Learning to understand a nation

• Published in: Social transformations in Chinese societies 2019-11, Vol.15 (2), p.81-93
• Main Authors: Tang, Hei-Hang Hayes, Chong, King Man Eric, Yuen, Wai Wa Timothy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1871-2673
• DOI: 10.1108/STICS-10-2018-0015

Purpose National identification among young people and the issues about how national education should be conducted have been the significant topics when the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was entering its third decade of the establishment. This paper was written based on data the authors obtained upon participation in a project organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project was carried out after the official curriculum, known as the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide, was shelved due to popular resentment. The project aimed at capturing the timely opportunity for substantial resources available for school-based operation of moral and national education and developing an alternative curriculum about teaching national issues and identification for Catholic Diocese and Convent primary schools to adopt. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this Catholic Project and examines the extent to which it is a counterhegemonic project or one for teaching to belong to a nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2007). It assesses the project’s possible contribution to citizenship and national education in Hong Kong, since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide. Design/methodology/approach The authors of this paper worked in an education university of Hong Kong and were invited to be team members of this Catholic Project. The role comprised proposing topics for teacher training, conducting seminars, giving comments to teaching resources, observing and giving feedback to schools that tried out the teaching and designing/implementing an evaluative survey and conducting follow-up interviews with involved parties such as teachers and key officials of the Catholic Centre. Given this, the research involved can be perceived as action research. This paper was written up with both the qualitative and quantitative data the authors collected when working the project. Findings This paper reported a Catholic citizenship training project with the focus on a Catholic school project on preparing students to understand the nation by learning national issues analytically. The ultimate goal was to ensure teachers in Catholic primary schools could lead the students to examine national issues and other social issues from the perspective of Catholic social ethics. Though the project arose after the failure of the government to force through its controversial national education programme, this paper f