CUHK Employees General Union
eNews (June 2018)
Editor-in-chief: Chan Yin Ha Vivian | Data: Wong Ka Po | Design and Typesetting: Cheng Chun Wing, Aidan Chau and Dora Lam (e-version) | Translation: Emily Ng
Member Interview
Will There Ever Be a Dawn for University Education?
(Interview, Text and photos: Vivian)
It was mid-May after the final exams and the campus was enjoying rare
tranquillity. I met Li Ming, her name a synonym of dawn, at Café 330 of
YIA Building. Otherwise called Minnie, she and I became acquaintances independent
of Facebook. But it was the debates on Facebook aroused by the “Hong Kong
Independence” banner incident and the #MeToo movement that allowed me insights
into the character of this young scholar. With independent and lucid thinking,
she is not one to shy away from confronting controversies. Further interactions
surprised me how a person can so seamlessly merge sharp perceptiveness
with tenderness. Much has happened to her over the past year: graduation
from her PhD, teaching, wedding, #MeToo ... These are not small matters.
How could she afford the time to prepare those thousand-word long posts
on social media? Does she not worry about her career future, not have pressure
for publication? I had heard that her contract was only one year, has she
secured the next job? We very much would like to talk to her about her
experience as a lecturer at CU this past year.
I genuinely like teaching
I have been pondering my future. In fact, my one-year lecturer contract with CU is coming to an end. So I have been thinking about future directions. I really like teaching. For me, this is a job where you can see your impact most directly. As compared to spending a lot of time on preparing articles for publication in journals that only a few people read, I find teaching a lot more meaningful for society. Even more so now that the measurements for research are productivity, speed, “internationalisation”. These I find wrong and not what I am after. Some senior colleague suggests me to apply for an AP (assistant professor) post. You can also teach. Get it for six years and make some good money first–after all, the salary and benefits of an AP are so much better than a lecturer. But then every year you will have to balance between “making paper” and teaching, every year you have to experience this conflict of values. This is not a life that I want. Even though lecturers, who specialise in teaching, do not have the equal prospect of the professors, still, I would rather spend more time on teaching.
Her teaching evaluations are very high, her classes very popular among
students. The problem is, the department doesn’t have the money. Recently,
various departments in different universities are all saying they don’t
have the money to pay for teachers. Where does the money go? It is true
that when she signed the contract, she was already told that this one-year
contract was non-renewable. But we are still puzzled. Then will her courses
be cancelled? If not, who is going to teach them? These, of course, are
not questions that she can raise. The lack of transparency is the strongest
weapon of modern management.
Having been in Hong Kong for ten years since she left Shanghai, first
as a graduate student, then as a lecturer, has she sensed any changes
in the university education in Hong Kong?
Standardised education is not conducive to creativity and thinking
I came to Hong Kong 10 years ago. From a student to a teacher, what I have felt most is the trend of administrative standardisation. There is now more paperwork, there must be expected outcomes in course outlines. You have to spell out clearly in details your grading criteria, how many marks are awarded to each task, what do students need to do for what marks, etc. All these seem very “scientific”, very “objective”. But can subjects of humanities be so “scientific”? The humanities emphasise inspiring student thinking, they emphasise experience and reflection. How can these be quantified and standardised? Standardisation greatly limits teaching and evaluation methods. To fulfil these “objective” requirements, both course contents and assessment methods are greatly limited. For example, you can only do tasks like writing papers, questions, or multiple choice. It would be harder to use tasks that are more creative, that put emphasis on the experience process or change of perspective since these are harder to precisely quantify and fit into the bell curve. All this is not conducive to nurturing openness and critical thinking. Unlike natural science, it is not possible to find precise and absolute formulas in the humanities and social sciences. The values of these disciplines are also largely unquantifiable and difficult to normalise. To manage them in a uniform matter is to suppress their wondrous value of inspiring thinking through experience.
This term I am teaching an elective course titled “Sexuality”. One of the assignments asks students to imagine that they were sex workers who are designing a poster to advertise their service. The objective is for them to reflect on what kind of sexual needs and desires are not approved by the society. We get some very thoughtful posters. Someone offers VR eye-glasses service to fulfil the desire for “public sex”; there is “sex uber” to try to address the “land problem”. These are not just wild imaginations, they require an in-depth understanding of what barriers, oppression and injustice there are in our mainstream social values. When we discuss sexuality, on the one hand, we are discussing the fulfilment and actualisation of desires; on the other hand, we are also reflecting on how agency can change society.
A market logic for segregation of grades
This assignment put emphasis on the process, so discussion is very important. But under the pressure of getting a good grade, students will ask: what are the grading criteria? The teacher too has to consider how to grade. We have to grade, we have to segregate the students in the education process. The outcomes of education are to be expressed in term of grades because the society has to classify people into grades, to decide your market value. Even when you find that everyone is doing really well, you cannot give everyone an A. You must sieve through for the “even more excellent” students. If there are too many 1st Honours, their value will go down and lose competitiveness in the market. So neither the universities nor the students want to see it happening. This kind of education thinking that emphasises competition, segregation, quantification and commodification is closely related to how the whole society works. When the society is like this, it is hard to change the education that is under its overarching framework. Under this kind of standardised education thinking, everything is expected to be measurable and expectable. It would be self-contradictory to require also creativity, independent thinking and personality if we are adhering to this thinking.
Even when talking about something so frustrating and so close to her heart, her attitude was still measured. Against the light, the profile of her face was clear and strong. Her gentle voice though softened any edges. With such passion for teaching, having put so much thought into her class design, there must have been a lot of enjoyable moments?
Satisfaction comes from the changes of the students
It is a really meaningful thing to be in touch with students, witnessing the changes of your students affected by you, or them looking at the world and other people from a new perspective. When I taught the course “Chinese Society”, I invited a guest to share with students about the “709 Crackdown”, for them to see the situation of those who resist in China, for them to see Chinese people that are different from those they see on the media or on the street, for them to see a different but equally real China. Politics in Hong Kong today is going the same way as in mainland China. What happens in China is only heartbeats away from Hong Kong. As compared, Hong Kong still has a bigger scope than China. But even there, people are trying their very best. So how can Hong Kong just give up its rights? The students were very moved and expressed their gratitude. We also discussed the Chinese identity. Students frankly and honestly exchanged their views in an unrestricted atmosphere, with tolerance. This kind of crossing of thoughts is the biggest reward and satisfaction in teaching.
Such satisfaction from teaching is a common experience of all teachers who teach with their hearts. Unfortunately, rather than teaching, what the current system values is research–and particular research for that.
Hong Kong lacks an environment that truly respects research
Universities these days give high regard to international ranking. A paper is only “useful” if it is published in an A-class journal. However, mainstream journals are only interested in hot topics. When you have few citations, you have low impact factor. So everyone is dashing to study those hot topics, those not necessarily of one’s own interest or of value to local society. Under the current system, it is highly likely to see a paper with a high impact factor but little academic or practical value, whereas a valuable paper may have difficulty finding an outlet for publication. After all, it is a production game, not a real meaningful research activity.
Education is to allow people to see choices
In contrast, being in touch with students allows you to see changes that are more real, more concrete. These are the actual valuable changes. They are bottom-up changes in one’s thoughts and actions. Education, after all, is about allowing people to see choices, to see that there can be different ways of life. People should have the right to know what kind of society, what kind of system they are living in. This is a matter of ethics. The system is unethical when it complicates things so that people cannot be in command of their own lives.
This is so well said. Only recently I heard different admin colleagues
complaining about how our university’s funding formulas had become so complicated
that they were intelligible to no one. In fact, the whole university is
going towards this direction in every aspect of its business, so much so
that people are getting more and more lost in the labyrinth of administrative
procedures. We are not told the reasons, we do not understand the outcomes.
We, therefore, cannot even question them. We often say university education’s
utmost task is to teach students to ask questions. However, the system
itself is destroying your capacity to raise questions.
What else has she observed in this 10 years in higher education in Hong
Kong?
Every discipline should have its own spirit. For example, the ethos of sociology should be to reveal the injustice of social institutions, to bring change to the society, to allow people to live with hope. But we no longer see this kind of spirit in the universities. Can we see any university head who can represent or express the idea of a university? The contemporary university presidents are mostly a representative of administrative power and no longer educators.
What is the idea of a university?
For example, independence, freedom of thoughts, concern for social justice. No matter what perspective or stance you have, we should have this common goal to pursue a better society. However, these are now all only bonus. Only when there is funding can they be talked about. Only when we have a good relationship with the governments and the businesses can they be talked about. When these ideals are in contradiction to your funding source, the former has to be sacrificed. They become only decorations on the cake.
True to her sharpness and unpretentiousness, Minnie spoke without dodging in face of the authority. I am sure she treasures dearly this liberal air in this soil, which we all know is rapidly evaporating in Hong Kong. It was a year ago when I first met Minnie in a gathering for casualised teachers. We had teachers on contract or part-time basis together, discussing the precarious environment of the field. Many were forced to switch to part-time posts with an unforeseeable future. One year later, Li Ming–“Dawn”, is still adrift on a precarious teaching post; but her aspirations are no less, her education ambitions are not daunted. With these, for a young scholar, perhaps the important issue of whether the dawn of her career will come soon is no longer that important. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that she will find a place where she can actualise her education ideas; for this will mean that there is still a dawn for university education in Hong Kong.