Powers that be fail to learn on education issue

Andrew Shuen - research director, The Lion Rock Institute, (The Standard, P.16 - View Point)


And you want us to have children?


As a 31-year-old male born and raised in Hong Kong, I am at a stage in life and mind where one could say I am seeking to ``settle down.'' Be a family man. Embrace the future with a vote in confidence by securing a partner, who shares my desire to have children.


This yearning, I am sure, is shared by many in my demographic. Yet, great apprehension overrides and hesitation grips. No doubt, there will be some who blame such apprehension on the fickleness of our generation. We grew up in relative prosperity and never seem to want the challenges of great responsibilities, especially one as great as raising a family. As a member of the aforementioned generation, I'm the first to admit that it is indeed because of fickleness that we remain apprehensive.


If the root cause was only as simple as fickleness by nature, I have no grounds for anger. But the fickleness unfortunately stems from forces not in our hands.


All parents when holding their child, though, always dream of greatness, hope at the very least their children will become productive members of society. Hope they would able to take care of themselves and not burden others.


Knowing this, individuals of our generation, especially when courtship begins, are nevertheless without hope.


This is due to a perpetual cloud hanging at the back of our mind, that education, especially the individual-child- ignoring, tortuous education system we have, is not a system which we want to subject any children, let alone our own.


We know that unless there are sufficient economic resources to guarantee a choice for our children to escape wholesale the entire universal education system, we will choose not to have children. Yet, we are a generation who experienced throughout our working life, one financial crisis after another. And from this experience, we know we cannot guarantee such economic resources for choice over the decades-long span of a child's education.


On Thursday, the Legislative Council's panel of education heard the wider community's response to the so-called fine tuning of mother-tongue education.


We have seen the results of government experimenting on our children, and we don't like it. This time, it's a change that took a decade to correct the poor decision made earlier by the government, but what other whim and crude actions will our children be subjected to next? We at the Lion Rock Institute have only these demands.


First, free the supply. Return the decision of how each and every child will be educated to the frontline educators. All Hong Kong schools' freedom in operations, hiring and firing should be raised to the level of international schools so that parents who cannot foresee decade-long economic stability can still be confident of bringing life to this world.


Then free the demand. The funding of education should solely be based upon the choice of parents. If a school and a child becomes a pair, let not artificial geographic boundaries, government social engineering, teacher union-vested interest or so-called education-expert opinions get in the way.


Taking these actions will end the anger not only caused by the lack of hope but also by the hypocrisy of education in Hong Kong. How can the politicians and bureaucrats that decide our children's fate say with a straight face that what they designed is the ``best'' when they speak with their actions by sending their children to international schools or abroad, therefore unwilling to subject their own offspring to the monstrosity of their own creation?


Please, all we want is to have children, with confidence.

Shoppers pay price for dodgy law

Nicole Idanna Alpert - The Lion Rock Institute Research Associate ( The Standard ~ Opinion , 2008.5.20)

How much harm can losing a few products because of mandatory nutritional labeling actually cause?

The supermarkets will still be stocked. Corner shops and wet markets will function much as they do today. And, whether consumers gloss over or ignore the information on the back of every product available, they will have to pay a bit extra for it.

It seems all is in order. Or is it?

Finding the products that you usually purchased absent is a small heartbreak for every grocery shopper.

Those in favor of mandatory food labeling cannot deny that a number of products will be missing after the law is passed.

I imagine the larger supermarkets like Great, 360 and CitySuper will find it more than easy to assuage the costs of the new food labeling with stickers and all, but wonder about the smaller shops.

The French specialty shop that just opened down the street will face huge financial obstacles when stuck with the costs of testing and stickering. Will it have to cut advertising in its budget or raise consumer prices to comply with the new mandatory labeling?

If those shops can't afford the new costs, we lose them and their special goods along with all the other products that retailers and manufactures will consider risks to continue to supply.

Huge criticism was made when the government eased its previous policy and proposed that it would extend the exemption to low-volume food products (30,000 units a year) with nutritional claims as long as stickers were placed on the products warning that it may not comply with Hong Kong's food labeling standards.

Might a consumer feel a bit insulted by this sticker hullabaloo? In reality, consumers interested in the nutritional aspects of products look at the packaging, and others ignore the stickers and hard-to-read small print.

If a consumer is satisfied with the information given, the product goes in the cart; if not, the product is back on the shelf.

Consumers vote with their purchases - products that are not wanted are not bought. It is consumer preference or demand that should remove unpopular products from the shelves, not food-labeling laws.

Choice is a top priority, and while fingers from Legco have been pointed at the industry, and it has been blamed for scaremongering and "duping" consumers, the truth remains that choice will inevitably diminish because of the new costs.

The frustration is understandable. It has been five years since the start of the food-labeling discussion and still a law is not yet in place. Having said that, legislation is not to be taken lightly and passing just anything is a horrible idea.

Health and choice are not mutually exclusive, and any food-labeling law adopted must illustrate that.

As an international city, Hong Kong should boast an ease of access and an enormous diversity of products from all over the world.

But when mandatory food labeling causes products to be shut out of the market and food choice to diminish, the legislation must be looked at again, even if it has been around for years.

The recent competition law inaccurately assumes consumers will be given more choice, but nonetheless emphasizes the importance of consumer benefit and choice.

On the other hand, mandatory food labeling emphasizes legislation that makes more choice more expensive. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

The popular political consensus is "do something, do anything" to get a law passed. Though those pushing for labeling laws have had to wait so long, this concept is both inappropriate for a city as developed and refined as Hong Kong, and irresponsible.

"Do anything" refers both to good and bad, so instead do something to improve the lot of consumers.

Well-researched, practical and measured legislation, regardless of the time it takes, will always trump passing "anything."