Atsuna: Why Is Military Training A Must for Kids in Hong Kong Mums' Minds?

Why Is Military Training A Must for Kids in Hong Kong Mums' Minds?
Translated by Chen-t'ang 鎮棠, Edited by Karen L., Written by Atsuna
Original: http://www.passiontimes.hk/article/01-26-2015/20786 

Hongkongers radically do not have a clue how to hit the country's spot: bootlicking seems to be the best tune, but in fact it goes to the wrong way.

When the people from mainland China are "in cahoots with foreign powers", Hongkongers rather give in the world and accommodate China as the new one; When the people from mainland China are learning English with eagerness, Hong Kong on the contrary ruins the generation's English by the "Mother Tongue Education", and even promots "Putonghua as the medium of instruction for Chinese subject" (PMIC); when the mainlanders cast doubts on the military training on students, Hong Kong rather fervently advocates "military summer camp", and now goes so far as to "Hong Kong Army Cadets"!

In China, it is compulsory for high school students (Grade 10) and university freshmen to participate in military training (MT). Military Service Law in 1955 provids the grounds for MT, but before the Tian'anmen Massacre in 1989, students were not forced to do so.

A Chinese writer therefore marked  1989 as the first year of MT, and since then nearly all freshmen have to receive MT for at least a month. Peking University being the staunch supporter of 1989's student movement was even given a year of MT for every student. Even though this one-year MT rule didn't maintain for a long time, it is crystal clear of its motive taming the revolutionary students.

No wonder Chen Danqing, a painter, said on his Weibo, "MT on students acts in no good purposes. This is a form of education turning men into slaves, and should it only exist in authoritarian states like North Korea. Do we opt to training a healthy, independent and free-thinking future generation, or simply obedient machines one after another?"

News covering severe corporal punishment in the training has made Chinese starting to cast doubts on the purpose of MT. Alone in 2014, there is quite some scandals happened. In Hunan, 42 injuries in total, and one of them is a teacher, who is in critical condition. All beaten by the instructors; In Liaoning, a female high schooler committed suicide after criticised of a disqualified posture; In Xi'an, a male student fell on the ground during training, and was certified dead during the way to hospital.

Well, just as I expected, flunkies popped up in time and categoried these as "exceptional cases". They criticised the youngsters are unable to face adversity, and said things such as "Many Chinese parents condone and spoil their only children, and MT can help build up their kids' team spirit and discipline". It does sound familiar, isn't it? These are precisely the reasons Hong Kong mums sending their children to MT camps!

The "Hong Kong Youth Military Summer Camp" and "Hong Kong University Student Military Life Experience Camp" are free in charge. I believe those mums will not value Chen Zuo'er's words ("Brainwashed by the Western theories and have to be refill their brain with the correct thoughts") much, but still pushing their young adult daughters and sons to participate in these camps. Why? Discipline training and advantages taking. In some weirdo university students' minds, "Work life is surely going to be much harder than studying. Through the camp, I can prepare myself to be more tenacious!”

Apart from parents, there are some school headmasters who force their students to join "discipline training camp. The harshness is indeed not comparable to MT, but running around the field, standing still under the sun and doing conditioning are matters of course. Be it MT or discipline training camps, through torturing your body, the endgame is about tearing down one's self-worth and turn people into more "disciplined" selves.

The main course includes severe conditioning punishment due to some slightest issues. Everyone gets to running around the field and doing press-ups. The "team spirit" the camp has attempted to build is based on collectivism. If one cannot be found obedience, it will make them all "villains". Those cocky or go-one's-own-way students are therefore the targets. Added with looped scolding and peer pressure, the students are "re-moulded" as "good" students who will succumb to authority.

Mere punishment is known to be insufficient. This is where the existence of "self-repentance" lies to complete the program. Under some sentimental music, exhausted students are forced to think through what they did wrong to their parents, their teachers and even the universe. Some may even kneel before the teachers and cry, swearing that they will start with a clean slate. If an outsider is to watch the scene, he or she might have thought the students have commited some sort of serious crime.

Not a few parents strongly believe such training camps can turn their kids into tougher ones, as it is known that students are supposed to suffer there. Yet, when they get out from the bars....I mean camps, they might be good boys and girls for a few days, however, it is but a on-the-spur-of-the-moment thing. Expecting a weekly camp to get rid of bad habits that has been accumulated for years, isn't it too greedy?

Knowing that the environment can change a person, Hong Kong mums get used to compare their kids with the same age from mainland China. These mums blame their kids for being less industrious than the ones there. Satirically, for years, these mums have instructed the domestic helpers to take care of all the "irrelevant" matters for their kids so that they can focus on practical skills such as English, Mandarin, piano, painting, dancing, etc – What so surprise if such kids cannot endure hardships?

Gnimmm: Condescending "Beasteachers" and Laurel-resting Students

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/ 

(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.

Students in secondary schools, therefore, shall be entitled to enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of religious belief. They are born with such freedom discussing political issues which is not some sort of grace spared by some "honourable" principals, whereas some beasteachers constantly please their superiors and "thoughtfully" advise the students to cherish the principal's leniency. What a new definition of ridiculousness! And its tone closely resembles Zhang Xiaoming's words "The fact that you [pan-dems] are allowed to stay alive, already shows the country's inclusiveness".

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!

Atsuna: Parents Pamper Children to Become Big Spenders

Parents Pamper Children to Become Big Spenders 

Translated by Nathaniel Suen, Written by 假啞港女 (Atsuna)
Original: http://www.passiontimes.hk/article/06-01-2014/15774 

(The Headliner, 15 December 2010)

Children in Hong Kong are reported to have spent over a thousand dollars on cosmetics upon successive trips to Taiwan and Korea per month, endorsed by parents’ expensive pocket money allowance.

He who distributed iPhones to schoolmates for the sake of being honoured in name is a teenager from Tai Po; she who visited Taiwan and Korea seven times in nine months just to see her favourite pop star is a secondary schooler from Kwun Tong; she who spends a thousand dollars on make-ups monthly is another secondary school student from Kwai Fong … The phenomenal emergence of young spenders worries social workers for adolescents’ poor ability to manage themselves financially, for which indulgent parents should be accounted.

"Daddy has promised me a pocket money of ten thousand dollars if I am admitted to the Diocesan Boys’ School. I can get an iPad for myself that way," a kindergartener told me.

In a society where toddlers are busier on their tutorials than adults working for their jobs, this is no news to me. Even so, as I noticed he endured the arduous study for the sake of getting an Apple producer despite his fatigue, I realised it was just one amongst all those "free-spending fledglings" revealing himself, whose life is extravagant but empty.

It has been reported earlier that a primary six schoolgirl in Hong Kong committed suicide pressurised by academic expectations. While some may impute the cause of this tragedy to Hong Kong kids' poor resilience, I would say that they are no difference to us, Hong Kong adults – the kids and we all work our fingers to the bone to earn living. Leisure time to play games on an iPhone is their equivalent of our salary. We, on the other hand, might have inherited exploitative genes from our bosses to assign tasks unceasingly to our children.

Overindulgence by parents is not the culprit of the phenomenal "Hong Kong kids" problem because this alone is inadequate to cause the predicament. The average weekly working hours of Hong Kong employees far exceeds 40 hours, which is the recommendation by the International Labour Organisation – Hong Kong kids' is no milder case. They do not need self-care and self-respect since they fully understand the act of making endeavours studying and can trade themselves attendance and respect.

Japanese writer Uchida Tatsuru had provided an insight to why teenagers in his country have poor academic attainment in his work Karyū shikō (The Orientation to Go Downstream). He wrote:

A contemporary society shaped by economic mechanism has predominant consequences in the development of children. They started their process of identity construction in the context of convenient stores, which means "consumer" is the first identity constructed. This results in a kind of "consumption behaviour" in learning, which intertwines cost with return. This consumerist perceptual pattern in learning has weakened the children's moral values and led to the idea that education is useless, as its values are hard to be seen. (Uchida, 2007)

If Uchida's logic applies, we shall see Hong Kong kids being as endeavouring as their parents, who possessed the "below-the-Lion-Rock" mentality, because "labour" should have been the first identity constructed. However in reality, the return for children’s labour is dollar bills in lieu of compliments and encouragement as it used to be. It is the very way we raise our children has contributed to their lack of innocence, lack of patience and understanding, and their opportunist temperament.

In fact, the concept of childhood in developmental psychology had not emerged until 400 years ago. During the Medieval Period, seven-year-old was set to be the end of childhood because children at that age were able to master communication and their language. Yet, as the technology of block printing came to Europe in the 15th Century, a new definition of childhood had been introduced – "children" referred to those who did not read whereas "adults" referred to those who were able to read. In that sense, adulthood was "earned" through hard work because one would not be qualified as an adult until he or she had been literate. This is why Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, or On Education that "reading is the scourge of childhood, for books teach us to talk about things we know nothing about". The modern definition of adulthood was conceived upon the creation of mass-printing books. Reading opens the door to abstract knowledge for people meanwhile classifying those who do not read from those who do.

When none of the adults in Hong Kong behaves like one, please spare university students for not acting like a grown-up. In spite of our ability to read, we are nothing short of a bunch of "educated illiterates" who scarcely read or think. A mature adult should have a good sense of citizenship apart from an intelligent ability to understand profound concepts. Nonetheless, there seems to be no sign of intelligent life who does not proclaim that "I hate politics" in Facebook status in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, the distinction between an adult and a child lies upon an adult can access to PG-18 information which includes the likes of sex and death topics. These topics which children were barred from accessing were unsealed as televisions and the Internet were popularised. Dirty words, a taboo children should shun, has paradoxically become one adults should shun when primary school teacher Alpais Lam Wai-sze was criticised for swearing in public. We read cheap magazines stuffed with sexual implications but we refuse to confront sexual topics in front of our children. Children learn not only from formal education but also from the reflections of our behaviour. As a result, they mock at sissy classmates in the same way how we discriminate homosexuals.

Confucius condemned those who "get older in age with lack of virtues" as "parasites"; I would denounce Hong Kong adults or kids who "get older in age and be not maturate" as "Hong Kong lads". They read and read a lot, but they do not think and seldom use their brain. They have diversified talents and all-rounded skills, they even know the meaning of complicated words like "dextrorotatory" and "Halappino"; nevertheless, they abstain from fighting for universal suffrage simply because "politics is boring".

The rise of "Hong Kong kids" and "Hong Kong lads" is a prevalent phenomenon. Both kinds act like the know-it-all smartass we met in our sixth grade class. It is undoubtable that they know a lot – in the sense of skills and information – not knowledge, let alone wisdom. There no longer exists a distinction between adults and children in Hong Kong because we think and act equally naïve. In which, the race of "Hong Kong kids" is becoming extinct while the race of “Hong Kong lads” is thriving.