International School Teacher at the Barricades.
But without a hard-hat
But without a hard-hat
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
I am no great fan of social media, being an irregular visitor to my Facebook page and having never used Twitter, but you’ve got to admit it is making life interesting.
From social anxiety to narcissism, fake news to algorithms, social media has invaded every aspect of our psyche. It is also deeply rooted in your school, and I am not just talking about those students who engage in a little ‘naughty’ texting.
Historians who look back on the early part of the 21st century may well conclude it was the age when teenagers got politicised. Back in my day, (the 1960s), teenagers were too busy playing at ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’ on Brighton beach, happily thumping each other to the soundtrack of The Who’s ‘My Generation’.
Politics was for boring old men in Trilby hats and waistcoats.
Teenagers may still be into thumping people, but not over whether they ride a scooter or a motorbike, wear Parka jacket or black leathers. Today’s schoolkids are wearing face masks, hard hats, and standing behind barricades facing off riot police — and that’s just the girls.
Rioting in Hong Kong has become the new go-to week-end leisure activity for students, and with over 750 of them arrested so far and HK in recession, clearly their activities are having an impact.
But it is not only HK.
The politicisation of Generation Z is a global phenomenon.
USA: Tens of thousands of high school students in cities nationwide skipped classes to attend the Global Climate Strike. “We have to treat climate change as what it is — an emergency”, said Audrey Maurine Xin Lin, an 18-year-old who has been one of the coordinators of the Boston school strike and march. USA Today
Thailand: Students from international schools in Bangkok constitute one of the most committed groups fighting climate change. And with Bangkok predicted to be underwater by 2050, it is little surprise the normally acquiescent Thai teenager is at the forefront of regional protests. “In Asia, we have a culture of seniority, and young people aren’t supposed to speak up for themselves and are not supposed to speak against adults”, said Nanticha “Lynn” Ocharoenchai, organiser of several such protests in Bangkok. Reuters
Europe: So far this year, tens of thousands of high school-age students from across Europe have boycotted classes and protested against climate change. And most of these protesters are girls. The loose movement’s inspiration, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl from Stockholm, has now achieved global celebrity status. Buzzfeed
South Korea:In South Korea’s deeply conservative but highly wired society, feminism, and the #MeToo Movement, has taken root more extensively among younger women, including teenagers, than in neighbouring countries such as Japan and China. Tens of thousands of women have poured into the streets of Seoul for regular protests against sexual harassment. In recent months, #School_MeToo has been trending on social media as students begin to call out sexual harassment and assault in South Korean schools. SCMP
There will be school teachers and school leaders reading this who know only too well that their erstwhile well-behaved students are now up in arms and very politically awake, not just about politics and democracy, but also climate change, patriarchy, sexual harassment, in fact the general state of the world they are inheriting.
And as teachers you may well have a lot of sympathy for their position, indeed, some of you may be protesting alongside your students. Though if you are an international teacher then I rather doubt it. As an expat working in a foreign country you are a guest of that country, moreover, you are in the privileged and socially elevated position of teacher, something that counts for a lot, especially in Asia. So long as you don’t rock the boat.
The truth is, while your students are protesting, maybe justifiably, many of their parents will be looking on in anguish if not growing annoyance and impatience.
That puts you, and the school, in an invidious position.
Your students will be getting increasingly vocal in the classroom and they’ll be looking to you, their teacher, for support. Meanwhile, parents will be relying on you to quieten your students down -maybe give them so much weekend homework they haven’t time to protest. You may also be experiencing conflict in the school between opposing groups. After all, not every student in HK wants to be rioting on Saturdays when they can be drinking latte’s in Starbucks. Suddenly you, the teacher, are in the middle; torn between conflicting groups, conflicting politics, and conflicting responsibilities.
But social media is not going away, its influence is if anything, growing. Consequently, the rules of politics are undergoing change. Basically, there are no rules any more. The traditional power base is fractured and a new generation is looking to exert its power and influence, violently if need be. This is not simply middle-class university students out on the streets, motivated by ‘left-wing’ university lecturers as was the case in Paris in the 1960s. Today it is children doing the protesting, some barely into puberty. And their influence is from social media.
Any school which aims to develop its students into ‘global citizens’ — and that would be most every international school — should be delighted with the radicalisation of Generation Z.
After all, #MeToo, Climate Change and democratic rights are very much global issues. We cannot encourage our students to think critically and then castigate them when they do exactly that.
At the same time, the growing violence is worrying, especially in HK.
School is no longer a place where dutiful children come and learn from teachers, not only how to think, what to think, but how to behave. School is now a political space, where opinions need to be heard and counted, though always guided by ‘rules of engagement’, ideally set by the teacher. We don’t want our students to stop thinking, if they do that then society is definitely lost. But nor do we want them to be unthinkingly reactive to the latest social media trend.
And violence can be an addictive virus.
Caught up in dramatic changes which are spreading rapidly, not least by social media, school teachers are now on the front line, whether they like it or not.
Dr Stephen Whitehead (opinions are author’s own)
This article originally appeared in EDDi: Educational Digest International.