Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam lays blame partly on educators, officials for young people ‘failing to grasp’ city’s constitutional status in lecture to teaching profession
- Delivering unprecedented lecture to profession, Lam calls on teachers to do more to instil traditional Chinese values in pupils
- Failing to correct misunderstandings about how Hong Kong operates constitutionally could lead to more social unrest in years to come, she warns
The Hong Kong government and the education sector were partly responsible for young people’s lack of understanding about the city’s constitutional status and should focus more on improving students’ moral values, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said yesterday in an unprecedented lecture to the teaching profession.
Lam spoke for 75 minutes on the powers and functions of her office and the scope of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, to roughly 100 principals and teachers gathered at the Productivity Council in Kowloon Tong, while the event was also live streamed.
Lam lay at least some of the blame for that involvement at the feet of teachers, telling her audience they needed a fuller grasp of the “one country, two systems” policy that governed relations between Hong Kong and mainland China.
“On the understanding of the relation between ‘one country’ and ‘two systems’, Hong Kong cannot be said to have grasped that well,” she said.
“Perhaps the government or the education sector have not been teaching this very well. This has led to some misconceptions in the society about this basic issue.”