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Bilingual and Multilingual Education pp 207–218Cite as

Bilingual Education in Hong Kong

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((ELE))

Abstract

The field of bilingual education in Hong Kong provides a perfect window to study the transformation of education in the context of wider processes of economic, institutional, political, sociolinguistic, and cultural changes. As Hong Kong changed from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region (SAR, hereafter) of the People’s Republic of China, the space of language education has seen the overlapping of old and new discourses regarding what languages should be learned or taught, by whom, when, and to what degree. Such discourses and the related policies which have contributed to their institutionalization cannot be detached from shifting conditions as to who gets to decide what language repertoires are attributed value in which sociolinguistic markets vis-à-vis local and translocal processes of destabilization of the modern politics of language and culture.

This entry traces major works that have reported and described these processes, with attention to their implications for the existing language-in-education policies and practices in contemporary Hong Kong. Recurrent problems and future directions for research are also discussed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The use of “Chinese” as a vague umbrella label to refer to spoken Cantonese and written Standard Mandarin Chinese, by the policy documents in Hong Kong, is an inherited practice from the British colonial government who allowed Cantonese some space by not naming it but covering it under the umbrella term “Chinese.”

  2. 2.

    In contrast to monolithic portrays of social groups where Europeans are repeatedly characterized as upper middle classes, and ethnically Chinese as working class, sources from this period show social class discrimination as led by wealthy Chinese groups and citizens as well. Some of these groups submitted several petitions to the Governor asking for a separate school for European children, or even for the establishment of a school where higher fees than those paid at schools run by Europeans may be charged, with the aim of avoiding the association of their children with the poorer classes in English-medium schools (Sweeting 1990, p. 196–199).

  3. 3.

    Standard Written Chinese (both in traditional and simplified characters) has been described as based on the linguistic features of spoken Mandarin, which has led to numerous arguments about the learning difficulties that this poses to Cantonese speakers whose oral language does not share the same lexical and grammatical features of Mandarin.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Culture, Communication and Media, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

    Miguel Pérez-Milans

Authors
  1. Miguel Pérez-Milans
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Correspondence to Miguel Pérez-Milans .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

    Ofelia García

  2. Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

    Angel M. Y. Lin

  3. Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stephen May

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Pérez-Milans, M. (2017). Bilingual Education in Hong Kong. In: García, O., Lin, A., May, S. (eds) Bilingual and Multilingual Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02258-1_17

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