tim's experiment

One of the thing which hjas often amazed me since moving to the education field is the number of people who reach very senior positions in this area while being really dumb.

Consider our, or rather the PRC’s, Minister for Education, Yuan Guiren. I suppose this person cannot have reached such an education eminence without some knowledge of the field, not to mention the animal cunning required to survive and prosper in the upper ranks of the Beijing leadership. But yesterday he, as Pravda put it, broke his silence on the national education issue. He said that “all nationals should receive national education”. This settled at least one part of the argument. One of the strongest arguments against national education, and the hardest to refute (because it is always hard to prove a negative), was that the whole thing was just being done to please Beijing. What was hard has now become impossible. It is being done at Beijing’s wish and Mr Yuan has no scruples about issuing instructions to that effect in public.  He went on to say, reportedly, that there was “room for discussion” on the matter. Too late.

Actually there was no reason for Mr Yuan to “break his silence” and a good reason for sticking with it. Under “one country two systems”  education is clearly a matter for Hong Kong, not for Beijing. It has nothing to do with defence or foreign affairs. Hong Kong schools are no more the business of the PRC Education Ministry than Hong Kong railways are that of (perish the thought) the Railways Ministry, or Hong Kong hospitals of the Health Ministry. Those people who periodically assure us that China has scrupulously observed the terms of the Basic Law now look a bit optimistic. After all if ministers are prepared to issue instructions in public who knows what they say in private? Sometimes silence really is golden.