LettersDon’t make Hong Kong education pay the price for government’s incompetence

In last Tuesday’s press conference, our leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor again slammed Hong Kong’s education system, then wrongly quoted Nelson Mandela as saying “the collapse of education is a collapse of the nation’’.

Stoking the controversy was a Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) history paper question, asking if Japan “did more good than harm to China” between 1900 and 1945. It provoked broadsides from the likes of Lam and Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, who declared the question and sources provided biased.

Japanese militarism, which led to the Nanking massacre and a series of ruthless invasions, caused colossal and irrecoverable harm to our nation in the Sino-Japanese war. But around the 1910s, Japan was offering help to the Chinese United League (found by Sun Yat-sen in Tokyo) propping up the underground resistance movement. Without Japan’s aid, Chinese may still be ruled by the Qing empire.

The DSE question merely asked students to determine, rationally and reasonably, if Japan did more good than harm. The genuine objective of the subject is to enhance critical thinking. It is beyond an educated guess that the Hong Kong government is trying to make education carry the can for its own failure. It criticises secondary education, especially liberal studies, for radicalising hot-blooded teenagers, making them antagonistic towards the government and China.

The oppression of Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority officials is a sign that total marginalisation looms over us, as our once inalienable freedoms peter out. Soon, our leader will possibly implement another round of education reform, putting the accent on nothing more than political correctness and patriotism – as even a pinprick of freedom of thought is detrimental to the country, isn’t it?

Dear Carrie Lam, please can you ask for the resignation of your secretary for education, Mr Kevin Yeung, on the basis of his remarks at his May 15 press conference?