One person's critical thinking is another person's subversion

It was 7 am on a school morning. I stepped into the train, sat down and started to push the bulky newspaper I'd just purchased into my already over-burdened schoolbag. As I looked up, I spotted a teaching colleague from a former school of mine. I hadn't seen him for three years, and I moved across the carriage to sit with him.

I was still battling to insert the newspaper into my bag, and I pulled out a DVD to help in the process. As a conversation starter, I showed my former colleague the cover of the DVD, and told him that I'd be showing it to my classes that day.

As he stared at the cover, his jaw visibly dropped. He took the film from me and gently smoothed his hand over the cover photograph. For a while, he seemed speechless. It was a documentary Moving the Mountain, which describes the events leading up to the bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in June, 1989.

My friend gently rested his hand on the now-famous photograph of the anonymous young man with the plastic bags, who stood in front of a line of army tanks, attempting to divert them from their ominous mission.

My companion then looked around the carriage and spoke to me very directly. In hushed tones, he said: 'I dream that, one day in the future, I will be able to talk about this with my students.'

Now, it was my turn to be dumbfounded, as he quietly went on to tell me that he would be 'sacked' if he even raised the topic in his classes at his school.