How Ronnie Cheng rose from office assistant to Diocesan Boys’ School headmaster and Global Teacher Prize finalist
The elite school’s principal also discusses how the young see the Occupy movement, ‘do-or-die’ exams and why he prefers to keep a low profile
Unlike many of its high-flying alumni over the past 148 years, Diocesan Boys’ School headmaster Ronnie Cheng Kay-yen prefers to keep a low profile.
The elite school, with its exclusive campus boasting a football pitch and concert hall on the outskirts of Mong Kok, and a star-studded alumni roster from the founding father of modern China, Dr Sun Yat-sen, to pop singer George Lam Chi-cheung, plus many more of the city’s notable and influential people, such as film director Alex Law Kai-yui.
Law directed Echoes of the Rainbow, based on his school days in the late 1960s, which won best screenplay at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2010.
As the 10th headmaster since 2012, the story of Cheng is not an often told one of a successful old boy who took up the torch of his alma mater and worked happily thereafter.
“There is a Chinese proverb which literally means failure is the mother of success,” he said.
“I’ve stumbled a lot, but I tried and picked myself up from where I’ve fallen, and I learned from failures.”