Student/ Ng King Lam :
Hi all. I’m from the 2016 Creative Playground. My name is Ng King Lam, Siu Lam. Today I will introduce to you Mr Simon Wong, Artistic Director of Ming Ri Institute for Arts Education. Wai, can you help me?

Woo:
How?

Student:
I don’t want to hold the microphone, so, can you just repeat what I say? Later on, just repeat each of my sentences, ok? Layer by layer, layering, building blocks, Barbie, jungle, jumping rope, ball pit, aeroplane chess, which is a board game. We haven’t seen one another for a long time. I’m in my middle age already. Unfortunately, on one occasion, I read a book about children overseas. Then I understood that game is the most natural behaviour of children, and toys are angels of children.

Woo:
Simon, how are you? Please give him a microphone.
Long time no see.

Simon:
Long time no see.
I haven’t been to this drama theatre for a long time. Hi all. My name is Simon Wong.
Thank you, Zuni. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share with you. This is an odd place. This was the school I taught at in the 80’s. This theatre has done a lot of things, but I haven’t come here for activities for a long time. I’m from a children’s arts organisation, and I do only two things there. We do children drama, with adults acting for the children, and we offer training for teachers. Our education is a bit different in the sense that we do not teach kids, but we teach teachers, in Hong Kong and in Mainland China. The world is actually very special. Just now, I like it when the young man tells me that I’m dismantling the world. If “dismantling the world” is a theatre, then it’s a very good theatre. Only when there is dismantling, there is reconstruction. Children use their imagination to reconstruct. The world is changing so radically. I know why the world is changing so radically because of my experience in the past 2 days.
The night before last night, I was in Xian. I had dinner with Elisa Simmage, the former secretary of the International Alliance for Children and Youth Theatre in Yanta, the most ancient old town in Xian, also the city centre in the Tang Dynasty. In the past four days in Xian, I did teacher training at the place where the puppet was born.
We taught them how to incorporate puppetry into modern education. Last night, I did an online teaching for parents for 30 groups with 15,000 people in total. This is the latest activity in the mainland. I spoke into the cell phone for one minute, and my interpreter turned my speech into subtitles. Many people watched a “lunatic” talking on the cell phone. It resembles live TV broadcast, like a live show. Every month, I conduct an activity like this, with about 10,000 people participating each time. 5 years ago, this was simply unimaginable. I had not thought that I could go to Mainland China formally, that I could train mainland teachers under no threat. I never thought that I would be in this challenge, and that I would write a review package (or a package of teaching materials) on education for them.
How to teach Chinese in the future? How to teach Chinese with drama? Of course, they have their own useful textbooks, but how can we teach? One month ago, in Hang Zhou, 900 secondary school and primary school teachers and headmasters discussed with us on how to write a drama lecture. This is not a general discussion about drama lectures, but about what drama courses are. In the mainland, drama courses have developed to a new frontier, covering personal growth, and what creative drama courses are. From kindergarten to high school, how do we do life drama courses? And how to create a drama course which shows concerns in the society?
I want to talk about the speed of change, which is so fast that it’s like we are doing experiments every day. It’s fine. The name of our organization is Ming Ri (Tomorrow) Institute for Arts Education. So named because we won’t know what will happen tomorrow from the very first day. Just like last night, I wasn’t sure if there would be a delay for today’s flight. I didn’t know if the morning flight would be delayed, as there are always delays. Because of Zuni, I flied from Xian to Hong Kong today. For the first time, the flight’s arrival was half-an-hour early. Maybe the pilot knew that I was heading here to give a speech. There are always delays with luggage recently, but amazingly, there is no delay this time. The Airport Express is never punctual but it is very punctual today. And I can also come on time by taxi, when normally, it’s difficult to catch a taxi. Here I am. Such are the miracles that we encounter every day.
Children’s drama is not equal to children acting. Children’s drama is like adult drama.
In adult drama, we act for the audience. We cast an influence on the audience, entertain them, let them have a feeling of pleasure and being touched, and then there will be changes. The same goes with children drama, but the theatre is for children. It’s not a genre of drama, but a theatrical culture for audiences aged 18 or below. This is the trend of development of world children drama. This is also the goal that “Ming Ri” has been striving for in the last 30 years. We do not aim at promoting children’s drama, so we do not crave for doing more plays, writing more scripts nor seeking more funds. We aspire to cause changes in children, changes through the influence of the theatre on them. So, we will participate in more exchanges.
Thanks to the development of the world, thanks to the opportunities sent from God, we had a lot of opportunities for exchange in the past 20 years. And in the last 8 years, I did one amazing thing that I never imagined. I am the chairman of the Education Committee of the International Puppeteers Union. I’ve done a deed of glory for my lifetime. I believe that I can really face up to my daughter for the first time. I feel, for the first time, I have some standing when talking to my daughter. Well, fathers have no standing when talking to daughters. And this time, I have some standing. I made an effort to send two puppetry groups to the battlefield in Lebanon, and they performed for the children there. We sent a video of a play to the children in the Middle East refugee camp in Germany. In the Mainland, we strived to raise funds for a project called “Support Kangaroo”. Kangaroos have pouches. We can send art, culture and life using these pouches. How much people donate is not important. The key point is for them to take a picture and put the words “I support kangaroo” on it, and then we upload them to the international website, so that refugees and young people can view them. Let them know that- when you feel distressed, we are with you. I spent a lot of time to engage students and teachers in the Mainland to Support Kangaroo. It’s not because they are wealthy, but I want to tell them that they must stand in the frontier of the world. Education reform is in full swing in the Mainland. I hope you won’t view the Mainland from an out-dated perspective.
The Mainland is a special society, and there is an upper-class society and an underground one. The underground society is open and honest, and there are many teachers and youths striving to make use of the grey areas for bringing about changes to the problems and issues of the country. In the past 4 days, we conducted talks in Xian. During this time and for a while now, I didn’t need to worry about what could be said and what couldn’t, when giving speeches around China.
On the podium, I do not need to bother myself with that. Sometimes in Hong Kong, you feel a bit more restraint with you can say than in China. There are 5 more days to go before completing this year’s duties, then I can have Christmas holiday. In the past year in the Mainland, I conducted 104 full-day workshops, and the participants were all teachers. About 32 groups of teachers from about 20 cities learnt from me.
They attended a 5-day workshop on education drama, and learnt how to use drama to teach.
At first, we taught only Chinese, but then the Mainland is really developing faster than we are, and they wanted us to teach some very moving drama subjects.
So, what are we doing now? We are writing a package of teaching materials （課檢包）. We will compile the contents of the textbooks published by the 6 major publishers into our teaching plan. Then we will instruct them to teach with the new methods, and to teach with drama. Now we are promoting the 7 approaches of teaching, from “About Drama”, “Full Drama” to “Mental Expert”, so that the teaching allows the children more room to grow. These include role-play, scenarios, personal growth and so on. In the kindergartens, we are implementing another education plan. We have worked out 108 teaching plans, including exploration of growth, exploration of nature, lifestyle exploration and cultural exploration. It means education is no longer about someone reciting and then another person listening.
There should be different types of development. As we were working hard- We have 7 research teams, including people from Hong Kong and the Mainland. As we were working like crazy, we got instruction that we needed to work on English as well. So now I’m learning to do a new task. Perhaps later on, I should consult Lynn. We started to work on English. We worked on how to teach with English and phonics, and how to integrate English into the cultural education for children. So, we have entered the kindergartens and primary schools. All these changes are very rapid.
3 years ago, when we enter Mainland China to conduct workshops, we had not imagined all these. That implies education is changing. When the Mainland is changing very radically, we have to face and adapt to these changes. Hong Kong resembles the rabbit in the race between the rabbit and the turtle. In the past, we ran very fast. We were smart, we were beautiful and white. However, we fell asleep.
It may not be the youths who fell asleep… Did we run backward? We should have run backward. I dare not say that we went backward. As I said, in Hong Kong, there are a lot of things that I dare not say out loud. So, we are getting slower and slower.
When it comes to education, I hope we don’t just dwell on how great we have been in the past, but look ahead to the future.
Education is very special. Just now, what Lynn said has touched me a lot. In terms of my experience, thanks to my English teacher when I was in primary 4, I can have today’s achievement. This English teacher treated us very well. My English was very poor, and before primary 4, I had never passed the English subject. My teacher knew that, so after primary 4, he used a new method to teach me. Everybody learnt through writing and spelling, the ancient way. I was special and learnt through drawing. So, my initial fears of learning English were transformed to affection. My teacher let me draw on the poster board in the class, and gave me a picture storybook. It was the first time I saw a picture storybook, and that was in 1974 when I was in primary 4. It was such a long time ago. At the time, people in HK didn’t know what a picture storybook was. And I got one. I drew the story on the poster board, and I know that my life has changed.
More interestingly, what is education? I was a student of the Polytechnic Design School. There is one thing I’d like to say. If any of you here are teachers with the Polytechnic, please don’t be angry with me. Actually, the things I learnt in the Polytechnic are useless, as I cannot get to understand a bit of my daughter’s work.
She is also working in design. All the techniques and concepts in use now are totally different from what I learnt at that time. So, what the Polytechnic had taught me was not skills, knowledge or technique, but that the world is large and full of fun.
And I learnt the most from the Polytechnic library. It influenced me most because of Mr. Lo King Man. At that time, he was in the senior management, and he put a lot of overseas drama books to the library. I am what I am today because of these books. In fact, the chemistry and the interest that education brings is just like this.
So, it’s simple to be an educator. We provide opportunities for chemical reactions to take place, and then let fermentation take its course. The same is true with our young people. Our power is dependent on them. I often say to my students，”My power of youth does not rest on me. From where do I get my power? Simply from all of you.” So, I am actually the old sorcerer in ghost stories. To absorb the power of youth.
Thank you.