EdTalk | Will my child be safe at university?

  • Although students are young adults by the time they go to university abroad, this will be the question in many parents’ minds long before they leave the parental nest and the relative safety of Hong Kong

Marchers carry the portraits of 17 who lost their lives in the Parkland High School shooting, drawn by Gracie Pekrul, 16, student of Simi Valley Oak Park Independent School, at the March For Our Lives rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 24, 2018. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

News of mass shootings in the United States or rising knife crime in the United Kingdom can be alarming but the perceptions that they create and the fear that they engender can be disproportionate to the actual risks involved.

I have always found it difficult to talk to students about this topic and dispense some common-sense advice without creating a rather dark picture. How do you tell a young person (or their parent) without frightening and alarming them?

Print option is available for subscribers only.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.