In addition to some adolescent worries, Christina Ho, from Hong Kong, enjoyed attending elite secondary schools in Australia, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"Schools are great, they encourage freedom of thought,", Christina Ho said, recalling the green days. She also spoke highly of her former classmates: I benefited a lot from them.
More than 20 years later, former high school students have become senior lecturers at (UTS), Sydney University of Science and Technology, and mothers of their two children.
Dr Ho and his daughter (Australian Broadcasting Corporation Photo)
However, 43-year-old decided not to send her children to elite high school because "there are too many Asian children."
When Dr. (Dr Ho) graduated from elite high school in 1991, Asian students were only a minority. Today, many students have Asian backgrounds in more than 20 all-elite middle schools and 25 elite schools in the new state. Some education critics estimate that some schools in Sydney have more than 90% Asian students.
Dr Ho, who is working on multiculturalism, says she does not want children in such a racially unbalanced environment.
"ideally, school is a microcosm of society, where children systematically learn about multiculturalism in their daily lives." This, she says, is unlikely to happen in a school that does not reflect the diversity and culture of society.
Dr Ho does not want his children to go to elite secondary schools. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation Photo)
In some elite schools, there are small ethnic groups. Trissha Varman, a 15-year-old elite high school student born in Malaysia, says that in their schools, South Asian students tend to form small groups known as "curry" (Curry Group). And 17-year-old Alissa, who also attended elite high school, said white students also formed a small group called "Skip," named after the pet kangaroo "Skippy", a pet kangaroo on the popular children`s television show < Skippy the Bush Kangaroo > in Australia.
Dr Ho also refers to the term "Asian five (the Asian five)", which refers to a range of scientific subjects, such as mathematics, which Asian students are good at. White subjects, on the other hand, refer to the humanities that Westerners are good at. In sports, debate is also seen as a white student. Dr Ho expressed deep concern. "as an immigrant who grew up in Australia, I wanted to be integrated more than anyone else. I don`t want to be divided by race."
She warned that it was unhealthy to look at the world with racially "glasses". As a result, she hopes to have a broader discussion of race, ethnicity, and education.
"the race problem is there, it`s palpable, people don`t know how to discuss it," she says. "one of my studies is to give people another way to talk about it, not just about race," she says. It also includes discussions on cultural and goverment policy issues. "
Dr. he practiced alt with his daughter. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation Photo)
Dr Ho`s two children are still young, five years old and nine years old. Will our education become more hierarchical and racial when they go to high school? Will there be more pressure on children to learn and more competition?
If so, what kind of Australian society would be created by children raised from such an education system?
