There was this M A level
course ‘principles of Chinese culture’ offered by the City University of Hong
Kong. To make sure that students from up
north could enjoy the same benefit, the Department made it a two-semester
event, having the Cantonese session in the first semester, and the Mandarin one
in the second. All things considered, it
cannot be said to be inconsiderate.
A few students from across
the border enrolled in the first session, then demanded the session be
converted into Mandarin speaking; for, they claimed, they could not understand
Cantonese. Some local students
disagreed, and a row erupted. It was the
Dean who intervened and settled the dispute.
Whether he handled the situation with a prudent measure is not my
concern here; what interests me is the education phenomenon in front of us.
It is not just an
institutional phenomenon because it involves how our students conduct
themselves, or deeper yet, it shows how we have trained our youth. One reason they provided was that using
Cantonese as the medium of instruction discriminated against them. Is it true?
Under the circumstances, giving a double offering seems reasonable
enough. The discrimination argument does
not seem to be persuasive to most.
Another one, which they
believed had more substance, goes something like this. To graduate in summer, you need to complete
all requirements by the end of the second semester. So, you’d free up all possible time slots to
fill in what you need to carry in the last term. To make it easy for yourself, you’d try to
get rid of ‘all other stuff’ by the end of the first. That certainly benefits the person planning
to leave school soon, but it causes all kinds of inconvenience to others. In most cases, universities usually do not
modify their set procedures only to make it easy for the few.
And if that be labelled
discriminatory, we may well ask: What is non-discrimination then? Should the institution cancel all her
Cantonese sessions and convert them all into Mandarin ones? Would that be reasonable? (We are of course
discussing as a matter of principle, not on the status of any linguistic form.)
Would that be advantageous to the majority who do not speak Mandarin?
Shortly after the incident,
there were debates between the netizens themselves. A university friend from Guangzhou
sent me a note with this comment: When in Rome China
If we care to look further,
we see the similar phenomenon happening not just on campus, but outside of it;
not just in Hong Kong , but almost everywhere
in the world. One of those students was
interviewed afterwards, at which occasion he said he should have more privilege
because he paid a higher fee than his local classmates. I wonder what he would have said had he
entered a state college in the US
Comparing with the ‘Roman’
idiom, the Chinese parallel actually goes one step more. It says literally like this: when you enter a
village, you follow the custom (i.e. mores) of the villagers; when you enter a
place, you beware of the taboos of the place.
And that has been a part of the social teaching for God knows how
long. It has not changed despite all the
upheavals, all the revolutions, all the comings and goings of dynasties. Now, apparently, we are not educating our
youngsters as we should be, we have failed to train them a very basic tenet in
social living. No need to look afar,
just look at how our young people behave here, and we can see we can’t really
laugh at others.
It may do our parents and
teachers some good if they really reflect on this.
