Govt Twisting Whole Purpose Of Liberal Studies: PTU

The Professional Teachers' Union (PTU) on Thursday said the sector is angry about proposed changes to the liberal studies subject that will put a heavy emphasis on national education.

Liberal studies has been blamed by pro-Beijing figures for fuelling anti-government sentiment among students during the social unrest of 2019, with some people also claiming the teaching materials are biased.

Education officials are now proposing to reduce the current six modules to three, covering only Hong Kong being administered under the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, the country since its reforms and opening up, and the contemporary world.

Students will be taught about the constitutional relationship between the SAR and the nation, safeguarding national security, how mainlanders' "quality of life has improved" and the enhancement of national strength, among other things.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, Tin Fong-chak, who's a vice-president of the PTU as well as a liberal studies teacher, said the purpose of the subject was to examine the pros and cons of an issue, but the suggested changes only stress improvements to the country.

"[The proposed changes] are inclined to talk about the positive things of the country, a kind of spoon-feeding education. I think that's why we are angry. It's so different from the original purpose," he said.

However, the vice-chairman of the Federation of Education Workers, Tang Fei, disagreed, saying critical thinking is still being retained, and it is good that the subject will become more "knowledge-based".

"The new syllabus provides more solid knowledge, whereas it's more vague in the old one. One of the main reasons why people criticised the old curriculum is because if you criticise something without a solid knowledge, the conclusion would not be valuable. It's just criticising for the sake of criticising," he said on the same radio programme.

Speaking to reporters in Legco, Education Secretary Kevin Yeung said a lot of the topics in the new curriculum will be extracted from the old one.

“We are not creating a new subject, we are trying to consolidate the current liberal studies subject with some of the reductions in the content, because we want to give the teachers and also the students more space for development. For example, the students could make use of their time to study deeper in other subjects or to take another elective," he said.

“The whole idea, if you look at the consultation, the questionnaire that we sent out to schools, we are talking about four core subjects, we are talking about creating, through these reforms, creating more space for the students to cater for their learning diversities, this is the objective of the whole exercise."

The revamped subject hasn't been given a new name yet, but suggestions from officials include "citizenship and the nation" and "nationals and society".

It's expected that the new curriculum will come into force from the start of the next academic year in September.