Is there an invisible wall standing between us? Education from the perspective of South Asian parents in Hong Kong

Abstract

Education of ethnic minority students has been the concern of government and schools. Resources and efforts have been put to improve the quality of their education. However, in order that such initiatives can bear fruits, they have to be based on good understanding. In order to fully understand the students, we actually need to understand the parents as well, because the parents are their primary sources from whom they pick up their values and outlooks to society. By knowing the situations and considerations of the parents, we can understand more about why the students think and behave the way they do. In many cases, the cooperation between schools and parents is also essential for bringing effective changes to students’ learning and their development of character. Even though all the above seem obvious and we often heard both schools and ethnic minority parents expressing the desire for better communication and mutual understanding, the actual situation still seems to be less than adequate. There seems to be an invisible wall hard to break and somehow efforts do not always pay off. In view of this, the Learning Community Team of the USP project has interviewed some Pakistani and Nepali parents who are very supportive to their children’s further education, and organised some interactions between school educators and parents. Through the dialogue, the Team can now comprehend better why some parents may not be responding to some of the schools’ initiatives in the way that the schools would expect, and identify certain gaps that parents and teachers can pay attend to in developing better mutual understanding and trust. The paper will share some of the findings and call for developing platform for dialogues of similar kinds that can raise the awareness of all parties about the challenges in intercultural communication, and what each can do a little more to improve it.