Condescending "Beasteachers" and Laurel-resting Students
Translated by Ciel K. and Karen L., Edited by Karen L., Written by Gnimmm
Original: http://gnimmm.com/2014/12/01/%E4%B8%80%E9%96%8B%E5%A7%8B%E8%AA%95%E4%B8%8B%E5%B7%B2%E7%B6%93%E8%92%BC%E8%80%81/
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| (Clipped from ATV) |
Relating "teachers" with "beasts" is something I never wish to do, and yet most of the them in Hong Kong, even not the worst, are no more than "workers who teach", and certainly far from reaching the standard being teachers. They are ignorant enough to assume that they have already fulfilled the ultimate requirements of being a teacher: building positive values for the students and training the students to think critically. But ironically neither do they have a clear set of principle for themselves, nor do they realise the fact that schools are in fact some social organisms.
Most of the teaching staff are typically shallow-minded. Getting into the administrative sector years later does not help them get rid of the paternalistic ruling: No freedom at all times. This is the prime reason why the students in Hong Kong are becoming this well-tamed. These teaching staff restrict the students in every possible way to ensure nothing goes wrong with themselves. Added with the regular quashing on students in the name of authority, their students suffer due to the lack of life experience.
To solve the problem caused, we have to go deep into their mindset and their way handling matters. It is rather their habitual practice persuading the bad students aside and isolating them from the peer. Isn't this trick perfectly the same to those armed with power and wealth in the society? This trick serves as a defence avoiding public discussions that would place them in disadvantage.
In the school context, positions between students and teachers have never been equal. Teacher is a side of vested interests in the establishment, responsible for setting rules. Yet interestingly, people seem to forget that the legitimacy of teachers is originated from the trust of both parents and students, and that they owe a say of being a victim or not. It is the same as the police force abuse the power, people have the right to claim it back, given that it is authorised by the citizens themselves for the sake of protecting the place.
That is why it is justifiable for students to point out teachers' mistakes and to stop them from abusing the power ever again. This is not a case reconstructing "red guards" in the Cultural Revolution, but merely empowering the students themselves.
Believing themselves to be infallible, the administrative personnel, the Directors of General Affairs and the social workers choose to solve the problems within their own "system". Observing and adopting perpetually this distorted set of methods, students therefore lose their innately ability to process some formulae in dealing with problems along the way.
This also explains the reason that a number of students from the non-prestige schools only realise that they had never faced the genuine challenges when they get into the universities and that they have a hard time outperforming their peers who have been used to go against the bureaucratic management in school of serious matters. Due to the pedanticism in secondary schools, the students are isolated from the real world.
Numerous indisputable examples are there. Factually, independence on secondary school students is relatively lower than that on universities students, however, most of the schools are willing to share with the students some clear-cut rules about rights they should have. This paternalistic ruling is what makes the students' unions and house captains figureheads-only.
It has been vague towards the line of power between secondary schools and their students' unions, not to mention that students' union does not exist in each and every school. These students' unions, if not all, have not been once released statement to the outside world. All these are linked to some students' confusion between executive committees and student residents' associations, which then followed by harsh criticisms from their peers.
Students' unions in secondary schools are merely puppets without genuine influence on the school policies. It can tell by their usual duties: simply pursuing welfare and reflect opinions. Even if such unions are bold enough to raise a petition or whatsoever, all they can get is at most an expression of certain stance but not some true efforts that make changes.
On the face of it, through the permission of students' unions, the schools attempted to seem avant-garde. In these cages, student-based authorities are there generated one by one acting as a consultant organisation reflecting students' opinions to school. Yet obviously enough, being as some consultant means to have no share of the power.
A students' union with power is at bottom castles in the air, whereas the make-believe power successfully deceives the students as if the fake universal suffrage deceives quite a number of citizens. For the secondary schools, every single year, there will be some annual meetings launched by the students' union which all the students can question the members of their performance throughout the year. During the process, the students frequently overlook that the school itself is the one holding the upmost authority within a school.
As a result, the power of the school expends, to an extent that the staff do not need to think of how to convince the students of the school's decisions as they know the students have to and are to comply anyway. The teachers who blindly stick to these rules are all accomplices to students' individual growth.
Failure of recognising this serious problem in the system is due to ignorance, while the refusal of change knowing the problem is an unenlightened behaviour. And it is self-abandoned for the students thinking that they will eventually graduate six to seven years later and that it will not affect their lives afterwards whether the school has made befitting response to students' views.
How does the school rules embody? This is the question worth thinking through. When one have suited in the "whatever" way of living, one will lose the vividness of life and there is no turning back.
You should know that teenagers are the only ones who will stand through the wind. The schools and teachers in this society wish you all students abandon your fearlessness, focus solely on studies and studies and pay no attention to them, given that there is forever more a natural conflict of interest between them and you.
If those who are young in age fear troubles and punishments and turn away from the question of life and death, the world will be at a standstill till Doomsday. And I, in line with lamentation, am swollen with anger!
