Are you polite?

Every morning, the assembly kicks off with a funny exchange of greetings between the host teacher and students.

"Good morning students", the teacher would announce, facing an army of well-lined students in the playground. In return, students would echo a barely audible "Goooooooooood mooooorniiiiing Mr/Ms. X". The host teacher would ask the students to repeat it if they find it really unacceptable. But the repeated greeting is usually no better than the first one.

Annoyed by the repeatedly apathetic response from students, the principal decided to give them a lecture on the importance of greeting the teacher loudly in the morning assembly.

So after the hall assembly in the last period on Friday, the principal materialized on the stage.

"Good afternoon," she started.

Dead silence.

One second passed.

Another second passed.

"Goooooood aaaafteeeernoooooon, Priiiiinciiiiipaaaal," erupted in the air.

"What?!" my mind exclaimed. You know, I was actually waiting for her to proceed without expecting such an eerie response. Obviously, the F.1 students could read the principal's intention better than I did.

The principal smiled with satisfaction and proceeded with her greeting-aloud-in-the-morning-assembly-means-being-polite theory.

I was as annoyed by the mechanical response from the F.1 students as the principal by students' mass greeting apathy.

What's more freaky, at the end of her lecture, she asked the crowd: "So now you understand everything I said?" The students had no choice but to return a dreamy, unenergetic "Yeeeeeeeeeessssssss" ("明-----------白-----------" was the actual wording). Again, the principal seemed satisified with it.

I felt like being part of a communist movie.

Does monotone mass greeting/response means courtesy?

I am under the impression that most students in this school are polite. They will greet you with a nod (whether they know you or not) or simply say "Good morning/afternoon" whenever they see you at school (or sometimes outside school). Some students will even give you a bow when they greet you. I was really impressed by their courtesy the first year I taught at this school.

Well, I myself am a polite person but to be frank, if I were one of them standing in the playground, I wouldn't even care to lip-greet, not to mention murmur a word.

So why do polite students refuse to greet the teacher in the morning assembly? Because the whole thing is not about being polite or not; it is just some kind of mindless discipline training through conditioning.

Hidden agenda: total obedience to the authority can free one from troubles.

I agree that discipline training is important in schooling because we live in a society confined by rules and orders. But every rule should be underlined by a legitimate reason. When a behaviour is drilled without a reasonable cause or, worse, with a misleading cause as such, we're molding students into rule-following robots. They stop asking why but only how.

Schooling is really a dangerous concept, especially here in Hong Kong. All those teacher pets are blind rule-followers while those who refuse to conform are labelled as outcasts or rebels.

Sometimes, I just don't know where the line between right and wrong lies after teaching for almost 5 years. Somehow, I feel like being assimilated into the system gradually. Horrible, isn't it?