Kung Hei Fat Choi, welcome to the Year of the Ox, and what an interesting year it promises to be. Full of potential, but it’s going to be a year of tough love. I write this while watching the inauguration of a new American president. Given the messianic levels of adoration and expectation heaped upon him, Barack Obama will undoubtedly disappoint. He is not the new god, but a politician – he talks the talk well enough, let’s see if he can walk the walk. Racism assures his legacy - he will always be known as the first black president - so let us hope that he will be a good, if not great, president. But what will be the reaction of black Americans when they don’t all suddenly over night become middle class and enjoy comfortable lives? Who will they blame?

Locally, we have a similar problem, less obvious because those affected are Chinese, and do not stick out by virtue of their skin colour. But the tough economy is going to bring to the fore the fact that the majority of children who attend government run schools and universities are not graduating with good enough skills to stand an even chance of getting the job they want. Admittedly, I’m going on my own personal experiences and those of friends who also run companies. But many applicants don’t even possess basic written or numerical skills – in Cantonese or English. (I’ll save you my long rant against Hong Kong having gone from a bi-lingual to monolingual city, when really we should have become a city producing tri-lingual students since the handover.) They have little pride in the work they do and seem far too easily satisfied with mediocre results. I hate to think that our state education system has adopted that awful tactic of teaching at the level of the slowest person in the class. If so then we must be prepared for rising unemployment as large numbers of Hong Kongers simply do not have the skills for the vacancies that are available as our economy adjusts. Do I have an answer? Sadly, no. Other than students need to be taught to use their brains to do more than just regurgitate facts which they don’t understand. Do I expect the anything to change? Sadly, no. The politicians and civil servants with the power to do something are far too insulated from the problem to be aware of it – or are the cause of the problem. If we want to maintain our position as one of the world’s great cities, then we should ensure that our youth have the best skills and advantages we can give them.

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