Bad news or Good news?

Attention! The following entry is heavily biased.

Deep down every school principal lives a communist or even a dictator dream -- students strictly conforming to dress codes, hairstyle codes and schoolbag codes; erupting greetings to teachers with joy and energy embedded in voice; succumbing to the authority (discipline! discipline! discipline!); forgoing self for group.

Does any of the above ring a bell in your mind?

um...

(Posters from http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/)

well...to certain extent, these are the ideas we teachers are instilling in students starting from nursery school, but somehow when I look at the molded smiles on their rosy faces, it is just impossible not to hate them.

If just looking at the posters give me gooseflesh, witnessing it here in modern Hong Kong is definitely an out-of-body experience.

Last Friday, three F.4 classes returned to school after a 4-day-3-night discipline camp. The first class had just landed in the school by the time I walked past the car park. The batch of students in camouflage uniforms stopped while a student at the front roared: 'SAY GOOD AFTERNOON TO MS. QOO!'

Before I was able to comprehend the whole situation, I heard a deafening greeting 'GOOD AFTERNOON MS. QOO!' followed by a triumphant clap.

My jaw fell on the ground.

I quickly fixed my jaw and replied playfully (well... just couldn't help it): 'um...actually I prefer English.' (note: they were greeting me in Cantonese). The whole batch repeated the whole thing in English.

While I was paralysed by the surreal scene on the spot, another batch of students arrived and the same thing happened.

The smiles on their radiant faces looked familiar to me... Yes! That's the smile in those posters.

As if the whole thing was not surreal enough, back in the classrooms, they knelt in front of teachers in a tearful face begging for their pardons for not trying their best, confessing their wrong-doings in the past. As reported by a dumbfounded teacher, the students lifted her and tossed her in the air while hurraying. They even ran around the school doing the confession thing to teachers in tear-laden face after school. Some boys cropped their hair so as to embrace a new self.

You must think I made it up. Well...that is totally understandable as even I myself who witnessed the whole thing found it utterly unbelievable.

All teachers including me were so curious about what happened in the camp that brought such a stunning transformation to students and 'brain-washing' was the most frequently heard adjective from some teachers who did not went to the camp with students.

The principal called a meeting to discuss how to sustain their behaviours at school. Some teachers are happy with the change of course. Somehow I think I should be happy too now that the students are more confident and positive. It is something we are working toward after all.

But the change sort of worries me. Can teenagers cope with such a big change in their perspectives now that they have left the cocoon where they were trained to be obey unconditionally and are back in the reality again? How can they deal with their family and friends with a new self and a new-found guilt?

It is rather irresponsible and to me, immoral to train students with malleable minds like this.

Well... in the mean time, my devilish self is looking forward to the morning assembly and the F.4 lessons on Monday. Somehow I'm expecting something more surreal...