It has become symbolic of the "generation gap" that the older generation views the younger generation as being impolite, impatient and less virtuous than it was at the same age.
According to this scenario, in the distant, misty past, young people had better moral values while the youth of today are "going to hell in a hand cart". However, this view is anachronistic, especially when applied to Hong Kong.
The youth of Hong Kong are not heedless of moral considerations. Rather, the students with whom my fellow native English-speaking teachers (NETs) and I interact every day have a pronounced moral aspect to their characters.
Recent dramatic events on the streets of Hong Kong have brought these good moral characters to the attention of both a domestic audience and, significantly, to a worldwide constituency.
Perhaps this is the result of moral education being an explicit part of the curriculum in many local schools. Moral education is often a timetabled teaching subject in many Hong Kong institutions and even incorporates homework.
The subject is not something we NETs may be used to, yet we can see it seems to work in producing co-operative and committed students. As a result, the number of pleasant, polite and helpful students in Hong Kong classrooms is often higher than in many of our native countries. Some of us may even feel we are refugees from surly and rude students - or worse - in our home countries.
Theorists such as Nucci (2008) in the US have published papers which argue that moral education can affect the "interactional domain" and thus lead students to be more caring of and helpful towards others around them. This is a tendency that many of us as NETs have noticed in our classrooms and which we have shared anecdotally with each other.