Teacher Organisations for Civic Education: A Study of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union since the 1980s

• In Event: Professional Associations & Nonprofit Labor as Catalysts for Change

Abstract

Although teacher organisations are critical to the educational community and politics, their specific roles in civic education have not received adequate attention. In Hong Kong, many local NGOs are active in offering a variety of programmes or activities with regard to citizenship education. Using the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (1974-2021) – the largest teacher organisation with distinct ideological-political backgrounds and active in civic education in Hong Kong as an illustration, this paper reviews its roles along the dimensions of social-political basis, orientations of civic education, and works and strategies in civic education. Drawing on published reports on civic education, websites and documents of the teacher union, newspaper reports, this article focuses on four issues, namely democratic education, political China, anti-Japan events, and the teaching of national education and Basic Law.

Although considerable attention has been paid to the official civic education project, the role of civil society in collaboration or contestation with the state has received relatively little attention. Analysing the views and works of civic education articulated by HKPTU spanning for over three decades, this paper shows a different version of civic education defined, negotiated and contested by this teacher union over time. This paper shows that civic education led by the pro-democratic Union represents empowerment struggles for human rights and democracy vis-à-vis the domestication efforts of the establishment in a hybrid regime. The Union’s advocacy and education work helped to push the government to defer its national education policy, and to address the inadequacy of civic education due to political neglect and the limitations of the existing school system. Although it differ in the view on the notion of patriotism and its emphasis in civic education, its national identity still contains an “ethno-cultural” favour and anti-Japanese sentiments. This paper elucidates the key factors that mediate the course and outcome of cultural politics, and the significant role of teacher organisations in defining and delivering citizenship and nationalism.

References

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Author

• Thomas Tse, CUHK