

Hong Kong Backs Down on ‘Moral Education’ Plan - daegloe
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/world/asia/amid-protest-hong-kong-backs-down-on-moral-education-plan.html?_r=1&hp

======
taofu
I am a 16 year old, locally schooled Hong Kong resident.

The rash implementation of Moral and National Education is but another attempt
by the Central Government in the grand scheme of things to assimilate Hong
Kong. Although the protest will probably succeed in stalling it, given its
massive public inertia , such victory is short-lived.

China will reclaim Hong Kong, no matter how vehement we protest . Deng
Xiaoping's 'One Country, Two Systems' is the sole reason why Hong Kong has
been allowed to escape the fate of its neighbouring provinces, and evolve into
what it is now.

According to Chapter 1, Article 5 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, the
constitutional document of HKSAR reads: 'The socialist system and policies
shall not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the
previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50
years.'

28 years has passed. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has already
demonstrated that it will not lie dormant until then.

Consider the 2012 Legislative Council Election, which is to be held tomorrow.
It introduces the new system of 'Super Seats', where elected 'Super' district
councillors' votes will count twice as much as their 'ordinary' colleagues.
Thanks to CPC, pro-establishment district councillors' are likely to be voted
in, and thus fulfill their function as pawns of the Hong Kong government in
the legislative council, passing whatever law CPC desires.

[http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1030842/electile-d...](http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1030842/electile-
dysfunction)

For the past decades, Hong Kong has never been a true democracy. I fear my
generation will fare worse.

~~~
Renaud
Not sure which 28 years you are referring to, but the handover was in 1997 and
the 15 year anniversary has just been celebrated in July.

35 more years to go before Hong Kong becomes another Chinese province (or not
if China decides that this 2-system thing works well for their interests), but
I'm also worried about the direction taken by China and its obvious hand in
trying to shape Hong Kong politics to its liking.

I'm still hopeful in that in Hong Kong, pragmatism usually prevail and even if
schools were force-fed such propaganda it's dubious that it would have much of
a real impact, given that information is still free in HK and people know
better.

I will be very worried when censorship or monitoring laws start to pass
through the legislature.

True democracy will never be achieved in Hong Kong, there will always be
intense supervision by China.

It's fairly obvious that many aspects of the freedoms we currently enjoy in
Hong Kong will be under siege over the next 35 years.

~~~
bitdiddle
probably a reference to the agreement signed in 1984 by Thatcher and Deng
Xiaoping

------
solox3
Foreigners can think of this as "real-life SOPA", where not your speech, nor
your online activities, but your moral values are being manipulated by what is
being thought by others as "your own country".

~~~
culturestate
> what is being thought by others as "your own country".

Are you Hongkongese? I live in HK now (American) and am curious to hear your
take on this and China's exertion of authority over HK in general.

~~~
solox3
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hong_Kong_Bas...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law)

The socialist system and policies shall not be practised in the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of
life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.

This is clearly not happening. Socialistic ideology has crept up all around,
and we have lost hope in restoring this city we once called home.

~~~
gurkendoktor
Even in Taiwan, which is still a de-facto country and not even a SAR, the
media influence of the PRC is frightening. Just a few days ago, there were
protests against a (pro-PRC) media monopoly:

[http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2012/09/02/20...](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2012/09/02/2003541753)

...but I doubt it'll help. At least I don't have to feel bad for the Taiwanese
majority because they get what they've voted for.

------
taofu
<http://new.livestream.com/socreclive/8sep2012>

Live stream of protest outside government headquarters in Hong Kong.

------
kohsuke
I was educated in Japan, and we did (and still do) have the moral education as
one of the subjects in the elementary school. I never thought anything of it
until now, but I can easily see that such a subject would be highly
controversial in the US or in Hong Kong.

Just FYI, Wwat they teach you in that subject is more or less common sense
stuff (apologize if you wronged someone, protect elders and smaller children,
be nice to your friends, and so on), and the separation of state and church
should still serve as a safe guard against introduction of any
religious/politiacal topics. So it's not like you get indoctroinated, but then
again, I'm not sure if I trust some states in the US to maintain that
separation properly...

~~~
learc83
>So it's not like you get indoctroinated, but then again, I'm not sure if I
trust some states in the US to maintain that separation properly

I'm not really sure what this article has to do with the US, but what you're
talking about is not up to individual states in the long run.

>separation of state and church should still serve as a safe guard against
introduction of any religious/politiacal topics.

How does separation of church and state prevent the introduction of political
topics?

> Wwat they teach you in that subject is more or less common sense stuff

Most schools in the US have at least something similar, but how does that
matter at all? Just because the US and Japan have something that could be
called "moral education", it doesn't mean that something called "moral
education" in Hong Kong would be similar.

~~~
kohsuke
No, the article has nothing to do with the US. It's just that it got me
thinking because I live in the US, that's all. Wherever you live, you take
certain things for granted. Being an immigrant, I've been interested in
finding things that I took for granted, and this article helped me find one,
that is the moral education as a teaching subject in school.

And you are right, I take back the "political topics" part.

I also didn't know that "most schools in the US have something similar." This
is from a parent of a 2nd grader in California --- I guess I better pay more
attention on what my kid is learning, eh? What is this subject called in the
US? I'd love to find out more about what that teaches and what that doesn't.

Wrt "not up to individual states", my understanding is that the states are
responsible for the K-12 education curriculum, and so if there's moral
education in K-12, I'd assume the state education board controls what goes in
there. Am I wrong on this?

~~~
w1ntermute
> my understanding is that the states are responsible for the K-12 education
> curriculum, and so if there's moral education in K-12, I'd assume the state
> education board controls what goes in there. Am I wrong on this?

Separation of church and state is a Constitutional matter, and therefore
enforced by the federal government. Individual states don't get a say. If they
refuse, the federal government will seize control.

This is what happened with racial desegregation of schools. After the Supreme
Court ruled in _Brown v. Board of Education_ that "separate but equal" was a
violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Arkansas
Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to physically
block black students from entering the white school (which had already
admitted them). President Eisenhower sent in Army troops and federalized the
Arkansas National Guard, overriding Faubus's authority.

~~~
andrewflnr
"Separation of church and state" is absolutely not a Constitutional matter.
That phrase comes from a letter written by, IIRC, Thomas Jefferson.

The constitution says "Congress shall make no law concerning an establishment
of religion..." and that's all. It has, or should have, no bearing at all on
the actions of state legislatures; if I recall correctly, at least one state
still had an official church at the time the Constitution was ratified.

Furthermore, it has essentially nothing to do with the Fourteenth amendment,
except maybe a few idiots who tried to use religion to justify racism.

~~~
w1ntermute
> The constitution says "Congress shall make no law concerning an
> establishment of religion..." and that's all. It has, or should have, no
> bearing at all on the actions of state legislatures

The Constitution does not explicitly state it, but the Supreme Court has a
long history of rulings interpreting that part of the Constitution which have
explicitly dealt with it, going back to the 1800s. Those cases include
_Reynolds v. U.S._ , _Everson v. Board of Education_ , _Engel v. Vitale_ ,
_Epperson v. Arkansas_ , and _Lemon v. Kurtzman_. In a common law system, as
that used in the US, these rulings have the force of law. As they were Supreme
Court rulings, they apply to the entire country and overrule any state laws.

> Furthermore, it has essentially nothing to do with the Fourteenth amendment,
> except maybe a few idiots who tried to use religion to justify racism.

Read what I wrote again. I wasn't suggesting any connection between separation
of church and state and the Fourteenth Amendment. I was merely giving an
example of when the federal government directly intervened in the public
school system and overrode state authority in order to enforce federal laws
and judicial rulings.

------
tongue50
The full name of the subject is "moral and national education", emphasis on
the "national" bit. The NYT headline has since been corrected.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
It's funny, if it weren't for the "Hong Kong" in the title, I would have
automatically thought this was about the US christian right trying to
indoctrinate kids. Instead, it's the PRoC/HK government.

~~~
mhartl
Of course, the Left would never use the educational system to indoctrinate
kids. In fact, I hear that public education is a bastion of conservatism and
that most teachers vote Republican (or worse).

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I never said that the left-wing wouldn't try to do such a thing. (in fact, the
far-left routinely do, such as in the OP ;)

------
mhartl

      Faced with tens of thousands of protesters contending that a Beijing-backed 
      plan for “moral and national education” amounted to brainwashing and political
      indoctrination...
    

Do you find yourself reflexively siding with the protesters? Perhaps you have
been exposed to some "brainwashing and political indoctrination" of your own,
by none other than official American (or other Western) public education.

~~~
crazygringo
Not really. For large amounts of people to get worked up enough about a
proposed government policy to bother protesting in public, it usually means
the proposed policy is _really_ bad. People don't get off their butts
otherwise.

Good government policy involves enough stakeholders, and propose reasonable
enough solutions, that there's no reason for protests. So while certainly not
every large protest is 100% right, they usually do indicate a breakdown of
effective processes for representative government, as applied to the policy
area in question.

~~~
mhartl
Your response is a case in point. Your views on "stakeholders", your belief in
"representative democracy", and your faith in the wisdom of the People are
fully in line with the progressive orthodoxy that is the bedrock of Western
public education. That doesn't necessarily make your views wrong, but it's
unlikely that you were reasoned into them from a blank slate. It's more likely
you came to them after a lifetime of exposure to a press and public
educational system that almost uniformly espouses such views.

As a thought experiment, consider what a hoplite educated in a Spartan _agoge_
would think of your views. What about an aristocrat educated in Antonine Rome,
or in France under Louis XIV? Would they share your sanguine views on the
wisdom of the People? If not, why not? How confident are you that you are
right and they are wrong, and what is the basis of that confidence?

None of this is a defense of current Chinese government policy. My point is
that using official education for brainwashing and political indoctrination is
par for the course in a country founded on the principle of popular
sovereignty. One consequence of this is that virtually every educated
Westerner, including most readers of Hacker News and the _New York Times_ ,
has been exposed to the same sort of brainwashing and political indoctrination
decried by the protesters in the OP. One effect of this is a reflexive support
of popular movements of all sorts without an appreciation of the potential
costs of that support.

Louis XIV might even have been sanguine, but his descendant Louis XVI would
know what I mean.

~~~
ChuckMcM
You are fighting a losing battle here I think but it is a reasonable question.
In political studies folks often use economic success as a proxy for
evaluating the quality of governance, by that analysis the US system would
score highly. and African feudalism would score poorly. However such
discussions are fraught with conditions, such as what are the natural
resources available? What are the hindrances? China makes an interesting case
because its economic growth under strict communism (Mao's model) was quite
poor, whereas its economic growth under a more capitalist system (Den
Xioping's model) has done much better. But its also perfectly valid to wonder
if economics is a good proxy. What about life expectancy? happiness ? hunger?

Ultimately though you are going to run into debating philosophy and that makes
for wonderful rhetoric but few conclusions.

~~~
andrewflnr
Aren't all those other factors pretty strongly correlated with economic
success? "Happiness" is obviously slippery and hard to measure, but to the
extent it's not dependent on the individual's choices, it depends a lot on
physical/emotional/economic comfort. And money works pretty well for getting
medicine and food.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, they correlate, although the causal linkages are subject to debate. It is
is also one of tenets of American politics sort of "If you're so good how come
the economy has tanked while you were driving?" this encompasses both the
evaluation criteria and the assumption of causality.

------
robomartin
I think that a question has been developing world-wide that remains without a
solid answer: How do we, the people of this planet, evolve into a species that
is free from the chains imposed onto us by governments?

Now, I know that I am solidly floating on utopia here and that what I am
thinking about might require centuries of change. No issue there.

I just feel that almost every nation on this planet is enslaved, in some way,
by its own government --whether put into place by the people, by force or
inheritance (royals).

I happen to think that most people on this planet are good people and that
most of us want pretty much the same things: To live a good and peaceful life,
have a family, provide for them and do the things we enjoy doing.

Governments, on the other hand, are all about power and control. And they,
invariably, take liberties that we, the people, might not want to take. They
get us into wars and conflicts, they enslave people, they engage in genocide
and they create antagonisms that might not exist.

I am not so naive as to not understand that some people will behave badly.
History is full of these examples.

You take a country like China. Over a billion people. And a few dozen (or
less) call the shots? Why?

Take the United States. Do you realize that you can never really own your home
here? Why? Property taxes. That's why. If you don't pay them the government
can take your home away from you, even if you paid all loans and have no debt.
Why is our government entitled to tax our homes? And why are they entitled to
take our homes away? If you really think about it and make an effort to clear
your mind of any preconceived notions or indoctrination it becomes clear that
this is but one example of the lunacy that government has become.

I think that humanity needs to evolve away from these systems if we are going
to survive and thrive. Of course there are too many issues to even attempt to
list them here. Like I said, maybe in a few centuries. John Lennon said it
best:

    
    
      Imagine there's no heaven
      It's easy if you try
      No hell below us
      Above us only sky
      Imagine all the people
      Living for today...
    
      Imagine there's no countries
      It isn't hard to do
      Nothing to kill or die for
      And no religion too
      Imagine all the people
      Living life in peace...
    
      You may say I'm a dreamer
      But I'm not the only one
      I hope someday you'll join us
      And the world will be as one
    
      Imagine no possessions
      I wonder if you can
      No need for greed or hunger
      A brotherhood of man
      Imagine all the people
      Sharing all the world...
    
      You may say I'm a dreamer
      But I'm not the only one
      I hope someday you'll join us
      And the world will live as one

~~~
mhartl

      "Imagine" ... is virtually the Communist manifesto, even 
      though I'm not particularly a Communist and I do not belong 
      to any movement. 
      
      —John Lennon
    

Before proposing "Imagine" as a founding document for your political
philosophy, you might want to consider the fate of people in nations founded
on the principles of the _Communist Manifesto_. (N.B. I love Lennon's
qualification: he's not _particularly_ a Communist—which means, by
implication, that he kinda sorta is one, even by his own admission.)

~~~
robomartin
I don't interpret it that way and certainly don't propose communism. I'm a
libertarian, so that would be diametrically opposed to my beliefs.

All I am saying is that I think --again, this is my belief-- that the future
of humanity probably lies in no countries and governments reduced to simple
administrative tasks.

I have no desire to be at war with some guy in Iran or Afghanistan any more
than a family man there wants to be at war with me. Governments start these
things and rope us all into them.

I mean, look at World War 1. Why did it even start?

<http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm>

Governments. Not the people. Governments.

Thirty seven million casualties.

<http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html>

Did the farmer or doctor in Germany or Russia want to go to war? Probably not.
It was their stupid governments that triggered the entire thing and tens of
millions died for it.

And that's my point. Governments as we have known them for the last century or
two need to mutate into something very different in order for us to evolve
further as a society and culture. We can't have the kinds of things you are
seeing around the world happen to us. Nobody "owns" me or you. Therefore, the
whole concept of governments telling and dictating what we can and cannot do
is at odds with what I might call "natural" laws.

I, we, hire government workers to do things for us that have community scope.
Build roads. Run the local school. Upholds laws that we agree upon, etc.
Beyond that, things are completely upside-down. No government should have the
power to declare war. Not any more. If anything, the people should reserve
that power and exercise it through voting. The same is true of a myriad of
other roles government plays today.

Take China as an example: Over a billion people allowed a handful of people in
Beijing to keep them from having more than one child. Over a billion people.
Really? What is it about the human condition that we allow such things to
happen. The point isn't to argue about the merit of the decision in the
context of population explosion. I believe that those things take care of
themselves one way or the other. The point here is that a society of over a
billion people somehow allows a handful of communist leaders to control their
reproductive rights. That's just wrong. If you allow that, of course they are
going to come into your schools and indoctrinate the shit out of your
children.

Here's another example. Times are tough right. Let's say you are unemployed
and have to feed your family. You happen to own a fishing pole and live near a
lake or stream. Here in California you can't go fishing and feed your family
without a fishing license. You have to buy a fishing license in order to
engage in the most fundamental act a human being can engage: hunt for food in
order to survive. Really? Yes, really? You are not allowed --by government--
to fish, no matter the circumstances. If they catch you fishing without a
license it can cost thousands of dollars and possibly end up doing time in
jail. In what alternate reality does this make any sense whatsoever.

OK, I understand about conservation, etc., etc. Still, it is my right, as a
human being on this planet, to hunt, fish and farm in order to feed myself and
my family. No government should have the power to prevent me from doing so.

If John Lennon wrote that song thinking about communism then I have to find
other words to describe some of my ideas, because communism is far, far from
it. When I read the words to the song I don't interpret communism in there but
rather people living freely WITHOUT or with minimal government.

Now, before anyone goes off on me. Admittedly the problem is very complex and,
if it can even happen, it would take centuries of cultural evolution in order
to reach even a portion of what I am talking about. Take religion as an
example. It's got to go. That will, I am sad to say, take a very long time.
The same is true of the attachment to the concept of countries. That's got to
go too. Earth. One people. True freedom. Not government subjugation.
Government must be reduced to administrative workers who work for us, not
against us.

