Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was asked whether she has any proof for her claim that some teachers are “poisoning” children with biased views and spreading “false and biased information” in schools. That this was the first question for Lam when she met the media before Tuesday’s Executive Council meeting suggests she has poked a hornets’ nest — inadvertently or otherwise.

No other place in the world, other than war zones, is witnessing so many of its youngsters harboring unwarranted hatred against their compatriots and country

But it takes willful blindness for anyone not to see that our pupils are being poisoned mentally in schools — and our younger generation is being deliberately led down the path to self-destruction.

No other place in the world, other than war zones, is witnessing so many of its youngsters harboring unwarranted hatred against their compatriots and country. No other place has witnessed its young people repeatedly torching public facilities and vandalizing their hometown. No other place has so often seen its young people waving flags of former colonists who once invaded their country, occupied their homeland and humiliated their ancestors.

All of these and other strange yet mind-boggling actions by our young people are the fruits of years of brainwashing or intoxication in schools under the guise of “cultivating critical thinking”. How else can anyone explain why a 13-year-old student harbors such bitter hatred against his own country that he set fire to the national flag, leading to his arrest? And how else can you explain why a 19-year-old student is so vicious that he slashed the neck of a police officer with a box-cutter in public without any provocation?

Allowing their conscience to be compromised by their political beliefs, many intelligent people, including the reporter who asked Lam for proof of “poisoning minds”, pretend not to see youngsters being brainwashed, intoxicated and radicalized by political zealots pretending to be professional educational workers.

They might have thought those are others’ children after all. But how can they feel comfortable when they know the chickens will eventually come home to roost? Political brainwashing, intoxication and radicalization do not discriminate when it comes to victimizing the young. How can anyone be sure their children, grand-children, siblings or children of their loved ones will not be the next victims? It is naive to think anyone will be the winner in a society whose younger generation is being radicalized or brainwashed by pernicious ideas.