LettersAre Hong Kong schools ready for pupils who have lived through 10 weeks of protests?

When kids go back to school, it will be different this year. Hong Kong children have witnessed 10 weeks of street protests. Some have seen violence first-hand; even more have been glued to video clips of people fighting with umbrellas and sticks. Our school-age children have come to recognise night-time neighbourhoods, chanting crowds and blasts of tear gas.

Just how “back to normal” will the school year be? What might be children’s expectations from friends and teachers? They might find fellow pupils safe and their peer group comfortable. However, teachers must be ready to accommodate children’s experiences over the summer.

Could language teachers encourage children to write what they have seen? Would librarians identify books for that preteen in despair because he was left out of a street fight? Will art teachers accept that paintings may be bleak? How will the civics teachers talk of our summer? Are counsellors prepared to listen to the nightmares of a nine-year-old “who just last spring was doing so well”? Can we all be quiet enough to listen to the kids going back to school?

Many adults have said, “Hong Kong has never been like this before.” Yet, for our children, this is how Hong Kong is now. When children go back to school, who will listen to them talk of everyday life this summer in Hong Kong?

Rosann Santora Kao, Tsim Sha Tsui

Hong Kong youth forced to pick a side