The trend of de-politicization in the liberal studies curriculum in Hong Kong

Abstract

Liberal Studies as a senior secondary subject in Hong Kong is now facing a dilemma between its educational aim of cultivating self-determined individuals and an appeal for its de-politicization. The aggravated dissonance regarding the subject’s future development arouses this study to find out whether signs of de-politicization can be detected in its curriculum and textbooks, which could fundamentally alter the essence of this subject.

To investigate whether there the tendency of de-politicization is reflected in Liberal Studies, content analysis is conducted on the official curriculum documents and selected textbooks. A framework of four types of de-politicization is developed based on the conceptions of de-politicization from political science and schools of civic virtues from citizenship education. These four types, reduction, selection, deflection and neutrality, are identified with their characteristic and values promoted, and subdivided into more specific forms corresponding to various modalities of issue framing.

The results of the content analysis indicate that a neutral approach to de-politicization with maximal presentation of values is found widely used to address issue enquiry. The inconsistency between the politicized orientation in the curriculum and the de-politicized interpretation in textbooks is believed to be the result of deficient guidelines and exemplification on how moral reasoning can be made in the curriculum and the textbooks.