October 1996
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U-students’ problems For years, there has been criticism about the academic quality of universities’ freshers. This year, the criticism may be more fierce than before because the overall performance of students in the AL level examination has deteriorated. For example, the passing percentage of both Chinese and English, which are the most important subjects, decreased. It seems that these new comers enter the universities under an unfavourable situation. Still worse, the school fees of the universities have been raised at an unreasonable rate. Despite protests of tertiary students, the government chose to ignore them. The government’s attitude is not surprising as it is used to ignoring the voices of the grassroots. Unfortunately, not every student can afford such great amount of money. As a result, most of the students have to face fierce criticism as well as bear financial burden. The former is mainly the responsibility of the students but the latter is clearly the government’s fault. In spite of high living standard, most of the families cannot afford such high school fees, especially, the sandwiches class. This class usually have little amount of grant and loan which nearly cannot help them. I think the government should stop increasing the school fees at a high rate.
Lee Man Yee
Many people say that ‘books are valuable treasure’, however, which kinds of books do they mean by that phrase? On the 27th of July, I went to the annual book fair in Wanchai. Out of my expectation, it was not so crowded. But what I could see were queues of young people, needless to say, they were lining up before the counters selling comic books and offering signed posters, photos and comic books of some famous authors and actors. Although comic books are in vogue and some of them are so popular that they are filmed. Youngsters should strike a balance between comic and other books. They should not indulge in comics only! The mass media, on one hand, is responsible to the climate of reading comic books by disseminating the heat of ‘instant culture’ through their pervasive influence. Those publishers, on the other hand, cater for tastes or curiosity of the youth to enjoy wide circulation. As a result, only a narrow range of choice, such as love stories, comics, etc are offered. Obviously, they are made up of very shallow things. Youth should also be blamed for this phenomenon too. They should develop independent thought and be self-confident in their age, but not going after the trend blindly. They should as well widen their horizon and cultivate interest in reading different kinds of books, but not only comics. For example, many educational books and some leisure-time readings can help improve their language ability. The book fair provides a chance for the great majority of book publishers to join together in every summer holidays. I want it neither to be distorted into a comic book fair nor becomes the laughing stock of reporter from China and Taiwan.
Lau Nga Yan
Centennial Olympic Games had eventually come to an end. Hong Kong athlete Lee Lai-shan had won a gold medal, first time for herself and Hong Kong. All Hong Kong people exulted at her triumph after receiving the news. Her success does not only bring great pleasure to herself but to the six million Hong Kong citizens as well. At the moment at a sport event had aroused the community spirit, every people were sharing her happiness. As she had said in front of the camera, “the gold medal I won does not belong to myself, it belongs to all the Hong Kong people. Without your support, I won’t get this result.” I was really touched by her speech, Lee did not behave arrogantly after winning the prize, her modesty is a positive demonstration to the younsters nowadays who are conceited about their limited achievement or ability. Her success is especially meaningful when we gained this honour just a year before Hong Kong’s return to China. At the Olympic stadium, we saw the first and the last time the Hong Kong flag flying. Though it is the one and only moment we saw our flag flying, it is enough to show that Hong Kong people are not only capable of making money but also can perform brightly in sport events. In the eyes of Hong Kong people, Lee Lai-shan is inevitably a heroine who brings pride and honour to us. Yet we should also salute to other Hong Kong representatives and their coaches in this Olympic Games, they had received tough training and played hard in the name of Hong Kong in the games as well.
Tse Sui Wah |
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