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  3. It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things.【F1】On June 6th its edu

It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things.【F1】On June 6th its edu

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问题     It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things.【F1】On June 6th its education minister lifted restrictions that forced four-fifths of the territory’s more than 500 secondary schools to teach in the "mother tongue", i.e. Cantonese, the main language of its residents. Schools may switch to English, the language of the former colonial oppressor, from next year.
    This reverses a decade-old policy adopted after Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997, in an assertion of independence from both former and present sovereign powers. Emotion may have played a large role in the decision. But it made some sense. Students speak Cantonese at home, and so using it is the easiest way to impart information and promote discussion.【F2】It is also the first language of most teachers: a study done at the time concluded that schools labeled "English-medium" were actually teaching in Cantonese but using English-language textbooks.
    【F3】After much bureaucratic rearrangement, 20% of schools were permitted to continue teaching in English, which may have made sense to teachers and administrators, but not to ambitious parents. They know that their offspring will need English to get ahead. Those who could flee the public system for costly private schools, or for the eight semi-private schools run on the British system, did so. The rest made extraordinary efforts to enter the minority of English-language schools. They have huge waiting lists; Cantonese ones gaping holes.
    That helps explain the minister’s change of heart, for which no reason was given.【F4】So does a survey published last year, which concluded that students from the Cantonese schools did far worse than their peers in getting into universities—a result that would horrify Hong Kong’s achievement-obsessed parents. And whatever the educators think, employers from coffee bars to banks either require people to be bilingual or pay more to those who are. Private schools offering supplementary English tuition have mushroomed.
    【F5】Hong Kong’s educational bureaucracy has devoted much thought to how English could be offered without harming other studies, and without sacrificing a generation of teachers with strong interest in a system based on their first language. The minister has skirted these difficult issues. A much debated but still undisclosed formula will allow an increasing number of subjects to be taught in English. Every step is controversial. Pragmatists want Hong Kong to drop Cantonese entirely in favor of English and Mandarin. But that may demand a level of cultural indifference which even Hong Kong cannot muster.
【F4】
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答案去年公布的一项调查结果同样也可以解释这一点：调查结果显示，在大学入学考试中，来自用广东话教学的学校的学生表现要比同龄人差很多——这一结果足以让香港望子成龙的父母们恐惧不已。
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