Government-appointed commission sends course glorifying China's success without mentioning its problems back to the government. Schools should decide what to teach students. This is a victory for the diocese and Cardinal Zen, who led the protest movement against the reform plan.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The Committee on the Implementation of Moral and National Education has asked the government to "invalidate" the course, deemed by the Church and Hong Kongers as an attempt at student "brain washing". This is the second backward step for the plan imposed by Beijing. At the start of the month, Hong Kong authorities had already made it optional, at each school's discretion.

Committee Chairwoman Anna Wu Hung-yu said the decision about the issues remains with the government. The commission, she noted, would recommend that schools be allowed to use a different name for the controversial subject to suit their own curriculum, which could contain religious or other social elements. "There is no need for an official set of guidelines," Wu explained.

Parents, students, teachers and ordinary citizens carried out a strike that lasted three weeks. They swarmed the Admiralty and government buildings.

Demonstrators slammed the planned educational reform as unjust because it would "glorify" mainland China's economic successes whilst downplay topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the country's poor human rights record.

According to Card Zen, who led the battle against government interference in education, the proposed reform was nothing but student "brain washing".

The prelate went on a hunger strike to stop the government-sponsored plan. For him, the national education was "a great injustice to the Church and the territory of Hong Kong" that threatened "to destroy the educational system of the area, considered one of the best in the region, of high quality and efficiency".

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