Cultivating students' socio-political sense : the relationship between studying liberal studies and citizenship

Abstract

Before the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese sovereignty, civic education was the least important subject in the eyes of both students and teachers as the subject did not count in the public examinations. Civic education classes avoided discussion of contemporary issues and secondary school students were criticized as ignorant about political matters.

After 1997, it can be observed that the political culture of Hong Kong has become more active as people’s general awareness of their political values and rights, and their readiness to uphold these values and assert the rights has increased. One of the growing political activist groups nowadays are students and the Hong Kong Education Bureau has made Liberal Studies a compulsory subject in the new senior secondary system (NSS) since 2007, in which students can learn about contemporary issues and discuss political systems, events and participation in class.

Seeing the growing political participation and activism in Hong Kong recently and the establishment of the Liberal Studies subject, this research aims to investigate how the learning of Liberal Studies can influence students’ citizenship – the concept of civil rights, political rights, social rights, in relation to political participation. This study will be a qualitative research by analyzing interviews of students from the University of Hong Kong who had studied the New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies curriculum. The semi-structured interviews with will be analyzed to investigate how Liberal Studies influence students’ social-political sense and citizenship.