At a meet-the-press session last week, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor hit out at opposition claims that she chose to side against the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union by bowing to pressure from Beijing, exerted through editorial statements published by media outlets Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily, to cut ties with this education body. On grounds of avoiding the further hijacking of education by the PTU’s political maneuvering in Hong Kong’s schools, the chief executive stood firmly by her education aides’ decision to sever working relations with the 95,000-strong school workers’ union. An official decision of this level of importance has unsurprisingly prompted skeptical concerns about whether the city’s governing circle has been pushed into a boycotting reaction under stress from the Chinese mainland. However, these baseless allegations were sheer conjecture that fell flat on their faces.
In expressing her concurrence to the Education Bureau’s move to cut the functional affiliation with the PTU, the chief executive was able to give a clear account on the increasingly politics-laden developments in recent years, with the 2019 anti-extradition violent protests being the turning point, which has led to her conclusion that the PTU made intense attempts at brewing up anti-government or anti-Beijing sentiments, which propelled a large number of students plus teachers toward participation in unlawful protests. During the flaming demonstrations in 2019, over 10,000 suspected lawbreakers, including rioters, were arrested, including 4,000 youngsters — half of whom were school students. There were cases in which teachers were caught joining such unauthorized activities with their students. In her view, the opportunity for any rational discussions between the government and the PTU was gone through no fault of her own.
Looking back, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government over the years carefully kept a working connection with the PTU in spite of its political stance, apparently in a bid to build up a diversified yet manageable portfolio of representation in the city’s education services. It will be recalled that the chief executive attempted to break the ice in the government’s interactions with the PTU by consenting to officiate at the latter’s 45th anniversary ceremony in 2017. And since the assumption of the elected office, the chief executive has injected a total of HK$13.5 billion ($1.73 billion) of new funds into the local education system, a move applauded by the PTU and other education organizations.
In principle, teacher training courses organized by the PTU will no longer be recognized. Hence, schools should not count teachers’ participation in the PTU’s training courses as part of the 150 hours of Continuing Professional Development activities in the three-year cycles with effect from July 31; however, in case schools find that certain training courses could be recognized given their special circumstances, they may consult the relevant EDB senior school development officer
If the cessation of work-related attachment with the PTU was but a knee-jerk response to the mentioned commentaries carried by Xinhua and People’s Daily, it could not have been a finely comprehensive package of systematic measures purporting to eradicate all traces of association with the teachers’ group, given the time-consuming manner in which the governmental machinery works and the exceedingly short interval between the appearance of the two State media’s commentaries and the EDB’s announcement of its break-off in contacts with the PTU.
It is, therefore, logical and sensible to deduce that the education authorities have been keeping in close view the behavior of the union’s leadership since the 2019 riots, particularly in the perspective of its ill impact on the school sector created and perpetuated by its different channels for possible infusion of biased political ideas and activities. The union was reproved for playing a supportive role in the 2019 riots, which relegated Hong Kong to a “riot city” on the vast map of its motherland. Censured for taking on an escalating political orientation over the past few years, which culminated in the 2019 street violence, the union was seen to have refrained from condemning the students who were engaged in the storming unrest and have even blown up anti-China and anti-HKSAR government feelings to impel them to revolt against the local governance. Such overdominance by politics, as argued by the city’s top leader, which has overridden school education, is unfair to most teachers, who have stayed neutral in politics and dedicated to teaching. Any infiltration of politics into schools will put into a bad social image education in general and teachers in particular.
A local academic was reported to have railed at the government’s ties-cutting resolution as being disguised under a “recent plan by Beijing to tighten its grip on Hong Kong”. If this was the hidden agenda behind the move, why was it necessary to have waited for so many months to do it after the National Security Law for Hong Kong was set in place for enforcement at the end of June last year? A more-plausible explanation seems to have tied in with the PTU declaring withdrawal last week from the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, an umbrella opposition group that organized the city’s June 4 vigil every year.
This apparent gesture of holding out olive branches was almost immediately frustrated by PTU President Fung Wai-wah’s remark to the media that notwithstanding the pullout from the political alliance in question, the PTU’s political stance on the June 4 incident remained unchanged, and that its members did not dismiss the possibility of standing with the alliance in the future. This declaration is tantamount to a flagrant confession of blatant disobedience that put an obvious end to the advisability of continuing any working links with this education workers’ body. And with this hopeless reality, the EDB had to reach a decision on its future with a trade union in education that refused to relinquish its anti-China stance.
By the EDB’s framework, a professional education organization “should uphold professionalism, help teachers demonstrate their professionalism in guiding students to discern right from wrong, teaching students the importance of law-abidingness, and steering them to grow on the right track.” On these counts and taking into account the foregoing circumstances, the PTU is not considered having lived up to the rightful expectations, but rather engaging substantially in “political propaganda under the guise of being a professional education organization”. Since the EDB could no longer regard the PTU as a professional education body, it decided to cease, from July 31, all the following working relations with the PTU:
The EDB will no longer have any formal or informal meetings with the PTU or its representatives, nor consult it on education-related issues.
In the meantime, the EDB will suspend the handling of cases referred or concerns raised by the PTU. People concerned may directly contact the EDB, relevant schools or organizations.
The EDB will holistically review the advisory committees and related educational bodies under its purview. If any members are holding posts in these committees and bodies as representatives of the PTU, these bodies will not recognize their membership, refuse their participation in the meetings, and deny them access to the EDB office area for the meetings.
In principle, teacher training courses organized by the PTU will no longer be recognized. Hence, schools should not count teachers’ participation in the PTU’s training courses as part of the 150 hours of Continuing Professional Development activities in the three-year cycles with effect from July 31; however, in case schools find that certain training courses could be recognized given their special circumstances, they may consult the relevant EDB senior school development officer.
In response to this EDB-initiated drastic scrapping of work-linked liaison, the PTU affirmed its positive concern over China’s development, its rejection of Hong Kong independence and non-incitement of students’ participation in anti-HKSAR government violent protests in 2019. It further argued that the EDB should get in touch with education bodies in order to substantiate its proclaimed support for teachers’ well-being. Sidelining the PTU, it alleged, would be a loss to the education profession. Such self-asserted claims could, however, be readily refuted by the past “words and deeds” of the PTU. If the union took at heart the motherland’s development, it would not have staged the mass sit-in demonstration outside the government’s headquarters in July 2012, demanding the withdrawal of the new national education plan for schools by early September. This has not yet recounted the aggressive role of the teachers’ organization in both the HK Alliance — confirmed having dropped out from it last week — and the Civil Human Rights Front, responsible for organizing the city’s July 1 anti-government rally every year and the “Occupy Central” movement, for which the PTU published teaching resources with contents on civil disobedience for all teachers; as well as in launching a territorywide class and teaching boycott by teachers, pulling schools into politics; and recently even openly promoting books that glorify violence.
It is perhaps high time that the PTU revisits its past public expressions and doings as a teachers’ union, to judge in a clear perspective if it can be “prudently” considered capable of “genuinely” representing the local teaching force, which is to be responsible for safeguarding students’ educational well-being by keeping school campuses politics-free. The latest strategies unveiled by the union will shift its attention to the handling of teachers’ professionalism and employment rights, as well as the establishment of a Chinese history and culture working group with a declared focus in fostering a proper understanding of the development of the homeland on the part of the teachers. Admittedly, these are initial steps taken in the right direction. Yet in the absence of a critical and fundamental metamorphosis of the PTU’s anti-China and anti-SAR government political attitude, program portfolio and overt commentaries, all expedient rather than principled measures will possibly be viewed as “tricks to evade accountability”, which are not able to drum up enormous leverage capable of removing the unpatriotic stigma of being a “malignant tumor” in the city’s education profession.
The author is chairman of Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organization.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.