All Generalizations Are Dangerous: A Response to Philip Yeung
Re: Original Article: Unruly students in Hong Kong are the product of a failed education system devoid of rich reading — Philip Yeung, Thursday, 25th January 2018
Co-author and Editor: Kevin Chan
One cannot help but consider Alexandre Dumas’ witticism when approaching Philip Yeung’s oversimplification of a deep-rooted and complex issue. Yeung would probably surmise that most Hong Kong students have never read the writings of Dumas, although, I admit, that would just be my assumption. Yeung proposes that misguided angry protests, along with student suicides, are a by-product of insufficient morality, and that “a rich reading programme” may offer a solution to mending this absence of a moral compass. It is as if he has uncovered the answer for this long-standing and persistent issue. Yet, beyond reforming the ‘not-good-enough’ education system, his proposition of providing ‘rich reading,’ which he not once defines, is ultimately blindsided by his hypocrisy, reductionism, and insensitivity.
Yeung’s rhetoric, in his deliberate use of derogatory terms, is perhaps the best example of his hypocrisy. He condemns students for “gansterish” and “intimidating language,” then continues to describe the teachings of Basic Law as “dull” and “meaningless,” assumes teachers in Hong Kong “are not readers” and labels them “an oxymoron,” and even goes so far as to coining the current education system “pathetic” and “unworthy to be called an education.” In his subtext, Yeung seems to offer a very singular idea of how one should ‘be’, and his opaque remarks are ironically authoritarian.
Furthermore, Yeung’s article highlights his immense reductionism of the psyche behind the general student population, especially when he asserts that student suicides could be prevented by “escapist reading.” He has wholly ignored to pay any regards to deeper psychological, societal, and cultural elements. It is simply wrong, and extremely insensitive, for him to use the recent surge of student suicides to advance his premise of promoting ‘richer reading’ as an almost-universal solution. As The Nation’s Zain Haider points out, “there is much to do around the interpretation and acceptance of difficulty, which can lessen the risk of suicide,”[1] reminding us that grief is an inherent aspect of life, which no society can hope to extinguish. Suicide, in all its complexities, has nothing to do with “emotional brittleness,” or being ‘ill-equipped’ to tackle life’s problems, both of which Yeung seems comfortable generalizing to be its cause.
On one hand, I agree with him on the dangers of rote learning and factual regurgitation, insofar as dysfunctionalities of a system “consumed by academic performance” is concerned, evidenced by how “societies with low suicide rates have… a status system that honours intrinsic values over achievement.”[1] However, his insensitive rhetoric totally disregards formidable underlying mental illnesses, which usually arise from early childhood, rather than during secondary school. It is clearly unacceptable that Yeung seems content in making Hong Kong’s flawed education system a scapegoat for student suicides.
Building on Yeung’s oversimplification of student mentalities, is it not true that timeless generations have struggled with working out their own balance of “exploration-openness and stability-commitment”[2] in their pre-adult lives, and that rebellions being an inevitable by-product of this conflict? Although, Yeung seems complacent in attributing this internal struggle to the problems of our education system in isolation. We can at least agree with him on the fundamental importance of valuable skills such as creativity and critical thinking, underpinning how “knowledge alone is not sufficient… but rather cognitive capacities.”[3] Yes, compulsory tests and exams are never enough, but Yeung’s article to suggest that ‘reading’ is a solution to this multi-faceted problem is rather frivolous.
Since pre- and post-1997 Hong Kong produced two very different milieus, the younger generation, or millennials, had to construct their own identity. This entails an extended and complex metaphysical struggle, and it is never just about compulsory mandarin exams. When the new clashes with the old, neither side should dismiss one another’s perspectives too readily, without a civil discussion. And in these trying times, rather than pointing fingers, and reducing disputes amongst populations of radical oppositions and ideologies with simple solutions, one should try to promote reasonable dialectics, rather than harsh diagnoses.
[1] Z. Haider, “Following Emma Bovary,” 11 September 2015. [Online]. Available: https://nation.com.pk/11-Sep-2015/following-emma-bovary.
[2] D. J. Levinson, “A Mid-life Transition: A Period in Adult Psychosocial Development,” Psychiatry, p. 5, 1977.
[3] J. E. Aoun, in Robot-Proof, Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2017, p. xix.
A trimmed version is published here in South China Morning Post.
