This is a column I wrote for the now defunct Hong Kong daily, the iMail in 2001. I was reminded of it by a number of threads on #ChinaTwitter about the “usefulness” of learning Chinese in terms of the potential careers rewards compared to the investment of time and effort. This in turn led one writer to pen a piece on how Chinese netizens are discussing the “usefulness” of learning English
THEY’RE a disparate bunch; a patriotic young cadre and his older co-worker, an ambitious thirtysomething entrepreneur hoping to do business with foreigners, and two fresh-faced young mothers waiting to join their husbands in Arizona.
Such are the students taking evening English classes with Father Franco Mella at Jiangmen’s Television University. Most had a basic grasp of English at best. They also had very different reasons for learning: some wanted to study and work abroad, some wanted to advance their careers and so on.
But the man who left the deepest impression was one of Franco’s former students, Ah-Fu.
He’s a farmer who lives about 45 minutes out of Jiangmen. Every morning for the past 13 years Ah-Fu has woken to the sound of the village rooster and the precise tones of the BBC World Service. Although he has attended classes, he is for the most part self-taught. He has a speech impediment but hasn’t let it become an obstacle.
“Carambola,” he says slowly, deliberately but confidently and for a moment I have to think about what it means. A carambola is a starfruit, it’s one of Ah-Fu’s favourite harvests and it seems, favourite words; he tells me he also grows papaya and pineapple. The joy is all too obvious as he finds a native English speaker with whom to practise the fruits of his labour, his hard-earned vocabulary.
He cuts an eccentric figure: small, tanned with a winning smile and clutching a leather handbag you might find in a vintage clothing store. “Yes, it’s a very charming bag,” he says when I compliment him on it.
Ah-Fu’s use of English is unconventional but highly creative and imaginative. He is far more at ease with this foreign tongue than the other students I met. Yet, unlike them, he has absolutely no practical use for it whatsoever.
His passion for English is such that he turned up at class one evening in a suit, prompting Franco to ask why he was dressed to the nines. “It’s my wedding day today and I’ve just come from the banquet,” he replied. Ah-Fu had left the bride with the guests at the party and cycled into town for class.
Ah-Fu has little chance of visiting an English-speaking country, he has few enough opportunities ever to use his English. But that hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm or his love for the language one little bit.
If Ah-Fu had grown up in a more affluent society, his speech impediment could have been corrected earlier, he could be using his language skills, he could even be writing this column. Ah-Fu’s love of learning and knowledge for its own sake led me to reflect upon our own society’s current fixation with “adding value”.
The government’s call for lifelong learning is certainly worthy and the realisation that the workforce needs to acquire new skills certainly makes business sense. But I’m afraid the add-value battle-cry could just end up alienating workers and hemming them into one retraining scheme after another without any hope of finding real or better jobs.
On the one hand, the concept of lifelong learning is elevated into an abstract ideal towards which we should all aspire, on the other hand we are told we should learn those things which make us more “useful” workers. And who decides what makes us useful? The market? The bosses? The government?
Recently, an internationally renowned mathematics professor gave a lecture to students in Hong Kong. Yau Shing-tung, who was partly educated here, pointed out there is too much emphasis on the study of things deemed “useful”. In the past it may have been engineering and accounting, now it’s computing.
Subjects such as Professor Yau’s pure mathematics are regarded as having no practical application and therefore not worth pursuing. Not only is this shortsighted, but as Professor Yau pointed out, the scientist who invented the laser was laughed at as an eccentric and his invention as useless.
In a society like Hong Kong, we can afford to cultivate and encourage the spirit of Ah-Fu rather than force it into no more than added value in a dispensable work unit.
Published in the Hong Kong iMail, 29 January 2001
