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In the course of education, teachers are bound to see some rebellious behavior from students, especially when they become teens.
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Some educators discipline misbehaving students with strict punishments. Others try to deal with them with patience and guidance.
In both situations, the schools take students' behavior seriously with different methods used to educate the teens.
So has St Francis Xavier's School in Tsuen Wan reacted properly in suspending 14 students from normal schooling for three days after the students allegedly ate breakfast and failed to stand up during the school's flag-raising ceremony?
It would be unfair to accuse the school as it must believe that its way of handling the incident best meets the interest of these students.
Since there is no standard approach in education, it is also highly probable that, if similar incidents had occurred at other schools, they may have handled things differently depending on the situation.
Nonetheless, patience and guidance are the major norms in education these days.
Perhaps what can be learnt from the incident is that schools should be allowed a high degree of freedom in teaching students without fearing regular repercussions.
Creativity could be lost if such fears were allowed to prevail.
Now that the concerned students have returned to normal schooling, society should let the matter rest. Stretching it out would do great harm to the students, teachers, school administration and parents.
As said in the Education Bureau's guidelines, the core spirit is that everything has to be sensible, reasonable and legal.
Meanwhile, it's a pity that police showed up at the school later in the day - the timing coincidence could not have been more unfortunate.
Police went there after they received a report from the school that some signs outside the campus were damaged.
The officers' presence had nothing to do with the flag-raising ceremony incident.
The police did the right thing in clarifying that. Otherwise, many people would still have continued to believe the school reported the students to police for allegedly showing disrespect - eating breakfast - during the morning ceremony.
Had the school really reported the breakfast eating to police, this might well have breached the spirit of the education bureau's guidelines for schools that call for approaches which are sensible, reasonable and lawful.
A satirical cartoon in Ming Pao by political cartoonist Zun Zi clearly irked the police after it depicted two officers - a little on the short side and with bulging bellies - armed with batons and shields responding to trivial complaints from a school headmaster.
Nobody should be surprised by Zun Zi's topic pick since the incident at St Francis Xavier's School has gripped the city thanks to huge media coverage.
The cartoon is humorous. Maybe we all should learn to regain a tiny bit of humor after spending so much time living in pandemic restrictions.
