Would teaching our kids Chinese history make them more patriotic?

The Chinese Ministry of Education's chief made his comments earlier on Hong Kong's education^* and suggested to strengthen the sense of national identity among school teachers in order to implement effective national education for Hong Kong's students. Such remarks clearly imply that the recent anti-China sentiments of our youth and the student-led discussion on independence were a result of inadequate national education. It is thus imperative for the SAR government to develop a train-the-trainer programme and national education curriculum to educate both our teachers and students about the great achievements of the country and to teach them to "love their country". It is not uncommon for Chinese officials to attribute the general rebellious sentiment of Hong Kong's youth to the lack of proper education and poor sense of national identity. However, the way this message has been presented often mis-focuses on the apparent reluctance of our young people to be identified as Chinese. The propaganda of some high-profile (self-proclaimed) patriots and Beijing officials in labelling and criticising Hong Kong's youth as being unpatriotic has actually made our society even more divided. People who believe (or are misled to believe) these kids are denying their Chinese identity cannot accept any such detachment attitude and may even interpret it as an act that threatens national safety, although such thinking is totally groundless. The youth, however, do not find any good reason to yield, and become even more expressive in showing their anti-China sentiments.

Being a local person and having lived here for half a century, I have not a fraction of hesitation to say that Hong Kong people are actually more Chinese than many people in the mainland. In some sense, we preserve our Chinese tradition even more seriously than any city in the mainland, and no one has a single doubt of our Chinese root. I do not see how this has changed in the past 20 years. It is simply incorrect to assume that our kids are denying their Chinese identity just from their apparent detachment, or in some cases, explicit denial of their Chinese nationality. The issue is complex, but not difficult to understand if we make a clear distinction between "national identity" and "nationality". What makes our kids feel detached from China or reluctant to agree on their nationality is the image they perceive of being Chinese which, by and large, is also shared by the rest of the world. When our kids heard news about how rights lawyers and activists were treated in China; or when they saw how Taiwanese singer Chou Tzu-yu was bullied by mainland "five-cent" netizens after waving a Taiwanese flag in a Korean TV show; or when they saw how the Chinese foreign minister scolded a Canadian reporter in Canada for asking about human rights in China; or when our general public got annoyed by the visually and audibly disturbing "da ma" dance in our public space; the perception of anything from China is clearly not helping to make our kids feel proud of being Chinese. Again, we have to clearly distinguish between our Chinese root, our culture, our country, the current regime, and the kind of society under the current regime. Putting an equal sign to all of them and accusing our youth for not "loving the country" is either purely politically driven or an obvious misjudgement.

The renewed proposal of compulsory Chinese history teaching in schools is somewhat irrelevant and can hardly help improve the situation as it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. And it may even make things worse, as textbook publishers and teachers may tend to overdo and selectively present only the good sides of our history in order to comply with the perceived agenda of the Chinese history curriculum. History should only be based on facts, not partial facts or distorted facts. We are supposed to learn from history, both the bright side and the dark side. If we only present partial facts and the bright side of history, the result is nothing but brainwashing, which only makes people more ignorant. Our education chief should know what the real issue is in order to formulate the right strategy. Our kids do love their country, though not necessarily the government or the group of people or party who are in power. What they don't agree is perhaps the interpretation of what a country is and what is expected of being patriotic. Clearly we need to do a lot more than just implementing national education. Change the perception! It is precisely China's soft power that matters more!