Abstract
Much harm has been done to Chinese language teaching by maladministrative measures in Hong Kong during the past forty years. This article brings up two main points in this issue. The first one is that in teacher registration and teacher assessment, the main concerns of the Education Department are simply the political background of the applicant, and whether the applicant has the minimum qualifications to be registered as a teacher. However, there is little attention paid to his major study. Many teachers, including Chinese language teachers, have to teach subjects which are not their own specialties. As over 80% of matriculation students will enter university in 1994, a lot of teachers who are 'qualified' but without satisfactory academic standards will serve society from 1997. The education crisis will be more obvious then. The second point is that, very often, principals and headmasters permit or assign teachers of other subjects to teach Chinese Language. Thus, the situation in the school becomes one where there are many "unqualified" Chinese teachers teaching this subject.The suggestion made in this paper is to allow graduates of China and other places such as Singapore to register as qualified teachers through adequate assessment. Under the principle of equal competition, there must be a language test for both local and non-local graduates. This paper also presents the view that such test and assessment should not be carried out by the Colleges of Education despite the Education Commission's proposal, as the academic standards of these colleges are currently low.
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