its early confinement of the development of the child, the inhibitive effect on social mobility and its conformative practice relating to workplace conditions. The paper then tackles the evolving of its aims as it developed through the years when public feedbacks, especially those from the principals and their agencies and those of students and their parents, which were not wholly agreed with its aims. Change became inevitable as the schools could not attract enough students. The incorporation of higher forms and the increase in proportion of cultural subjects, which result more or less in the breaking of the dead end and confining structure, have provided a renewal of the aims of prevocational education. However, if prevocational education is going to be the ideal 'type' of education for the next generation, which it has all the reason to be, a radical revision of its aims is needed. The leading principle is a vision towards the realisation of the creativity of the individual and the democratisation of the modern world.

摘要

N.A.