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In a recent education forum organized by the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, former deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office Mr Chen Zuoer (陳佐耳) postulated an interesting theory about the cause of Occupy Central that had partially paralysed our city for more than two months last year.1 In short, Mr Chen's thesis was based on his observation that students participating in Occupy were just babies when the city returned to the motherland in 1997 and therefore their education in the past 20 years must have gone seriously wrong. He logically concluded that the education minister should "guide" our schools under the instruction of the Chinese central government.2To no one's surprise, Mr Chen's theory represents a typical mindset of mainland officials and a glaring misconception of the limited role education can play in a society where there is free flow of information, freedom of press, and freedom of expression (relatively speaking). Surely the mainland education has been comparatively much more successful in terms of painting a positive image of the government and making students believe in everything the government does to its people. But putting the blame of Occupy on our education does not sound fair to Hong Kong!
Hong Kong kids have full access to publications and websites carrying "sensitive" information that is normally avoided or banned in the mainland, and we are always allowed to talk about it openly here. The media in Hong Kong is generally uncensored (though politically-driven self censorship of the media has emerged in recent years). Schools emphasize independent thinking to some extent. Obedience is not necessarily the norm in our society, and is never a stereotypical requirement of our kids. All these add up to a much more open societal environment that could hardly breed a generation of young people who would meet the current national standard of obedience, loyalty and hexie (harmony), regardless of our education policy or how much supervision Beijing would provide.
Perhaps we should learn from the success of mainland education and begin with building a desirable societal environment. An effective and practically proven, though not immediate, solution for Hong Kong is to start blocking Google, YouTube, Facebook, and all other websites3 whose contents may disrupt hexie even if they are telling the truth. Sensitive publications should be banned, non-compliant media should be shut down, and related discussions discouraged or even forbidden in schools. In case students are exposed to non-compliant media reports, adequate remedial training should be provided, such as requiring them to study the views of Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao. The core part of our national education curriculum should be based on official materials provided by the central government. Then, only under such favourable societal condition, we will expect reasonable hope of success of our education in pursuing the raison d'état.
January 12, 2015
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Online references:
1. The Hong Kong Economic Journal (信報): Beijing supervision needed for HK education chief: Chen Zuoer
2. South China Morning Post (南華早報): Chen Zuoer remark stokes fears of renewed proposals for patriotic education
3. Popular websites containing sensitive news and articles with diversified viewpoints:
- The House News Bloggers (主場博客) (emerged after the closing of The House News)
Google Sites
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