The first stop of the journey of growth: my elementary and junior high school - Xinguang School

The recently published " Why I Write - When Matters Launches the Registration Iscn Function " can be said to be the prelude to a series of personal growth journeys that I plan to write. I plan to register this series of serials with ISCN. When Likecoin is upgraded to support NFT in the future, I also plan to cast this series of works into text NFT.

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The reason why everyone becomes who they are now is because the past has shaped Yicheng. So to understand me as an adult, one has to look back on the journey of growth in the past. Elementary school can be said to be the beginning of my growth journey. Why not in childhood? This is mainly because my childhood was still an ignorant period, and my memory was very fragmented. Therefore, unless I do hypnosis, it is very difficult to identify those events in the early years that were decisive for later growth. Conversely, in elementary school, consciousness and memory gradually become clear and systematic, and easy to recall. Therefore, I take the school I attended in primary and secondary schools as the first stop of my growth journey. The first stop on my growth journey, and also a very important stop, is Xinguang School.

The full name of Xinguang School is Xinguang Home and School for the Blind. The long name is because it includes primary and secondary schools for visually impaired students, nursing homes, and skill training centers for both mentally and visually impaired students (Note 1). And my studies from Primary One to Junior Three were completed in Xinguang School.

This year, Xinguang School has a history of 125 years. In 1897, missionaries from the German Lutheran Church of Siddhikan first opened a home for blind girls in an old building unit in the Western District. At that time, it was still the late Qing Dynasty in mainland China, and Hong Kong's society was not much better. In the context of conservative society and low status of women, girls who are visually impaired or even blind are often abandoned. Therefore, the predecessor of Xinguang School can be said to be an orphanage for blind girls (Note 2). Therefore, the people of Hong Kong in the past also called it the "House for Blind Girls".

It was not until 1956 that Xinguang Home for the Blind began to register with the then Education Department as a school providing primary to junior secondary education for visually impaired schoolchildren and adolescents. The school building and dormitory where I was studying were built in 1960 with funding from the Jockey Club.

My elementary school to junior high school period was from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. At that time, the Xinguang campus and dormitory were located on Pokfulam Road (Note 3), and it was only one bus stop from Queen Mary Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong. Most students are boarders who go home after school on Fridays and return to their dorms on Sunday afternoons to prepare for school on Mondays. It's not hard to imagine that my childhood and teenage years spent far less time with family injuries than I did in school boarding. This is why I feel that the ten years at Xinguang School are so important in shaping me as an adult. The location of Xinguang School, its boarding arrangements, its school rules, courses, and the interaction between teachers and students and between classmates are all elements of my growth. These elements have had both positive and negative effects on my growth. I will come to each of them in future articles.

Note 1: Xinguang provides separate teaching for visually impaired students without intellectual disabilities and visually impaired students with intellectual disabilities. Generally, the primary and secondary school curriculum for visually impaired students is basically the same as that of mainstream schools, except that there is more training on the use of Braille for fully blind students, and training on the use of visual aids for low-sighted students. For trainees with both intellectual and visual impairments, the main training is various life skills.

Note 2: The society in the early days of Xinguang was very conservative. Visually impaired baby girls or girls are often abandoned by their parents. Why are visually impaired baby girls or girls abandoned in the majority of cases rather than visually impaired baby boys or boys? This is due to traditional gender role stereotypes. Parents of visually impaired boys would like to have a sighted wife to take care of them when they grow up. But women themselves are expected to grow up to take care of their families. Visually impaired women are considered to be incapable of taking care of their families, so their parents also expect them to be unmarried when they grow up and have no future, so they will have a higher motivation to abandon them.

Note 3: The school site on Pok Fu Lam Road is really attractive. With the mountains facing the sea, and the wealthy mansion Vinyl, it has long been coveted by developers. In May this year, Xinguang School and the developer reached a land exchange agreement and will move to Tung Chung. The original site of the school building on Pok Fu Lam Road will be converted into a low-density luxury residential building.

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Growth series

1. why i write