Opinion | The high cost of educational failure
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
I have a confession to make. I distrust crowds. Crowds don't think. They feel, and they act on their raw feelings. They act as a herd, driven by their need to belong. Both the January Six riots in Washington DC and the deranged crowds rampaging in the streets of Hong Kong are tribal riffraff mindlessly tearing society apart. Their hallmark is the absence of rationality. This rebellion of the herd is sheer lunacy and a fake movement—they are rebels without a real cause. What is real is a gulf of misunderstanding between the opposite sides. It is tribal thinking at its worst, in which one side has all the virtues and the other side owns all the vices.
Fighting for tribalism is not fighting for freedom. It is a fight of the mentally enslaved---the deadly "us versus them" insecurity masquerading as a noble cause. Mislabeled as a fight for freedom, it is, in fact, the insanity of the unthinking who are trapped in tribalism.
When Hong Kong returned to China, it was as if teenagers were asked to change parents—the foster parents they know versus their biological parents, who are strangers. Let us be honest: Today, China is a far cry from the days of the Cultural Revolution. Great progress had swept across the country. A lot of water over the dam. Deng Xiaoping had unleashed the greatest social transformation in human history. But young rioters were too blind to see the change. They gave China no credit for its massive achievements in the last three decades.
Regrettably, the Hong Kong SAR was too busy to see the need to fill the emotional vacuum left by the departure of colonial rulers before the new administration clicked into place. The Handover ceremony was spectacular. But alas, young, impressionable locals were left unprepared to embrace China's new sovereignty by learning Chinese history. What these misguided youngsters saw each day was deep-pocketed mainlanders flocking to Hong Kong to splash their cash and shop till they drop, speaking a tongue unfamiliar to their ears. The gap between them is threefold: sociocultural, linguistic, and historical. Young minds and hearts hardened and did not soften one iota. History, if taught, was poorly taught. Anti-China forces with ill intent were quick to exploit this emotional void.
The simple-minded young kids swallowed the last colonial governor, Chris Patten's ideology, unquestioningly and primed themselves for a lunatic fight with their new sovereign. The immediate trigger was the proposed extradition legislation. Once the genie escaped from the bottle, it refused to be coaxed back in. The slogans of young university students calling for the Independence of Hong Kong were the height of stupidity. We were in big trouble. The historically ignorant were easily manipulated by sinister anti-mainland forces, with Jimmy Lai as the godfather of chaos. Lai was no freedom fighter. He had cleverly turned gutter sensationalism into commercial profit. He had struck tabloid gold. The gullible masses were in his pocket.
Across the Pacific, toxic tribalism American style flared up on January 6 in Washington DC, with Trump fanning the flames. It was a rampage more deadly and ferocious than the Hong Kong riots. Many were jailed. In Hong Kong, many went behind bars. A lot more went into exile. They have no one to blame but their own lunacy.
Now you know why "populism" and "demagoguery" are such fearful words to describe those incapable of critical thinking.
Sir Ken Robinson lamented education's failure to nurture creativity. But what is equally lamentable is education's failure to train critical thinkers capable of telling right from wrong. In Hong Kong's case, the city was ironically the freest in the world at the height of the unrest, with a daily average of 19 street protests. Its residents enjoyed total, unfettered freedom. Practically nothing was off-limits, with no sacred cows in Hong Kong. What more could they wish for? They kept pushing until they pushed themselves overboard. Large chunks of the city were paralyzed for many months. Beijing had to act. No city could function in such protracted chaos—not in London, and certainly not in Washington. National security legislation became a matter of societal survival. Order must return. Who's to blame? The unthinking herd who had been denied political freedoms under colonial rule. They had abused their post-colonial freedoms. Now, the pendulum has swung. When education has fallen short, the law must step in to do its job.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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