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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, after attending a radio programme today (January 24):
Reporter: You said during the programme that young people don't have a good understanding of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle and the Basic Law. And you said it is now a good time to strengthen education in that area. First of all, could you tell us what prompted you to make these remarks, and also how you can achieve this goal?
Secretary for Education: Thank you very much. What I have been saying is during the last Occupy Movement and in between a lot of the newspaper and media discussions, there is always a misunderstanding on the status of Hong Kong relative to the exact wording and position given by the Basic Law as well as the "One Country, Two Systems". So there has been a concern about how far actually our young people know exactly what it is. So there is a suggestion that we should relook at the current Basic Law education and the "One Country, Two Systems" education to see whether there is any need for any sort of upgrading or review. That is what we are heading right now. When we look at it, we understand people may have the idea so much on the right of being a Hong Kong citizen but not so much about the "One Country" perspective, and under the constitution of the country and Basic Law is derived from that, for example. There is a need to have a little bit of more in-depth understanding of that part. It is an example. There are others as well about the different types of education in different stages of schooling as well as teachers in need of more support in this area and also, not the least, there is the updating of the materials on the teaching and learning side. So these are the few things that we are heading in getting it better.
Reporter: And also the question about the Army Cadet. It says one of the objectives is to eventually set up schools in Hong Kong. With its pro-Beijing background, do you think it is appropriate at all to do this?
Secretary for Education: I get it that this is part of the aspirations of the newly established uniformed group, and with all the ideas being communicated so far, providing our students and young people an additional alternative relative to, sort of, the uniformed groups, life exposure, at the same time, better health for individuals and ability to handle adversity, together also to build the social service mind as well as the serving mind for the country. All these are very good ones. But they need the time to actually articulate further and make them more transparent. I understand it is newly formed, so they probably need some time first of all, and secondly, there might be aspiration of actually establishing schools. As I mentioned earlier, if you really want to set up a school, there are a lot of factors you need to consider first. So that is what I am trying to say.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, January 24, 2015
Issued at HKT 13:32
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