Quiz: Which absentee sent the following note to whom? 'Couldn't attend yesterday because the chauffeur was ill.' Was it: (a) Chim Pui-chung to the President of Legco; (b) The Spice Trader to the editor of the South China Morning Post ; or (c) A child's mother to staff at a junior school on The Peak? Yes, the answer is (c), and it really happened. Kids these days live in a different world.
At Glenealy Primary School last week, teachers asked a group of five-year-old children to organise a drama scene. When Your Humble Narrator was a brat, this would have meant pretending to be bunnies. Not today. This lot organised a bank and did financial transactions among themselves.
This writer recalls being prevented from taking a slide rule into a maths exam 20 years ago. A few years later, there were debates about whether calculators should be allowed. Today in schools in Hong Kong and elsewhere, the debate is whether the little brats can take their Pentium laptops into the exam hall.
And remember those grubby exercise books filled with spidery handwriting and inkblots that we used to carry around? Dying out. My teacher wife regularly brings home her marking - computer-typed, laser-printed and illustrated with photographs scanned into the pages.
Copying is not a matter of meeting after school and transcribing the essays of the class swot. No, the little horrors send their work to each other's computers via modem, and then edit in a few 'mistakes' to cover their tracks.
Fortunately, today's youngsters are still kids at heart, as is revealed when they attempt to express themselves in their essays.