Universities can help students understand engines of power in society

Our political climate has become quite heated due to calls for “independence” voiced by some young people and university students.

Most of the earlier agitation resulted from the flawed decision by mainland authorities to cripple our political progress by opposing election reforms for the SAR chief executive. These outsiders badly underestimated our political maturity and merely bowed to local vested interests. Big money usually trumps small people.

History teaches us that social unrest and agitation are almost invariably the result of politicians’ failure to move with the times and meet new demands.

China’s dowager queen is perhaps the example best known to Chinese people, but her counterparts are found in every nation undergoing change. The founder of modern China , Sun Yat-sen, had to deal with this reality.

Scholars and students are the ones who reflect on, analyse and deal with change, so it is understandable that they will criticise political systems and call for needed reforms. But as history again reminds us, they are often condemned and persecuted for their efforts.

Actually, a good education what helps young people not to become pawns in an existing unjust social system, but to question it and reform it, and to prepare for a more equitable and decent society, based on more humane and peaceful values, not on aggression and dog-eat-dog competition.