Public Eye | There should be more to life than stereotypes

Now listen up children: all Filipino women are maids. They clean your toilets. All South Asian men are construction workers. They build your roads. All Westerners are rich. They're a class above you. It's called stereotyping. Learn that word well. Burn the word racism into your brain too. The two are interchangeable. You'll need to apply both as you make your way in life. Only when you learn to use skin colour to determine who are toilet cleaners and who belong to the upper class will you have gained a true Hong Kong education. Why else do you think our schools use textbooks that show Filipinos as maids and Westerners as rich? Why else do you think the Education Bureau condones this by shrugging its shoulders? So when you next see a South Asian, regard him as a builder, even though there are more rich Indians than poor in Hong Kong. Commentator Chip Tsao drew flak some years ago when he called the Philippines a nation of servants. Now it looks like he had great foresight. Our school books are teaching the children the same thing too.

Remember the firestorm over national education two years ago? Tens of thousands of students backed by teachers, parents, and politicians massed outside government headquarters. They condemned national education as code for brainwashing. The government backed down. So how come these people are not kicking up a fuss over schoolbooks that teach children how to stereotype? Does their silence mean they consider it brainwashing to learn about China and the Basic Law but not brainwashing when children are taught to be racists?