Batgung

If Hong Kong expat parents decide to send their children to local schools, then begins the intimidating process of trying to get them into a 'good' one. Parents all over the world try hard to get the best education possible for their children, of course, so in one sense there's nothing unusual about this. But the lengths to which some Hong Kong parents will go beggar belief.

Why is getting into a good school such a big deal here?

First, there's the intense -- almost religious -- faith many Chinese people have in the power of education. A look at the enrollment figures for universities in the USA, for example, will almost always reveal a disproportionate number of 'Asian Americans', a large proportion of whom will be of Chinese ancestry. On the whole, this education-fixation is of course a good thing, but it also provides an endless supply of fuel for the fires of parental ambition.

Next, Hong Kong is a small place, in the sense that everyone knows which schools are 'good ones', i.e. boasting long traditions of academic excellence, and known for producing social and cultural elites. Networks of 'old school chums' still exist and, given the Chinese propensity for guanxi (i.e. appealing to and making use of personal influence in politics and business), graduating from one can be a big advantage.

Thirdly, the Hong Kong Government directly encourages intra-school competition by grouping its secondary schools into 'bands', i.e. direct rankings of their quality. This removes any remaining mystery about the school your kid gets into.

All of this leads to some outrageous behavior from 'concerned' parents who 'only want the best' for their children. And the process begins early. Let's look at a couple of examples.

One of Mrs Tall's female relatives, who shall certainly go unnamed or further identified, has a daughter who just this year is entering primary school after finishing kindergarten. Her parents had already moved from Tuen Mun (a new suburban town that's not noted for having good schools) to Kowloon Tong (an area with lots of older, more prominent schools) in order to boost her geographical chances of getting in a 'good one'.

But was this enough? Was it now time to let fate take its hand to dictate which school she'd get allotted to? Of course not. Instead, this girl's mother launched a campaign of almost manic self-promotion and sycophancy to try to game the system, i.e. to get her daughter admitted via special dispensation to one of several famous schools. This campaign was built on a foundation of dragging the poor girl to years of extracurricular classes and activities -- swimming lessons, piano lessons, drawing and art lessons, English lessons, and so on. Mom assembled a curriculum vitae comprising several pages of information on these accomplishment, buttressed by stacks of award certificates, participation notices, signed testimonials from kindergarten teachers (really, I'm not making this up) and so on.

But none of this was at all unusual. In fact, the reason Mrs Tall and I were witness to all this is that Mrs Ambitious then asked us to write application letters for her daughter! And we did: you just can't turn down requests like this, and hope to maintain family harmony. We also redesigned and edited the CV. Mom wanted to make sure all was in perfect English, of course.

In the end, the little girl didn't get into any of the 'good schools', so Mom was back to us in a flash, asking for more letters, this time to ask the relevant headmasters and headmistresses to reconsider their decisions, to please think about what a truly accomplished and singular girl was being overlooked here, and on and on. So far, it still hasn't worked.

The problem is not the little girl. She's bright, eager to learn, and in no way unsuited for attending a good school: she's a normal child. But so are hundreds of thousands of other children in Hong Kong, and their parents are all pushing them into regimens of lessons and accomplishments and polishing up their CVs, too.

In one sense, Mrs Tall's relative isn't even all that extreme. Mrs Tall had a colleague at one of her former jobs who took the game to another level entirely. She started leveraging the application process when her son was in her womb. How? Well, she knew that many of the best schools in Hong Kong are run by the Catholic Church. So she hung around a Catholic church that was associated with one of the good schools, and sucked up to the nuns who had influence on school admissions. She became a church member, was baptized, and did a lot of volunteer work to further ingratiate herself. But it was all a sham -- and she then compounded her sins by bragging to her colleagues about how her Machiavellian maneuverings were going to beat the system and get her kid in the school's door!

This might be an extreme case, but I don't think it's isolated, either. Mrs Tall later had another colleague at a different company who'd also become a 'member' of a church with the same general plan in mind. I'm sure examples abound.

So, added to the question of whether or not to send our kids to international or local schools, the Talls and the Baldings will need to decide whether or not to 'play the game' of school admissions.

If you've got advice for us -- or good stories about this subject -- we're all ears!