The Advocation of Hiking in Hong Kong Secondary Schools

Why Hiking?

About 40% of the land in Hong Kong is designated as country park area with rich vegetation coverage. This surprisingly high percentage of less disturbed nature area offers great opportunity for busy Hong Kong citizens to explore the wonders of wilderness. A recent survey (Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, 2006)(1) shows that the most popular activity that take place inside the country park in Hong Kong is hiking. Being one of the most common and welcome outdoor recreation activities in Hong Kong, hiking has gained increasingly important attention of recreation providers (including the government, non-governmental organizations, private sectors, etc.) locally. In this regards, the author would also like to explore ways of advocating hiking in secondary schools of Hong Kong with the aims to introduce the excellent outdoor recreation to the school-age youth so as to extend the benefits of hiking to our younger generation in the society.

The term “hiking” is often associated with “nature”, “outdoor” and “adventure”; and it is often linked with some other outdoor activities such as “mountaineering”, “rock-climbing”, “stream trekking” and “expedition”, etc. Therefore it is important to clearly define the exact activity that is referred by the term “hiking”. Ibrahim & Cordes (1993) defined outdoor recreation as the broad spectrum of activities that are carried out outdoors during leisure time purely for pleasure or some other intrinsic value. Perceiving its exclusive dependence on the outdoor and natural environment, hiking shall be undoubtedly classified as a form of outdoor recreation (it is presumed that no one would regard walking within city area as hiking). However, the component of “adventure” may or may not be present, depending on the program plan of the activity. In considering the target group of the advocation to secondary school students, “hiking” is better clarified as day-trip hiking within the local country park area. The major activity involved shall be walking along trails or paths in the nature, rather than more risk-taking activity like climbing rocks, trekking streams or off-trail exploration. However, the adventurous long-distance expedition shall remain a possibility as an advanced challenge for students who are deeply interested and physically capable.

Hiking has become more and more popular leisure activity in Hong Kong, noticeably after the SARS outbreak in 2003. The effect of the incident is yet to be studied, but efforts has already been made by the government and various NGOs to promote hiking to the general public. The work of government mainly focuses on providing better facilities (e.g. hiking trials, map signs and distance posts with grid reference, emergency call stations, etc.) to ensure hiking safety; as well as launching different campaigns and programs to educate the public on the benefits and safety of hiking. A lot of NGOs (e.g. HKTraveller.com, Care Action, Mountain and Stream, etc.) have been playing a major role in stirring up a culture of going hiking as an easy, common and healthy outdoor activity for the majority of the population. This includes the establishment of many hiking groups, organization of hiking competitions as well as publication of useful materials which offer guidelines and advices for interested hikers. With these concerted efforts, more and more people are heading to the natural environment rather than staying in the urban area during their leisure time. This may be explained by the compensatory theory proposed by Bammel (1996). He suggested that leisure is seen as compensating for the boredom of work, which is the dominant force in life. In view of the stressful, tense and rapid-paced lifestyle of most people living in the modernized city, the theory find its value in explaining the strong desire for Hong Kong citizens to resort to the wildness during the leisure time. For secondary school students in Hong Kong with highly examination-oriented education system, life can be equally boring and stressful. This therefore strongly suggested that hiking may also become one of the most beneficial and welcomed leisure activities for most secondary students in Hong Kong. However, the author would also emphasize that hiking can be something more than simply a leisure activity for students, but rather a programmed outdoor recreation activity with clear and well-defined educational aims, which is in line with the concept of life-wide learning proposed by the Curriculum Development Council (2001).

Benefits of Hiking to Secondary School Students

Being an outdoor recreation requiring more substantial degrees of strength, endurance and agility, hiking definitely offers promising benefits to the physical wellness of the participants. Besides that, Ferranti (1997) had elaborated on the comprehensive benefits of hiking on human being. He stated that a regular regimen of hiking helps fulfilling our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and spiritual needs. The benefits of hiking are in fact very diversified. With respect to the adolescents in secondary schools, hiking offers additional benefits of discovering and affirming their identity and independence (Kraus, 1997). Rapoport (1975) pointed out that adolescents enjoy trying out a wide gamut of activities and therefore recreation provisions shall be diversified, contrasting and fluid which is not tied down to any particular place, person and activity. Markowitz (1993) also mentioned that teenagers want to be challenged. With consideration of the dynamic, challenging and stress-relieving nature of hiking that takes place in the wild nature which is strongly contrasting to the daily exposure of the adolescents, all these suggested that hiking is one of the perfect recreational activities that matches their special recreational pursuits. The benefits of hiking to secondary school students can be generally summarized in three perspectives, namely physical, psychological and intellectual.

It does not take a genius to understand the physical benefits of hiking. Its effects on teenagers are even more obvious with regard to the remarkable physical bodily changes that happened during the puberty. Ferranti (1997) had provided a comprehensive explanation on all the physical benefits of hiking. Being a natural form of aerobic exercise, hiking offers a cardiovascular workout to adolescents which helps training the heart muscles and stretching the lungs. It also helps toning the muscles and building a more balanced body sculpture, which may be of particular interest of adolescent boys. Furthermore, hiking also offers additional benefits of burning calories and hence controlling weight. This may also serves as a major attraction to most