A niche in life

Many of our students (and potential students) pick their major, or their courses, based on market demand. Of course, since they are not yet on the job market, they are basically picking it based on projected market demand, trying to extrapolate 2-3 years into the future, when they will be on the job market. I am interested, for example, in knowing what the business faculty's admissions figures will be like after this stock market crash.

Today, I went to the horticulturist's to buy some fertilizer for our plants. The place is run by a father-son combo -- the dad learned his trade from his father, the son graduated with an M.Eng. from a well-known UK university. Working in a nursery would not be a job that one would expect an M.Eng. student to get into, even if it were the family business. However, between the two of them, they have carved out a niche for themselves, importing high-quality and exotic plants, high-tech equipment and artsy accessories. And since the son speaks fluent English, they have also managed to corner a steady clientele of expats living in the New Territories who're desperate to recreate their own gardens from home.

It mayn't be a glamorous job, and certainly it's an unconventional choice of career, but I couldn't help feeling that the young man had made the correct choice in life. He clearly enjoyed what he was doing, he had expertise in his area, and he had managed to find himself a niche in life.

I wish that our own students would stop for a moment to think about what they *want* to do, and what they are suited to doing, rather than obsessing on what would make the most money or provide the most stable living!

Variations on a tune

Most of us know the song "My bonnie is over the river". One of my students told me the version that she was taught by her teachers in primary school. Here it is, complete with actions:

My bonnie [outlines the shape of a person in the air, "body"] is over [makes the shape of an "O" with two hands] the o-[makes the "O" shape] cean [points to the lips, 唇, almost-homonym for the second syllable in "ocean"];
My bonnie ["body" action again] is over ["O" action] the sea [shades eyes with hand, "see"].
My bonnie ["body" action] is over ["O" action] the o-["O" action] cean ["唇" action] --
Oh bring [hands in a "come hither" motion] back [pats one's back] my bonny ["body" action] to me [points to oneself].

Interesting way to teach English.

Computer training for refugee kids

Last Christmas, my pastor gave a wonderful sermon on "Home", during which he spoke about Christ's homelessness while He was on earth. From there, he extrapolated to how many people in Hong Kong are homeless -- not in the sense of street sleepers, but rather, they are refugees in Hong Kong, in a state of legal limbo.

Inspired by that sermon, I had then decided to try and see how we could help out. I learned about the name of an NGO here that looks to serve these people, but I was very busy then and didn't follow up. Then, about a month back, I had dinner with a friend of mine who happened to be volunteering for the same NGO. I decided that twice couldn't be a coincidence and jumped onto that, and got my friend to introduce me to the director there. They welcomed our help and we decided to do a short computer training camp for their children, just to see if our students could handle it.

After a flu-scare-induced delay, today saw our first IT camp for these refugee children. They come from a variety of races and backgrounds, and their English speaking ability is also very varied. Some of them are also a bit unruly -- like any other kid, perhaps, they would rather play computer games on the Internet rather than learn how to take pictures! But once you got their attention and their interest, they got excited about the subject matter in a hurry.

I think it was a big challenge for our students, too. Looking at those kids today, it suddenly occurred to me that most of our students had probably never interacted this closely with somebody who's not Chinese before, excepting their professors, and none of their professors come from similar backgrounds as these kids. Hong Kong is truly a little too racially homogeneous, I think. But kids are easy to deal with, and by the end of the morning, I would say that they were quite comfortable with each other.

It was a good feeling to come home at the end of the day today.

Academics

In several of his blog posts recently (1, 2, 3), StephenC lamented the declining proficiency of academic skills in Hong Kong students, especially in the languages. Actually, if one takes a sampling of local students and tests their language skills, I suspect (no hard stats to back it up) that you will find that the situation is very, very polarized. The good students have excellent English skills -- much better than I would have had at the same age myself. The bad ones... sometimes I wonder if they know what they're trying to express themselves!

Many people might attribute this to the growing prosperity gap in Hong Kong. And certainly this is very true: the rich get richer, and the poor have been getting poorer. Take into account the numerous tutorial schools, after-school activities, etc etc that are available to the children of those who can pay, and you can see why the rich get a leg-up on their academics.

However, there is another factor. Today, we hosted a Hong Kong-wide robot contest for primary and secondary school students. I went walking around the pit area where all the teams were doing their preparation, and I was astonished to see students from some of the teams with their homework and revision materials spread out on the table, trying to get in some test prep in between contest rounds. It was not a surprise to find out that those students were from the elite schools.

What were the other teams doing? Most of them were just hanging out, some were playing computer games, some were even playing card games. The more serious were actually trying to make some final modifications to their robots or programs. I did not see anybody reading any books, either Chinese or English.

Is it a surprise, then, that students from the elite schools keep on sweeping all the best places, all the prizes? Then the question is: who's to blame?

Multiple Choice: Expected Value

When we discuss how our students answer exam questions, a common comment is that since they seem to just pick multiple choice answers at random, they might be better off just picking the same choice for all the answers, and get the same expected value outcome. However reasonable this seems, none of us had ever seen a student actually try this tactic, until this year, when a student tried it in StephenC's class.

When StephenC showed me that exam paper, I commented that maybe the usual practice of giving points for correct answers but not taking off points for incorrect ones actually encouraged students to try such a tactic. To try and preempt that, I set my exam to give 2 points for a correct multiple choice answer, and -0.5 points for an incorrect one.

I spoke too soon. Take a look at this exam paper. Apparently the possibility of getting points deducted isn't strong enough. And yes, the result is right at the expected value.

Are we too conservative?

This BBC article caught my eye. It talks about a school on a quiet little island off the coast of Scotland which decided to go all-digital. ICT (Internet and Computer Technology) was introduced into the curriculum at all levels and all subjects, and UMPCs and laptops were issued to all students and teachers.

This is a little like a project that we have been involved in here in Hong Kong, with one of the local schools. The school board and funders were very supportive, but the teachers and principals were much more conservative. And I regret to say that our team, when asked for our opinions, also tended to be more conservative, recommending a very gradual digitalization rather than the full-blown approach that has been taken in Scotland.

Now, reading these articles, I wonder: are we being too conservative and cautious? I know that we have to be good stewards of our resources and not be wasteful, but sometimes, I do wonder whether this "look-for-blame" and "accountable" culture in Hong Kong has changed us all into fraidy-cats, contented with incremental, baby steps, and afraid to dream big and think about the impossible?

It's a sobering thought.

In-class Musical

This shot was taken from a real life lecture somewhere in the US, I believe. What happens is that a bunch of students made up this musical act to perform in the middle of a lecture. And by "performing", I mean literally, they interrupted the teacher and started singing and dancing in class. Listen to the words, they're hilarious.

It's a pity that more of our students can't think of creative things like these to do, and instead they spend their energy thinking up new and creative ways of complaining.

Feeling Special

The picture on the left shows the YX team from our school, getting ready to board the Shanghai-HK flight at the end of the tour -- or more precisely, most of the team, since 3 members of our team had to return to HK right after the camp and couldn't make it to Shanghai.

Anyway, the picture doesn't really have anything to do with the contents of this post. But just thought I'd share it.

I went to church today for the first time in 4 weeks -- I somehow managed to be out of town for 4 consecutive Sundays in July. It was really good to be there again -- I hadn't quite realized just how much I had missed it. The thing that really touched me though was that I managed to have a really good conversation with the new pastor. That may seem like it's nothing -- it's just a conversation -- but honestly, he made me feel that what I was saying was worth listening to and important (when even I don't know how important what I was saying really was!) At one point, one of the elders came up and asked him something and the pastor told the guy that he'd get back to him, and he continued talking with me like nothing had happened! I was very surprised and touched -- after all, I am really not anybody important like the elders, and he's here spending time talking with me!

What that made me really think about is how we interact with our students, especially myself, in particular. I have an "open-door policy" in theory, but there are times when I am so busy and caught up with work and administration that I have am often too busy for students who come and see me, even if my door happens to be open. In fact, there have been times last year when students came to see me for help just as I was about to rush off to something, and I had no choice (I didn't feel like I could reschedule the meeting and be confident that I would have time for them then) but to tell them to walk with me to wherever I was going, and I would talk with them on the way. Geez, I wonder how important *that* must have made them feel (turns sarcasm off).

I think I have a lot to learn still about being a good teacher and listener.

College Rankings

There has been quite a lot of discussion around campus recently about college rankings, and now that our school has decided to get itself involved, there will be even more pressure to "play the game" and toe the line on research and publications.

Interestingly, the New York Times reported that a number of US liberal arts colleges have declined to be ranked. I wonder if this is just a small, quickly contained "rebellion" of a few, or the start of a larger trend? If it is the latter, then HK will be picking up on something just as people in the US are starting to find problems with it... which wouldn't surprise me.

Disorder, or Discipline?

I came across this NY Times article titled "About that mean streak of yours: psychiatry can only do so much". It talked about how illnesses termed as "personality disorders" were increasingly being used to cover behavior that really should simply be classified as "he's just not a nice person".

We don't see that so much here in Hong Kong, but what we do have here (and I daresay that the US has too) is an increase in diagnoses of the so-called "Attention Deficit Disorder". Not being a psychiatrist, I hesitate to make a judgment on whether these are truly disorders or not. However, I do often wonder how many of these could be cured with just simply firm parental discipline rather than through medication.