Hong Kong officials have singled out at least two schools for singing the Chinese national anthem “too softly”.
Teachers at a third school have been asked to help students “cultivate habit and confidence” in singing it.
Hong Kong has redoubled the emphasis on “patriotic” education since 2020 when China cracked down on the city’s pro-democracy movement.
Officials said students’ voices at the Hong Kong and Macau Lutheran Church Primary School were “soft and weak” and “should be strengthened”. At Yan Chai Hospital Lim Por Yen Secondary School, teachers were told to “help students develop the habit of singing the national anthem loudly in unison”.
Shit like this is why the kneeling protests in the states never bothered me. I’m proud to live in a country with freedom of expression. This kind of forced nationalism is a cancer
Shit like this is why the kneeling protests in the states never bothered me.
Nationalism is a fucking curse. It drives people insane. These guys don’t love our country enough. Those guys love their country TOO MUCH. Its all so miserable and awful for everyone involved.
I’m proud to live in a country with freedom of expression.
Freedom to say anything that doesn’t upset the rich and powerful. Freedom to speak anywhere that the police won’t arrest you and the corporations can’t ban you. Freedom to travel anywhere your credit card can afford to send you and the State Department hasn’t banned you from going. Freedom to express yourself in any way that some Christian Fundamentalist doesn’t think will unduly influence his little rugrats.
Unlimited, Unconditional, Unparalleled Freedom (*)
- Limits and Conditions still apply. Please consult your local boss or party apparatchik for further details.
Even having an anthem, being bullied into putting your hand over your heart, making children onesie allegiance, is all indoctrination to nationalism. It’s horrible.
The Pledge of Allegiance has entered the chat.
I’m aware it isn’t mandatory, but no one made that clear to me when I was a kid.
You could have asked… I mean, you were in a building staffed with people paid to answer questions and inform you about the world.
Most of the staff likely would have told me that it is mandatory. There are news stories all the time about kids being bullied, given detention, and other negative repercussions, for exercising their right to not say the pledge.
High, high chance they wouldn’t have been encouraging. Reasons include their personal political beliefs and the fact they tend to care more about parent reactions than students, because guess which group they’re on equal footing with?
I live in New York, one of the most northern and blue states around, and have my entire life. In 7th grade I decided I didn’t like saying the Pledge of Allegiance, the name alone sounded odd to me, like why are children pledging themselves to a country, when we can’t even really understand what that means? So I stopped.
The school staff lost their minds.
Luckily my parents taught me to be firm in my beliefs, if I had truely thought about them and believed them. So I stuck to my choice, and my parents backed me up on it when they arrived at the school 45 minutes after the Pledge normally ended.
On a side note, I had read ahead in my Social Studies textbook that week, and learned about Nationalism in Nazi Germany, and it had sounded strangly familiar to me. Not long after the Pledge of Allegiance incident happened.
I’m aware it isn’t mandatory
Here is a breakdown of laws in 47 states that require reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
That’s totally fucked up, and seems to be a violation of the first amendment, but IANAL
Don’t American school kids all have to like salute their flag and pledge themselves or some shit each morning?
Lmao @ the Americans getting all uncomfortable trying to weasel out of this
Yeah bullshit it’s “not mandatory,” how can you have such a basic denial of reality?
Totally optional, that’s why every time some kid understands and abstains, the teachers and other students bully them mercilessly, give them detention, suspension, expulsion, and it makes national news whenever someone actually tries.
I bet joining the NSDAP was fucking optional too, don’t try to deny your christofascism that everyone just accepts because somehow it’s better when America does it
Idk, I didn’t stand for the pledge and they didn’t disappear me into a white van or exile me to Cuba 🤷
Maybe, and stop me if I’m going too far here, maybe you weren’t aware it isn’t forced. That’s fine because now you’ve been handed a personal account of the opposite to be true, I’m sure you will reassess you stance 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
To an extent, but you expect demands for hegemony from western imperialists.
In the Hong Kong case, it’s the government - an agent of the people - which is just enforcing the desire of the people to praise the revolution. It’s not that the kids can’t sing softly. It’s that if they sing softly it’s because of the lingering influence of the colonizers. Therefore they need re-education until their minds are properly free.
No one is keeping track of how enthusiastically they do it or writing official reports on it or encouraging more of it. It’s the interest the govt takes in it that makes it weird(er).
Not that long ago in my public school the most I could get away without detention was standing facing the flag and not speaking -and that was only because my homeroom teacher was fairly lax and I was the only objector.
Punishments for not participating were real and I can’t say the school wouldn’t have come up with a more formalized patriotism monitoring if more students rejected it as a movement. 🤷♂️
Louisiana schools will soon all have the ten commandments posted too. They just passed that as law there.
I embarrassed the COO of a large organization once in front of approximately half of that organization’s management. Managed to get away with it. So yes, I can say with some certainty that being able to stand up and freely express yourself is character building and, frankly, fucking awesome.
