![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
WASH YR BRAIN, PLAY THE GAME AGAIN
Sep. 4th, 2012 10:31 amMeanwhile, here’s the lead story in Hong Kong at the moment:
Basically, the HK govt – at the behest of Beijing – has decided that local school curriculum should include “moral and national education” in the form of class materials that teach children how awesome and successful China’s one-party system is, and how multi-party systems like (oh, say) the US are just a disaster. And so on.
As you can gather, it’s not a terribly popular idea, what with 40,000 people turning up at Tamar (where the HK govt offices are located) to protest the curriculum. Many of them are still there even as I type this. A few of them are even on hunger strike.
And it's not hard to imagine why when you remember we’re talking about a govt who will tell you that nothing important ever happened on June 4th.
Things like the hunger strike are a bit cheesy. And the govt – for now – has said they’ll let schools decide whether to teach the class and how to teach it, and in any case it won’t be on the exams.
Still, I think the protesters are right to be concerned when the HK govt suggests this kind of thing, especially at a time when trust in the current admin is not especially high.
But then I come from a country where the Republican Party gets to rewrite history textbooks to make them more fair and balanced, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
And now a pretentious but relevant quote:
Kids won’t follow,
This is dF
Basically, the HK govt – at the behest of Beijing – has decided that local school curriculum should include “moral and national education” in the form of class materials that teach children how awesome and successful China’s one-party system is, and how multi-party systems like (oh, say) the US are just a disaster. And so on.
As you can gather, it’s not a terribly popular idea, what with 40,000 people turning up at Tamar (where the HK govt offices are located) to protest the curriculum. Many of them are still there even as I type this. A few of them are even on hunger strike.
And it's not hard to imagine why when you remember we’re talking about a govt who will tell you that nothing important ever happened on June 4th.
Things like the hunger strike are a bit cheesy. And the govt – for now – has said they’ll let schools decide whether to teach the class and how to teach it, and in any case it won’t be on the exams.
Still, I think the protesters are right to be concerned when the HK govt suggests this kind of thing, especially at a time when trust in the current admin is not especially high.
But then I come from a country where the Republican Party gets to rewrite history textbooks to make them more fair and balanced, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
And now a pretentious but relevant quote:
“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
― Arthur Schopenhauer
Kids won’t follow,
This is dF
