The Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ) is urging local schools to carefully choose textbooks ensuring that they are suitable for their students’ psychological development and learning needs.
The bureau also underlined that according to Macau’s official curriculum requirements, local schools should ensure that their students can write traditional Chinese characters while also becoming familiar with simplified Chinese characters.
The bureau made the remarks in a statement on Friday night in the wake of the release of a letter, addressed to DSEDJ Director Kong Chi Meng, by a group of parents of students of Sacred Heart Canossian College, according to which for the upcoming 2024/25 academic year, the school will use textbooks teaching the Chinese language published by the mainland’s People’s Education Press (PEP) for P1 students, i.e., textbooks written in simplified Chinese characters.
Sacred Heart Canossian College runs both a Chinese section, i.e., with Chinese as the main medium of instruction, and an English section, i.e., with English as the main medium of instruction.
The letter by parents of students of the school’s Chinese section addressed to Kong was released on social media last week.
The school’s Chinese section is officially known as Sacred Heart Canossian College proper, while its English section is officially known as Sacred Heart Canossian College (English Section).
The letter states that students beginning to use textbooks in simplified Chinese characters studying the Chinese language from P1 will render them unable to learn to correctly write traditional Chinese characters.
The letter urges the bureau to order the school to continue using textbooks teaching the Chinese language written in traditional Chinese characters for primary education students.
Friday night’s DSEDJ statement said that the bureau was aware of the various opinions from parents of students of a school concerning the use of different textbooks for the upcoming 2024/25 academic year.
The statement did not mention the school’s name.
According to the statement, DSEDJ officials had a meeting last week with representatives of the school where they briefed them about the bureau’s official curricular requirements for local schools, urging the school to choose textbooks in a way that takes their students’ development and learning needs into account.
According to the official curricular requirements for local schools, they should ensure that their students are able to correctly write traditional Chinese characters while also gaining an understanding of the nation’s standardised Chinese characters – i.e., simplified Chinese characters.
In its reply to the bureau, according to the statement, the school pledged that it will continue to choose textbooks written in traditional Chinese characters for various subjects while using diverse teaching resources in traditional Chinese characters with the aim of ensuring that its students will continue to have proper exposure to traditional Chinese characters.
According to the statement, the school pledged that it will push ahead with its teaching approach with the use of both traditional Chinese characters and the nation’s standardised, i.e., simplified Chinese characters in a gradual manner.
This undated handout photo downloaded from the Education and Youth Development Bureau’s (DSEDJ) website yesterday shows one of the entrances of Sacred Heart Canossian College, on Avenida do Coronel Mesquita.
