My stand on Inclusive Education

What's inclusive education?

Quoting Wikipedia, Inclusive education is "an approach to educating students with special educational needs. Under the inclusion model, students with special needs spend most or all of their time with non-disabled students."

The notion is that, by allowing students with special educational needs to participate in classroom with other students who are not disabled, these students with SEN will fare better.

What is the issue?

There exists quite a number of premises that must be fulfilled before inclusive education would be beneficial.

(1) Teachers must be educated such that they know how to handle students with special education needs.


We are talking about a really wide range of knowledge that a teacher needed before they can conduct a lesson with these students with SEN. There are a thousand and one disabilities out there and these requires knowledge and input from speech, occupational and physio-therapists. And we are talking about three-to-five years of tertiary education here.

And then, the ability to deal with difficult case adequately is strongly correlated with center experience (in almost all sort of fields). Do you know why liver transplant in Hong Kong is only done in QMH? Do you know why we need to segregate hospitals into different levels of "trauma center" in the US? It has all to do with the center experience and center volume.

The more you do, the better you can do it. There's a reason why people are called "specialists".

(2) The classroom (i.e. teachers AND other fellow students) must extend to adapt to the need of the students who may be unable to receive traditional instruction without interrupting the class.

In the past, special education schools opened because people find that the traditional classroom was too rigid to adapt to the need of the students with SEN, and for the matter, there has been little change in the classroom situation.

and so on, and so forth.

Without these premises fulfilled, the situation of "inclusive education" in Hong Kong is more like dumping all those special students into schools of poorer academic performance, whether you like it or not...

Placebo’s guide – getting into medical school

There are no grades that I’ll talk about (you can see for yourselves in the JUPAS website I suppose); there are few examples of what would bring a person into medical school (there are enough medical doctors around you and it’s easy to ask); what this piece deals with is how you get there after you have got all the requisites – good academic results, reference letters and the much needed luck. Accept this, and read on.

Medical schools in Hong Kong are basically a place for really bright students[1]. For those who are less able to get good grades at public examinations, alternatives include entrance to medical schools in Taiwan, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Medical school isn’t exactly something one should consider if you are asking for money. Yes – really good surgeons do make a million a week – but how many of those are there? You are much better off doing MT jobs and hope for the best. You will work less hours, have better quality of life earlier and hopefully retire earlier. There are certainly jobs in the medical sectors that would provide you with decent hours, but those would usually require either a period of damnation which may be quite long (some 8 years perhaps for physicians to rise to the level where you need not be on-site during on-call period) or an unreasonable curriculum that you will need to finish (e.g. anatomic and cytopathology).

Who do they want as medical students?

It all stems from one thing – a medical school wants to train safe doctors. The idea is, you could at least expect a safe doctor taking care of you when you’re in the hospital – thus, we need doctors (thus medical students) who understand their limits, work as a team and listen to others.

Accept it – medical school is all about vocational training. There is no ‘university’ part involved unless you are part of the academic staff in the university – and even then, not until you receive your fellowship.

You are going to get interviews, and you are going to be asked on why you want to be a medical doctor (once you’re in you will graduate unless you quit) and why you should be offered a place in the medical school.

So why do you want to be a doctor?

It is very natural to ask this question, am I not correct, monsieur? Let’s look at some sample answers:

1.      My mother told me to do so.

2.      I am living in a public housing estate and all I want to do is to get some decent salary to raise my four younger brothers.

3.      It is my dream to become a doctor.

4.      My father is a doctor, and I am to inherit his practice.

And so on, and so forth. These may as well be the real underlying reasons for many doctors out there, but of course, as a reasonably good student you know that there are many ways of presenting the same idea. I am not trying to give standard answers here, but the idea is that you want to help other people out, and medicine is one direct way of helping these folks.

[1] No, the luminance is not required for passing the examinations after you get into the medical school.

Childhood education - our future?

Irrelevant introduction

There are a total of four pillars in the Trafalgar square. Alongside Lord Nelson, are four pillars with the statues of King George IV, Sir Charles Napier and Sir Henry Havelock. Yes- we are missing one of them. At the current moment, it showcases a sculpture called "Powerless Structures, Fig. 101".

Powerless Structures, Fig.101 by Loz Flowers

An excerpt of the caption thus reads:

"... the work references the traditional monuments in the square, but, with its golden shine, it celebrates generations to come... We wanted to create a public sculpture which, rather than dealing with topics of victory or defeat, honours the every battles of growing up."

This shows how these Englishman see the importance of our future generations - they raise the depiction of our future generations to the status of historical heroes.

Childhood educators

Childhood education is important[1]. The thing is, whether you believe in the critical period hypothesis or not, the golden rule in language acquisition is still the earlier the better. The problem[2] with childhood education in Hong Kong is the utter neglect of it by the government.

Face it, the average parent in Hong Kong is not that sort of well-educated parent we are seeing in the advertisements (e.g. of HSBC) - look at the statistics - the average boy in Hong Kong doing HKCEE (although it is now historical, this represents what we have in the society for at least a decade-worth of men) would not pass all the three core subjects (Chinese, English and Mathematics).

And then we need kindergarten[3], and some of us may believe in the supposition that these quasi-educators in the kindergartens are better qualified than these apparently academically not-so-competent dads and moms. And perhaps we are wrong - at least for our generation. The minimum qualification, back in the years when the now-working generation were kindergarten pupils, for kindergarten teachers is that of finishing Form 3. The requirement has since changed to five passes in HKCEE (and still not requiring a pass in mathematics).

I suppose our children deserve better education. It is time we actually examine what is going on in the kindergartens rather than trying the best of our luck in applying for the best kindergartens judged by their associations with the international primary schools...

Recommendations?

In the form of replying a specialty consultation, may I suggest:

(1) Raising the salary for all education posts such as kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers to improve the competitiveness in the job market.
(2) Mandatory language assessment for all childhood educators (to the likings of LPAT in primary and secondary teachers) - our children are looking at them for INPUTS during their critical (or early if you insist) years.

I am not asking for much - a pass in CAE or CPE would be quite sufficient - and mind you, we had that passed in our matriculation years.

[1] If you believe that a citation here would be useful, go here. I believe in the contrary.
[2] If there were no problems then I wouldn't have written this.
[3] To be honest, this is probably not the reason for the existence of kindergartens, and even with the universal tertiary education in taiwan, things are much better looking either.

English as medium of instruction - II

In the classroom

It is no secret that the English competence of an average HK secondary school student is inadequate to learn the curriculum in English. However, to satisfy parental demands of using English as the medium of instruction, schools has been silently allowing teachers who were supposed to teach in English, to use Cantonese to supplement teaching - this supplementation could sometimes be a whole session conducted in Cantonese.

In fact, this (using Cantonese to conduct a lesson teaching material in a textbook written in English) certainly improved the understanding of students despite being rather unsound pedagogically. The problem with it though, is that, should we still label these as "EMI" schools? "EMI" subjects?

The situation of the pseudo-EMI teaching in secondary school has not been studied thoroughly, the obvious reason being that teachers will usually revert to teaching in English when being observed. What comes to rescue, though, is studies conducted among university students in Hong Kong.

Braine and McNaught had a fairly well-written literature review of the pseudo-EMI teaching in Hong Kong in their paper entitled "Adaptation of the ‘Writing Across Curriculum’ Model to the Hong Kong Context" [1]. In essence, in the university, students pressure the lecturers to use Cantonese by simply not responding to lecturers who still teach with English.

We can see that the outcome associated with teaching in English in these students whose competence do not enable them or facilitate them to learn in English is that - they will simply NOT learn the subject, and the outcome associated with teaching in Cantonese in these students would be that their English couldn't improve. The issue lies on:

(1) Are we doing an adequate job in placing students into correct MOI group?
  ... are we trying to put too many students in EMI schools?
  ... could this be due to parental demands?
(2) Is it possible to setup a category so that English textbooks are taught in lessons conducted in Cantonese?
(3) What is wrong with the current English education in HK?

[1] http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/clear/download/paper/BMcN_Lui.pdf

English as medium of instruction - I

There is a recent posting on the medium of instruction in discuss.com.hk.The matter surrounding the discussion was that whether Chinese should be employed during teaching of a subject (other than English) in a school where the "medium of instruction" is English.

a short history of MOI in Hong Kong

a large proportion of this historical account was derived from [1].

It all started in 1978 - when universal education in Hong Kong was in its first year of life. It was the year that all Hong Kong children, regardless of their socioeconomic background, were granted 9 years of free education.

The curriculum then, was terribly difficult even for students nowadays. The 1953 Joint primary 6 examination was famous and it was well-circulated on the internet. A copy was donated by a retired teacher to a museum in Hong Kong (三棟屋博物館).

The questions were as follows:

一至四題任答三題

(一)斯巴達和雅典是怎樣的國家，試分述之。
(二)試述法國革命的起因。
(三)分答下列二題：
   (甲)季候風地帶包括哪些地區？氣候和雨量的情形怎樣？
   (乙)沙漠的成因怎樣？
(四)試把中國和美國的農作方式作一比較。

五至八題任答三題

(五)香港政府的立法機關和司法機關及行政機關其組織與職權是怎樣的？
(六)香港政府何以要設華民政務司署？這個機關辦些什麼事情？
(七)政府為什麼要對人民徵稅？是不是隨意徵收？須經什麼機關通過才能實行？人民對政府估定的稅額不同意時有什麼補救方法？
(八)聯合國何時成立？會址設於何處？為實現「天下一家」的最高理想，聯合國應做些什麼事情？

九至十一題任答二題

(九)試以圖及文字解釋潮汐的原因。
(十)維他命有哪幾種？每種有什麼功用？各種維他命在食物中之含量如何？
(十一)普通蚊與瘧蚊有什麼區別，瘧蚊怎樣傳染瘧疾？

This is terribly difficult even for junior secondary school students nowadays. Given such examination paper, one can imagine how elitist the education then was. The less prestigious schools were then harbouring a lot of students from lower socio-economic status who basically had completely inadequate English competency to study the curriculum in English.


And expectedly, the Education Commission sought help from UK. The panel of experts then recommended that:

...is for the Government to impose Cantonese as the medium of instruction in FI-III of all secondary schools...

and also

...to leave alone the small number of school which have been genuinely successful in using English as a medium of instruction...

The idea then was to introduce English progressively throughout junior secondary education. Then, a policy called "positive discrimination" evolved. It was a policy such that schools teaching in Chinese could brand themselves as such. The problem that follow was of course - very few school followed this recommendation. The reason was simple - you need good input to make good output, and better students tends to go to schools that teach in English.

With failure of the policy, a mandatory scheme was then introduced to categorize STUDENTS, first, into Group I-III (Ability to learn in I - both EMI and CMI schools, II - CMI schools only, III - EMI schools only) and then those school that couldn't get enough of EMI-capable students are forced to use Chinese as the medium of instruction.


[1] http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~hkier/content/document/OP/Op64.pdf

The authority of teachers

Apple daily had a recent commentry written by Chip Tsao(陶傑). 

For those who can't read Chinese, it was about a secondary school teacher having problem with child who doesn't give a damn about the subject she was teaching - home economics. The child thought that if the button goes off from the cloth she'll just buy another piece of clothing[1]. Tsao believe that it is important for the teacher to hold up their dignity and perhaps traditional values in school and that she should not be afraid of complaints.

To be honest though this is totally NOT applicable for secondary teachers these days -- the principals in schools are more apologetic than ever and to be honest do they even have the dignity of an academic?

The value of his comment aside, this is a very vivid illustration of teachers losing their authority over students and parents.

I personally hold a belief that teachers should:

(1) Be very knowledgeable in their field, and
(2) Be respected.

The thing is, if you would like the teachers to deliver their teaching effectively, they have to be able to manage the classroom well - and to manage the classroom well, one has to confer them of adequate power to discipline the children in the class (fairly).

These days, the typical teacher had more fear than power inside the classroom. Children are more fragile than ever - they are prone to harm themselves, taking drugs, joining gangs and so on - if you ever punish them, and they retaliate by abandoning themselves. And then if they go such way after your punishment, you are going to be the "killer teacher" who will be fired and not be hired by any other school. And even if a child cries at home after being scold/punished in school, parents these days often complain to the school without even knowing why their child was punished.

If a teacher had more fear than power inside a classroom, how can they teach effectively?

Thus, the way to go is:

(1) For the management of school - you should stand by the very teachers you have hired, and treat students as students, parents as parents and school as a professional agent delivering teaching. If they run the school like a service industry, the only that can come is failing the delivery of teaching (and thus they fail professionally).
(2) For the teachers - they should uphold their professional standards and not be put into fear by these students and parents who would only complain.

In my humble opinion, though, teachers in Hong Kong had more problems with knowledge in their fields than complaints...

[1] well, true - and perhaps it even isn't economical to put it back in if the one doing it is earning quite a bit per hour

First degree

Recently came across a few books in the commercial press on the topic of "what i wish i knew when i was 20".. Surely these books do have some content to sell and if a 20-year-old man would really follow the advice i can see it working...

I also have something to offer to the secondary school students (though i think none of them are likely audience of this blog). it's about one's own education.

what comprises a degree

depends on who you ask - this is going to mean very different things for different people. most would see a degree in terms of:

(1) the granting institution
(2) the faculty / major
(3) the honor (as in, first, second upper/lower and third)

for those who dig deeper, these are also interesting to the employer:

(4) whether it is acquired in distant learning (esp Lond degrees)
(5) supervisor for final year project
(6) courses taken

For the items 4-6 they would need your transcript to know it.

and getting a good first degree is important

the reason why a good first degree is important is that a second degree (or taught master for the matter) is never going to cover up the blemishes introduced by the first degree - unless the second one is really a spectacular one. studying for a second degree mean that you will need to dedicate time which you could spent to polish your career path. these also raises question in the job interviews on why you do not get into your target school in the first place (hint: this prompts the interviewer that you may be a lazy person)

what is a good first degree? it's simple:

(1) the best local schools - nobody is going to blame you for not going overseas
(2) oxbridge, icl, lse, st andrew, durham, ucl
(3) ivy league, pacific-12

for the purpose of hong kong students - (1) meant hku, cuhk and hkust. it is not that the other schools do not have good degrees[1] - it's that people look at the degree name, then the bracket, then the rest.

and then not that japan universities are not good - in fact, u of tokyo is very good in most aspects and are great rivals with hku in terms of ranking - note that hku's ranking is more of a research thing than a teaching thing and many of us would consider u of tokyo having better teaching and better students than hku.

why not a good second degree/master degree?

the simple reason is that it is less recognized - most boss understand what taught master meant - it's just exchanging money for degree - and often one do not learn much because of (1) its part-time basis, and (2) because of daytime work. if you do fulltime on these taught master then it raises question on how much your time is really worth - to be honest, to a productive man, a year off just for a master degree is way too much.

for the (overseas) research master, it may as well be better, but then the career choice would then be much more limited - mostly to companies with R&D, as well as in the academic/teaching field. it is also a more difficult business - professors detaining research students just to complete projects are not something that is unheard of.


[1] for example, polyu BA in design is of course best in the field, but we are talking about general degrees. general ones.

The 80s generation - education

This is definitely a complex socioeconomic phenomenon that one must write about these days.

They are born in the years of prosperity that last through their young childhood. Then they see the recessions. Not once. Not twice. Not thrice. Perhaps there has been too many recessions for them, occurring too frequently for them to adapt to even one. 

Education

To be honest, education is one thing that has been in turmoils for people born in the 1980s. It is not that they have not enough options. It is that they have too many options - and mind you, that is not so much of a good thing.

For those born in the 70s, when they have finished their school certificate examination, they can study up to matriculation (which, they can apply for universities/higher education afterwards), or they can come out and work. There are the vocational schools e.g. Haking Wong Technical Institute[1], which allows youngsters to be trained into somebody who can do their job really well in a certain sector.

For those born in the 80s, though, as the number of universities grew, higher education became a necessity rather than a privilege, a basic need rather than a luxury. And then the government gave them something called "associate degree" which (1) cost an arm and a leg, (2) teaches little that is practical, and (3) had extremely lax graduation requirements -- to some, it is almost like selling the diploma rather than doing education[2] - of course it is just an example... but if you can let these people graduate...

It looks really bad -- to the previous generation -- these people born in the 80s are not learning for the sake of learning, they are learning for the sake of not working.

Readers, what do you think?

[1] I can still remember the free soup that was available in the canteen in Haking Wong back in the days. The meals there was affordable, and most importantly, one can be sure that he is well fed there with just $20...
[2] My experience with these associate degree people is that.. I once came across a biological science major - I asked him if he could tell me the features of various phyla of the animal kingdom - he couldn't. I asked the same for the plant kingdom - he couldn't. I asked for the most important cycle in the body - Kreb's cycle - he can't even remember the intermediates (and I was only asking for citrate, alpha-ketoglutarate and oxaloacetate - i wasn't asking for the details). So what kind of biological science major is he....

Liberal education - Looking back

Introduction

There has been quite a body of discussion on the establishment of liberal studies. Various published articles, most prominently on Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal, have already listed out the difficulties of establishing such a subject in Hong Kong, citing reasons such as (1) Lack of a clear scope for liberal studies, (2) Necessity of an adequate prerequisite base of knowledge before the appreciation of the intrinsic value of liberal studies,(3) Lack of established teaching protocols, (4) Lack of applicable teaching materials, and the detrimental effect of establishing a standard one, (5) Lack of staff development on the subject, (6) Lack of substantial guidelines, etc. [1]

Whereas some of these concerns have been addressed by the issuance of formal guidelines on the development of liberal studies, vacuum still exists (despite how the nature abhors it) even though the academic exploration of it started some 5 years ago.

Liberal studies and general education

Originally, the term to the academia was that of general education, and it is perhaps a response to the increasing specialization of undergraduate courses that spurred in the 1970s (especially in the US of A). There, it was noted that although these new graduates are extremely knowledgeable in their own field, they are often ill-informed in most other fields.

To quote, the question at the end of the 1970s was that of whether the universities and colleges could continue their strengths in specialization, and at the same time offer something more, like, a liberal, general education[2].

Difficulties

While the difficulty of establishing a general education system at a university level is to get the departments to provide manpower to the courses and to design the courses such that it is understandable to the uninitiated, the difficulty in establishing a general education (or liberal studies) system at the secondary level is the lack of scholars who are able to teach.

While the level of knowledge that would eventually be tested would not be excessively difficult, it is to the interest of students, that each element of general education (as in science, social sciences and humanities) be taught by somebody who is well informed in each of those subjects.

It is perhaps to the advantage of students that the curriculum development of liberal studies in Hong Kong has always been ignoring the scientific part of it – such that,at the very least, a student won’t be taught on, for example, the scientific method (which, unsurprisingly, is an integral part of liberal studies curriculum elsewhere) by a teacher who has not even been instructed formally for it in a tertiary setting.

The good ol’ days of liberal studies

In the olden days, students are formally required to take almost all subjects while in junior forms, including literature, history, geography, integrated science and so on. This, perhaps, is actually the ideal picture of general education, and liberal studies at work. Each subject was taught by a relatively specialized teacher, relatively knowledgeable in their own field, and was ready to answer the question in an unambiguous manner.

It is perhaps to the best interest of students that we actually divide it back into pieces, and allow each piece of knowledge to be delivered by those in the know.

[1] see H K Kwok. The implementation of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong and its strategies, published in 2007, in Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal (pp1-6), for further discussions.
[2] see J Scott Lee. Liberal studies and general education in the undergraduate curricula in the 21th century: their role, development and the challenges.(Presentation available from google search)

This article is an edited version of my original post in an education forum.

Are we really helping the society to get more talents?

Are we really helping the society to get more talents?

A rather long rant

The education system in Hong Kong has undergone dramatic change which accumulated into the establishment of a new examination system, HKDSE, starting in 2012.The aim of an education system is of course to foster the development of talented person for the society, but then is our system really doing this? Are we really changing for the better?

A social worker has pointed out, during an episode of Hong Kong Connection (鏗鏘集), on how the bourgeois had cast their vote of no confidence by walking away from the government-sponsored education system in Hong Kong to the international schools, which, according to some, foster learning by providing an environment that is more dynamic and less examination-oriented. This behavior is of course not without its consequences, with eventually more local Chinese occupying positions in international schools and increasingly fierce competition for the places in it. Some foreigners who worked in Hong Kong could no longer find a place for their children to study in because they simply do not learn enough Chinese to allow education in the local system, nor could they secure a place in these international schools because of the fierce competition[1].

The problem with the change is that the education system has been modified in such a way that it promotes grade inflation, disproportionate amount of resources spent on particular groups of students, and increasingly, education for those who don't really want it.

Grade inflation

We are admitting an increasing number of students into our higher education system every year - be it in the statutory universities, in the statutory institutions, approved post-secondary colleges, VTC or other institutes which are accredited by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (What a long name!).

In the past, most of these students would have failed (and for the matter, some of them still failed) in the certificate examination (or eventually, for some, in the advanced level examination) and they do not have a chance of receiving tertiary education - their situation was perhaps not as bad as one would be in, these days, without a tertiary qualification, because a degree was not perceived as a must back then.

The grade inflation comes from three sides - the first side is that a reasonable curriculum has to be defined for a degree or other qualifications that is to be conferred; the second side is the institutional need of passing a reasonable number of students per year; the third side is the admission quality. One has to understand, that, despite the increase in overall intelligence in the general population, the number of those who could actually demonstrate good understanding in an undergraduate-level curriculum is definitely limited. I for one could not, really, achieve good understanding of a mathematics degree, for example, despite that I have finished my medical degree - it's not only a matter of intelligence, but also a matter of specific talent.

And then, now that an instructor, or a lecturer is now in charge of teaching students who failed their A-level physics AND applied mathematics, in an associate degree or perhaps a higher diploma program in the discipline of Engineering, what do you do? Do you change the curriculum? (not possible) Fail most of them? (not acceptable to the institution) or do you just inflate the grades? (the easy way out).

I am not saying that this is a specific problem of the education system in Hong Kong - in fact,  this is happening in a global scale even in the best universities - but the fact that this problem is global doesn't mean that it could immediately be passed as normal -- we still need to do something about it.

Disproportionate amount of resources spent in groups of students

In the past, there were the special education program, and there were the gifted education program (basically organized by the Faculty of Education, CUHK - The Program for the Gifted and Talented). Nowadays, we do not see as much emphasis in these and in fact, we are seeing a lot of money (and man-hour) being spent on remedial programs.

Remedial programs are definitely not news - we have remedial program, especially for language education since really long ago and it is everywhere - even in century-old establishments. The concept of remedial education is also not wrong - in a way, it is there to help those who could not learn effectively in the original classroom environment and provides a place in which the upper bar of student performance is lower, and the teacher-student ratio higher - this allows a teacher to teach a group of students in which the variance of ability is lower, and unsurprisingly this will lead to better received teaching.

The problem with remedial programs nowadays is that it is never-ending, and that it does not allow for additional time (as in academic year, not in lesson-hour) for the students to learn. A more terrible version of it has recently been developed by some band-2 schools which targeted a group of students who have trouble, but also 'hope' for a pass in the public examination - there, the students are divided into three groups:

(1) Those who are likely to fail despite remedial measures
(2) Those who are likely to benefit from remedial measures
(3) Those who are likely to pass the examination irrespective of remedial measures

And to make it further extremist, they are precluding the students categorized in (1) from coming to the remedial classes. Not that this is not utilitarian-correct,  but imagine the psychological health of the students so-categorized!

Then we look at the higher education. Higher education is an extremely expensive business, and I think most of us understood this.

The notion that the newer generation ought to have some sort of higher education has  been engraved onto the mind of parents in Hong Kong. The issue with these, though, is that they have to understand that the university is supposed to be a place for the advancement of science and arts, and we are looking for potential researchers in university education -- University education is NOT vocational training, and NOT a continuation of secondary school studies. To further the advancement of science and arts, however, is definitely not something that everybody is suited to do.

Education for those who don't really want it (and it is really parents' problem)


Most of us would understand that motivated students are some of the best students one would have in any education establishment. And the one of the worst problem we are having in the 21st century is that most of our students aren't motivated enough.

The best students often study because the subject matter itself is interesting to them - there is little else that is contributing as to why the student study. This is what people refer to as intrinsic motivation.

The lack of intrinsic motivation could be due to the vast array of distractions available these days, like computer games, TV programs, magazines, etc, but it could also be the diminished exposure of certain subjects to students which makes it increasingly difficult for students to actually find their true love -- a subject that is of their interest. For one, if you have never introduced to a subject like, bioinformatics for example, how does one get to like it?

This is not yet the worst enemy. Now that we have a wave of parents who are completely clueless as to how to rear a child, for example - we have parents who feed their newborn 3 times per day, essentially starving them to a near-fatal state, it is not surprising that they will foster learning in their child the wrong way. Some of them would provide a lot of extrinsic motivators without understanding the effect of it and the correct way of using it. And then when they find that the rewards don't work any more because of tachyphylaxis, they blame it on the teacher (you can't expect them to have learnt education psychology, could you?)

By now we can see that the causes of the motivation problem can be summarized below:

(1) They don't even get to develop the interest in a subject because they are not even exposed to it adequately.
(2) There are too much distraction these days
(3) Parents are often giving rewards the wrong way

Conclusion

With all these problems it is difficult to see how the new generation could actually learn - perhaps the education system would act as a sieve that allows only the best students to pass through, but this is currently at the cost of educating so many people who are really unwilling to learn (in "band 2 and 3 secondary schools" and in non-university tertiary education).

Could we have done better?

[1] Not that the government is obliged to provide them with it though, but this will surely hamper professionals from coming over.

[2] Formerly, there was also an examination for primary school graduation, but this is perhaps too old for me to comment on. Comments from readers with experience in the former system is encouraged. I refer the change to the changes imposed on the academic year 1996-1997. 
[3] Well, if they tried to foster their children's learning, it is already better than a 'so-what attitude' that is quite common these days... 


Edited 27.3.2012 - Mostly English usage (Too many complaints from my girlfriend)