Other Books Published by CERC
In Search of an Identity: The Politics of History as a School Subject in Hong Kong, 1960s-2005
By Edward Vickers
ISBN 10: 962-8093-38-X; ISBN 13: 978-962-8093-38-0. (2005, 334pp.)
HK$200 (local), US$32 (overseas)
published by Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC)
In most societies the
school subject of History reflects and reinforces a sense of collective
identity. However, in Hong Kong this has emphatically not been the case.
Official and popular ambivalence towards ‘the nation’ in the shape of the
People’s Republic of China, and the sensitivity of Hong Kong’s own political and
cultural status, have meant that the question of local identity has until
recently been largely sidestepped in school curricula and textbooks. In this
ground- breaking study, Edward Vickers sets out to reexamine some of the myths
concerning colonialism and schooling under the British, while showing how in
postcolonial Hong Kong these myths have been deployed to legitimise a programme
of nationalistic re-education. In a new Afterword, he emphasises that it is Hong
Kong’s fundamentally undemocratic political context that has thwarted – and
continues to thwart – efforts to make history education a vehicle for fostering
a liberal, democratic sense of regional and national citizenship.
“Since the 1960s, Hong Kong people have developed a strong sense of their own
distinctiveness. This thorough study explains why the local school curriculum
has failed to reflect this emerging sense of identity. Vickers shows how the
pressures of political correctness have constrained curriculum developers, and
undermined their attempts to make history education more relevant, stimulating
and critical. His book should be read not only by specialists interested in
curriculum history, but by all those who are interested in Hong Kong, and the
role that education can play in shaping its future.”
Christine Loh – Chief Executive Officer, Civic Exchange, Hong Kong
“In Search of an Identity provides a scholarly and superbly readable account of a complex episode in curriculum history in East Asia. As such, it represents a major contribution to curriculum policy studies and to the regional historiography of education and identity formation.”
From the Foreword by Professor Andy Green
“This volume makes a substantial contribution to understanding the complexities of curriculum development processes, identity politics, and notions of ‘culture’ and ‘nationness’ – not only in Hong Kong, but across the rest of East Asia and beyond.”
Alisa Jones, The China Quarterly
“A significant contribution to research in the field of education in general, and to research in comparative curriculum history in particular... the first comprehensive effort to analyse the trajectories of history education in Hong Kong from historical perspectives.”
Hiromitsu Inokuchi and Yoshiko Nozaki, The Asia Pacific Journal of Education
“[There is] no other book covering so thoroughly an essential topic for scholars of national identity: the curriculum through which Hong Kong youth have been taught history over the past forty years.”
Gordon Matthews, Asian Anthropology
Edward Vickers is Lecturer in Comparative Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is co-editor of History Education and National Identity in East Asia (New York: Routledge, 2005).