LettersHong Kong or US: great power comes with great responsibility for teachers

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Children are like blank sheets of paper, and the teachers become their pens, guiding their young minds towards a path where opinions and beliefs are formed. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 6:15am, 24 Oct 2020Updated: 6:15am, 24 Oct 2020

As a child, I was told by my teacher never to open an umbrella indoors because it was bad luck. I have paid extra attention to where I opened my umbrella ever since, even though I know it was simply a superstition.

Teachers are extremely influential, maybe more so than journalists. Yes, journalists, especially the ones who work for big media companies, have a much bigger reach than a teacher of a class of 15-30. But, as I learned in journalism class, most adults who read the news – subconsciously or not – tend to only read news articles that agree with their views.

Children, on the other hand, are very different. They are like blank sheets of paper, and their teachers become their pens, guiding their young minds towards a path where opinions and beliefs are formed. But sometimes that guidance can be biased.

As someone who has studied in both Hong Kong and the United States, I interacted with and learned from teachers from various cultural backgrounds. Some allowed their subjective views to surface, while others did their best to teach with as much neutrality as possible.

My humanities teacher last year, for example, taught us about the Cultural Revolution. And during our time studying Chinese history, she presented the facts and never imposed her opinion on us, even when someone asked for it, because she wanted us to use our knowledge to form our own opinions, instead of following other people’s judgments. She taught us to become the leaders of our own minds.

On the other hand, I’ve also had teachers depict a particular version of history – in black and white. Rather than present the facts, the teachers would narrate a story, which was sometimes useful for understanding historical events but could also make one overlook the full picture.

This is why education for the young is so important. Teachers can shape our society but they also need to present all sides of an issue so students can develop their own viewpoints (“Teachers have rights, but also a duty to leave bias out of class”, October 23).