Part 1: Prof. Li Che-lan, Linda
Woo:
Welcome to the second day of our creative education forum. I guess you have all got the headsets for the simultaneous interpretation we provide. If you don’t have one, you can get it from outside. We have three channels, channel 1 is English, channel 2 is Mandarin, and channel 3 is Cantonese.
Welcome everyone. Before we begin, I would like to play a video. If you have watched it yesterday, you can enjoy it again, because the last part is different.
Woo:
The theme yesterday was the relation between tradition and education.
Today, our theme is cross-culturalism. In the video we just showed, you saw the part about a visit to Nanjing. Why a tour to Nanjing? Let me explain to you the background. This forum is actually part of the “Creative Playground – Danny Yung Experimental Theatre”. This project started in 2015 and runs for a period of 2 years. The main objective is to develop a curriculum, designed for Level 3 under the Qualifications Framework. We hope that when the curriculum is completed, secondary schools or the other educational bodies, which are interested to develop a school-based curriculum can make use of it. The structure is designed in accordance with the six elements of theatre: body, sound, space, science and technology, symbol and structure. We treat these elements as six subjects, and they constitute a theatre curriculum.
Last year, we organized our first forum, and this is the second one. Many expert groups have discussed this curriculum. Our time-table is that, before mid-2017, the curriculum will be uploaded to the internet as online resources. Schools that are interested can use the materials. For secondary school teachers or friends in attendance today, if your school is interested in developing this school-based curriculum, please approach us. We’ll see what assistance we can provide.
Yesterday, we talked about tradition. Today, we’ll talk about cross-culturalism.
Crossing language is a characteristic of HK education. We are bilingual in Chinese and English, we speak Cantonese and Putonghua, and there are various cross-cultural elements. Cross-cultural communication is a trend in the world now.
So, actually, what is its relation with education? This year, for the creative playground project, we have recruited 18 youngsters. They went through a few stages. In the first stage, we arranged a 2-week trip to Nanjing for them.
They learnt from teachers of Jingkun opera and other Asian teachers of modern art and modern dance in a very intensive 2-week workshop. When they returned to Hong Kong, they attended a series of workshops and lessons. Finally, they created a performance in 2 months’ time, and the performance was just staged in Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity. We have researched and studied about the curriculum for 2 years, and we will offer the reference materials to you all.
Firstly, about the curriculum, as it’s designed for Level 3 of the Qualifications Framework, what contents should it contain?
About teaching, as the curriculum is established, we need teachers to deliver it, so that it’s lively. About teaching materials, what are the teaching methods?
Then there are equipment and facilities. If we want to learn about theatrical body movement, what kind of space do we need for doing rehearsals? What other supporting facilities do we need? We develop the curriculum according to this model.
Today, we are very happy to have some experts from different places to share with us. Yesterday, we had a discussion on education and tradition. Today, we will talk about cross-culturalism. Before the forum begins, we’d like to be a bit creative. We want to be a bit unusual and not that monotonous, so we have invited friends from creative playground to introduce the 4 speakers.
They’ll start now.
Woo:
Thank you, all. Now we’ll formally begin our forum. Our 4 speakers will address us for 15 minutes each, then there will be a discussion. Let’s invite the first speaker, Prof. Li Che-lan.Please take a seat. Prof. Li, we’ll talk about cross-culturalism today.
In recent years, the City University also offers creative media courses, taking in students from different places all over the world. As a leader planning the development of the university, what do you think about the notion of cross-culturalism, and its relation with education?
Li Che-Lan:
Fine. Thank you. Let me thank Danny for inviting me first. I want to clarify a point before I start, I haven’t been a leader for many years, but it’s still a good idea for me to share some of my experiences. I think cross-culturalism is a very big and important topic. When I received the invitation, I asked the organizer what language I should speak in. And the organizer said that I could use any language. Anyway, I know only 2 to 3 languages. But when I was about to make a decision, I really had to think it over, and it took considerable mental effort. Then I thought about what this topic was about. The topic is about crossing cultures, and how cross-culturalism is related to our theme, that is, its relation with creative education. I guess if I don’t think about it at all- My native language is the language I use when I speak to my family at home or when I go out for shopping. Of course it’s Cantonese. This is my native language. This means my native culture is the culture associated with Cantonese. But we are talking about crossing culture, right? I thought that I had to make a leap to cross from my native language. Though my Mandarin or English is definitely not as good as my native language, I would pick one of them. I thought, well, let me speak in Mandarin.
How can I go about this topic? Our speakers today are all eminent experts in this field. I’m not working in the art field. I’m not working in art, drama or theatre.
In the past 3 years at the university, I have been doing planning work, which sounds rather boring. I’m a scholar of political science and I do research about politics. One of the subjects I teach, and the direction and focus of my research, is about the changes in established systems. How does the system or the society change and evolve?
Culture is actually a system at its deepest level. We talk about what culture is all the time, and in fact, it’s the deepest form of a system. Then, what is a system?
The most significant difference between a system and our behavior and decision is that it is a strong permanence. If something changes a lot from time to time, it can hardly be called a system. So, culture as a system of the deepest level, it itself has…
There is a book…perhaps some younger friends may not have any ideas…it says that culture is a super stable structure. So, what do we educate in education?
Fundamentally, education is mostly about teaching the kids the rules of games in their growing stage. How to speak?How to eat? How to be polite? How to find a job? As an adult, how to find a job without running into obstacles? Everyone is learning the various rules of games of our society. This in fact, is a system, a culture.
Hence, sometimes education emphasizes on teaching the youth…Even we ourselves have gone through the same process……To teach them various systems of rules and culture. Culture is usually linked to our community, and that’s why our learnt culture is more unified in nature. If you give the students different sets of the rules of games, they would be very bored and confused, not knowing what to do. Though you want to let them have variety, they would, in the end, ask for your help in simplifying them into a single set of rules, or something more comprehensive. In such a way, they can easily follow. Otherwise they don’t know what to do with it. I’m here today, and what am I supposed to do? What should be emphasized behind this topic? Or they would be confused, not knowing what to do. Hence, this is a kind of human nature. Irrespective of the many different colors you see in the nature, you tend to generalize them as one color. For example, when you see 100 different colors, you’d say it’s multi-colored, and that you see full colours in front of you. You won’t say that you see 100 different colours, but you’d simply say it’s colorful, and that all the different colors are viewed as a certain colorful colour.
So, from this angle, it’s human nature to make complex things simple. And in this way, we can live on, by making life simpler. But the situation we are now facing is how to make our life better, and how to recover the diversity. In the midst of simplicity…Simplicity because we make things simple. But in actual fact, the world is not simple at all. It’s diversified in nature. We’re born with diversity. I myself am multi-faceted. So is everyone, right? We don’t just have a single attribute in our character. Instead, we have many. We’re born with diversity. Humans are born complicated. A society is also complicated. So, how do we face the diversified nature in ourselves? In fact, I think the so-called cultural diversity… Of course, we now place an emphasis on having more exchanges among different communities and different groups of people. I definitely agree with that.
Our school also attaches importance to internationalization and exchange programmes. We want to send our students overseas, and recruit foreign students to our school. But I think the most important aspect of diversity lies within us. How do we face our own inner diversity? How do we face the internal diversity of the society? How about the diversity in our family? If we are able to face the internal diversity, we can more readily understand the external diversity.
Otherwise… I chatted with Danny for a few minutes before the forum, we said that it seems there are a lot of international activities going on now, and if they are not well organized, they would become a mere formality, an illusion only, an empty frame with no contents. If we don’t attach importance to contents, even if we invite friends from a long way away, that serves no purpose, as there is no good exchange and no diversity. Hence, I think we need to return to our inner world to face our own diversified nature.
If we respect this inner diversity, then this would be the most important subversion against traditional education. When doing creative education, on the one hand, we have to find what is common among all the diversified things.
Otherwise, our kids don’t know how to live life. At the same time, as we grow up, or when the kids are sensible enough, we should subvert their ideas, and let them know that, for example, being punctual is important, but we should not risk our lives for the sake of punctuality. Or suppose that you’re facing a certain crisis, you’d better be late for 5 minutes than let yourself get into any accidents when crossing the road, or drive very fast, because you’re nervous about being late.
So, sometimes we need to strike a balance. That’s what I think. Maybe I’ll end here, and leave more time for exchanges later.
Woo:
Thank you. What should I do now? You can stay here on the stage or return to the audience.
Li Che-Lan:
You’re giving me so many options to choose from. I don’t know what to do, right? It’s better to have fewer choices in life. Please tell me what to do then. You’d better go off the stage, so you can see the projection screen.
Thank you.
Woo:
Thank you. Let’s invite our next speaker.
Who’s the next? Hartmut.