Geography and Citizenship Education in Hong Kong

Although values education is always included in the syllabus, its very nature of being difficult to teach and assess often reduces the teachers to pay only lip service to its actual teaching. However, the author thinks there will be changes in Hong Kong. The emphasis of values education is important to bring about better cultural understanding of students. Citizenship education is strongly related to the civic component of values education, in which geography has to play a role alongside other subjects. The Centre for Citizenship Education of the Hong Kong Institute of Education focuses on values, civics and environmental education. The author describes what happened in the field of geographical and citizenship education in Hong Kong during the transitional period before and after the return of its sovereignty to China in 1997. She summarises her reflections about what has happened, or perhaps is happening, by saying that the Hong Kong curriculum is moving from a conservative and elitist perspective to a more nationalist and integrative perspective. Geography education can play an important role in helping students to develop 'competence' citizenship to practise and care for the environment in order to perform a stewardship role in this changing world.