Two nine-year-old girls were walking at the back of a large group in Cheung Chau last week. One said: 'It's not fair, they make us walk 17 kilometres just to look at a hole in the ground and then all the way back again.' The teacher's version was: 'We strolled no more than three kilometres and surveyed an historically important site [a pirate's cave] and undertook a street study on the way back.'
It was the annual residential camp. Some would say once a year is more than enough. The logistics of supervising more than 100 students to and on an outlying island for several days (and nights) would daunt army generals.
But camp looks different depending on who's involved. Teachers see a more social extension of school life with similar discipline and structure. They plan a full programme of educational activities.
Students see them in a different light. When their class leader is spotted eating dodgy sausage butties and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast just like them it earns respect very quickly. When asked, 'do you have to eat this stuff as well?' one teacher reluctantly had to agree.
Teachers are also on duty 24 hours a day in an environment where sleep becomes more hope than fact. The real skill, though, is interpreting back at school the work produced in specially-prepared books that have been carried with soggy sandwiches, oily crisps and congealed substances.
In addition, camp is an opportunity to develop social skills in students, some of whom are away from home and looking after their things for the first time. Not all are completely successful. One boy when challenged as to why his bed and his clothes looked as if they had been dragged backwards through a hedge several times, looked shocked. 'But it's tidy,' he protested.