AROHA

結果後段回歸到團結溫情的大道上。魔鬼病倒了人性化了、打鬥被辭那些煽情都出了；該告白的人告了白、道理也講了、誤會終變成領悟、家庭也和睦收場… 但是依然buy，因為頭幾集已buy-in咗。好有心的一部作品，當中的批判和道理很多時在人與人之間說不出、說不清的。



雖知道套劇要講的都完了，而且女王的神秘身世還是不要揭破才好（這方面原劇的編者處理得很聰明），但我仍然很想看特別篇《墮天使》及《惡魔降臨》啊！！有誰可以hook me up呢？

《女王》幾問

很多人寫《女王的教室》，今天讀到little islo的從《女王的教室》中醒來，有「全班同學杯葛」的劇情預告，成為弄斷駱駝背的最後一根稻草。無法，上YouTube看，剛剛到第6集。

剌激出很多問題，例如：

1. 精英制還是「一個都不能少」（或布殊美版的"No child left behind"）？是一個值得不止學生、老師、家長和政策制定者思考的問題。怎樣教育下一輩、用甚麼基制分配教育資源、應不應放棄追不上的學生…這一切關乎於一個社會對本身資源分配和發展前景的共識。想得不清不楚，或是只從個人的權利出發，便會流於另一位女教師那樣有心無力。
2. 面對專權，積極還是消極？如果我是和美，早就以消極對抗的手法應付阿久津了— 罰做粗活？無問題。換了是我便每個禮拜測驗之前出聲抗議，自動當選「班代表」，有了人「墊底」，同學不怕被罰，女王的制度便告崩潰。當然她可以改變遊戲規則，例如增加「班代表」名額，或像後來更毒辣的，將班分組，行集體問責制，教大家互相監察。但重點是我想我會「用制度抵制制度」（天海祐希演技巧妙到一個程度，你不再會想為何看不到她呼吸，為甚麼她和她的陰影會無處不在，漸漸轉而把她看成一個制度、一種現實。）以退為進，passive aggression，我想這是很中國、很東方的反抗手法（另一種是悲情勸諫吧？）。奇怪《女王的教室》裡沒有加入這種在現實生活中畫諷刺漫畫、寫隱晦文章、玩政治不合作遊戲的人物。創作人反而用和美這「過份」積極、不肯放棄的角色帶動故事。看下去，相信會看到這種不酸澀、不諷刺的積極態度的所能帶出的溫度和力量。
3. 低頭還是不低頭？互相猜忌監察只有一個結果 — 每個人的權利都被剝奪了。相反，如果有足夠人不玩這遊戲，引發網絡效應，專制便不能實行。可惜總是有人因為各種原因而屈服（我也不敢肯定自已不會），大伙於是落入prisona's dilemma人人自危的局面。這是人類千古的難題。
   
4. 受娛樂了還是受啟發了？日本一直以來的島國恐懼（i.e., 不可能自給自足）和近幾代享受慣、不能吃苦等等憂慮，其實是全球性的。地球村嘛。我認：我也是好食懶飛、自私自利的人，對反省陌生。這些所謂啟發，抱歉也淺薄得很。或者到頭來，我只不過在隔著螢幕、安全的重溫學生時代的種種：友情、背叛、競爭、無助、理想、幻滅… 畢竟人性的不公在我們軟弱無力又被迫與同齡人圈在一起「學習」的時期最為深切；而小同學仔那些未經啄磨、赤裸裸的人心，在記憶中更為殘酷貼身。
   

感想就到這裡了。繼續睇。

分裂對話

我訝異說：「你怎麼到現在還拎著這顆天真探求的心呢？那麼幼稚，那麼不切實際，不難為情麼？」

你直澄澄的望著我，直到看出我的寒窘來 。我別過頭去，知道你在想：「你這樣甘心的在失望和諷刺中腐死，也好意思麼？」

Famine

By Sinead O'Connor

OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the famine
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no famine
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self - destruction
Alcoholism, drug adiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent psychological damage
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed famine
We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
But it's use in the controlling of our education
Schools go on about Black 47
On and on about The terrible famine
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one
(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from
(that I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong
So let's take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We're sufferin from post traumatic stress disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child - like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself basned in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from

He who hides and those who forget

Are those who have lost contact with their own history inherently obedient?

We'll see.

September 1, 2006, New York Times
Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Aug. 31 — When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s. The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today’s economic and political goals.

Supporters say the overhaul enlivens mandatory history courses for junior and senior high school students and better prepares them for life in the real world. The old textbooks, not unlike the ruling Communist Party, changed relatively little in the last quarter-century of market-oriented economic reforms. They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.

They do not so much rewrite history as diminish it. The one-party state, having largely abandoned its official ideology, prefers people to think more about the future than the past.

The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.

J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan’s bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable.

The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention. Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.

“Our traditional version of history was focused on ideology and national identity,” said Zhu Xueqin, a historian at Shanghai University. “The new history is less ideological, and that suits the political goals of today.”

The changes are at least initially limited to Shanghai. That elite urban region has leeway to alter its curriculum and textbooks, and in the past it has introduced advances that the central government has instructed the rest of the country to follow.

But the textbooks have provoked a lively debate among historians ahead of their full-scale introduction in Shanghai in the fall term. Several Shanghai schools began using the texts experimentally in the last school year.

Many scholars said they did not regret leaving behind the Marxist perspective in history courses. It is still taught in required classes on politics. But some criticized what they saw as an effort to minimize history altogether. Chinese and world history in junior high have been compressed into two years from three, while the single year in senior high devoted to history now focuses on cultures, ideas and civilizations.

“The junior high textbook castrates history, while the senior high school textbook eliminates it entirely,” one Shanghai history teacher wrote in an online discussion. The teacher asked to remain anonymous because he was criticizing the education authorities.

Zhou Chunsheng, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and one of the lead authors of the new textbook series, said his purpose was to rescue history from its traditional emphasis on leaders and wars and to make people and societies the central theme.

“History does not belong to emperors or generals,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “It belongs to the people. It may take some time for others to accept this, naturally, but a similar process has long been under way in Europe and the United States.”

Mr. Zhou said the new textbooks followed the ideas of the French historian Fernand Braudel. Mr. Braudel advocated including culture, religion, social customs, economics and ideology into a new “total history.” That approach has been popular in many Western countries for more than half a century.

Mr. Braudel elevated history above the ideology of any nation. China has steadily moved away from its ruling ideology of Communism, but the Shanghai textbooks are the first to try examining it as a phenomenon rather than preaching it as the truth.

Socialism is still referred to as having a “glorious future.” But the concept is reduced to one of 52 chapters in the senior high school text. Revolutionary socialism gets less emphasis than the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution.

Students now study Mao — still officially revered as the founding father of modern China but no longer regularly promoted as an influence on policy — only in junior high. In the senior high school text, he is mentioned fleetingly as part of a lesson on the custom of lowering flags to half-staff at state funerals, like Mao’s in 1976.

Deng Xiaoping, who began China’s market-oriented reforms, appears in the junior and senior high school versions, with emphasis on his economic vision.

Gerald A. Postiglione, an associate professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, said mainland Chinese education authorities had searched for ways to make the school curriculum more relevant.

“The emphasis is on producing innovative thinking and preparing students for a global discourse,” he said. “It is natural that they would ask whether a history textbook that talks so much about Chinese suffering during the colonial era is really creating the kind of sophisticated talent they want for today’s Shanghai.”

That does not mean history and politics have been disentangled. Early this year a prominent Chinese historian, Yuan Weishi, wrote an essay that criticized Chinese textbooks for whitewashing the savagery of the Boxer Rebellion, the violent movement against foreigners in China at the beginning of the 20th century. He called for a more balanced analysis of what provoked foreign interventions at the time.

In response, the popular newspaper supplement Freezing Point, which carried his essay, was temporarily shut down and its editors were fired. When it reopened, Freezing Point ran an essay that rebuked Mr. Yuan, a warning that many historical topics remained too delicate to discuss in the popular media.

The Shanghai textbook revisions do not address many domestic and foreign concerns about the biased way Chinese schools teach recent history. Like the old textbooks, for example, the new ones play down historic errors or atrocities like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the army crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.

The junior high school textbook still uses boilerplate idioms to condemn Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930’s and includes little about Tokyo’s peaceful, democratic postwar development. It will do little to assuage Japanese concerns that Chinese imbibe hatred of Japan from a young age.

Yet over all, the reduction in time spent studying history and the inclusion of new topics, like culture and technology, mean that the content of the core Chinese history course has contracted sharply.

The new textbook leaves out some milestones of ancient history. Shanghai students will no longer learn that Qin Shihuang, who unified the country and became China’s first emperor, ordered a campaign to burn books and kill scholars, to wipe out intellectual resistance to his rule. The text bypasses well-known rebellions and coups that shook or toppled the Zhou, Sui, Tang and Ming dynasties.

It does not mention the resistance by Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, to Kublai Khan’s invasion and the founding of the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty. Wen Tianxiang, a Han Chinese prime minister who became the country’s most transcendent symbol of loyalty and patriotism when he refused to serve the Mongol invaders, is also left out.

Some of those historic facts and personalities have been replaced with references to old customs and fashions, prompting some critics to say that history teaching has lost focus.

“Would you rather students remember the design of ancient robes, or that the Qin dynasty unified China in 221 B.C.?” one high school teacher quipped in an online forum for history experts.

Others speculated that the Shanghai textbooks reflected the political viewpoints of China’s top leaders, including Jiang Zemin, the former president and Communist Party chief, and his successor, Hu Jintao.

Mr. Jiang’s “Three Represents” slogan aimed to broaden the Communist Party’s mandate and dilute its traditional emphasis on class struggle. Mr. Hu coined the phrase “harmonious society,” which analysts say aims to persuade people to build a stable, prosperous, unified China under one-party rule.

The new textbooks de-emphasize dynastic change, peasant struggle, ethnic rivalry and war, some critics say, because the leadership does not want people thinking that such things matter a great deal. Officials prefer to create the impression that Chinese through the ages cared more about innovation, technology and trade relationships with the outside world.

Mr. Zhou, the Shanghai scholar who helped write the textbooks, says the new history does present a more harmonious image of China’s past. But he says the alterations “do not come from someone’s political slogan,” but rather reflect a sea change in thinking about what students need to know.

“The government has a big role in approving textbooks,” he said. “But the goal of our work is not politics. It is to make the study of history more mainstream and prepare our students for a new era.”