With matriculation exam being over, a number of students were said to have set their high school textbooks on fire - the books over which they had spent so many gruelling hours of study. As the books burned they were mumbling: "We are liberated at last!"

You would think that they had been finally delivered from indescribable anguish and boredom.

In the eyes of ordinary people, we might as well say that these students have gone to extremes by burning up all that had kept them company during their studies in the long spell of blistering heat.

But if we take an analytical and more sensible approach to the event, it would not be difficult for us to reach the conclusion that the current education system must be in trouble if it generates such disgust in the minds of students. This tendency can justifiably be interpreted as a revelation of sorrow, which reeks of a bit of "can't help it".

Education should be a noble process of accelerating the mental growth of individuals, and the recipients are expected to feel blissfully happy on their way to maturity. But today we're nonplused by the phenomenon that a good number of students, rather than enjoying the sublime happiness supposed to be provided by education, do not hide their detestation for it.

After a dozen years of school life, they usually end up dog-tired and exhausted, not knowing whether they have acquired anything worthwhile. Consigning books to flames may be a lesson for the educations who help implement the current education system.

Now I wonder if it's appropriate to ask ourselves several questions. Shall we call it a success if we succeed in casting students, who are otherwise energetic, ingenious and diversified in character, into a single, shaped mould?

Is university the only outlet for high school graduates? Have we degraded ourselves to such a degree that we are ready only to lay the blame on the indolence of students rather than the incapability of the educators? Have the reading materials we have compiled become so vapid that they no longer can capture the attention of students?

Instead of being an emperor who commands that all his subjects adapt to his will, education should be a competent guide which manages to meet the specific needs of its disciples.

If education were to churn out "rebels" who are not in harmony with the overall environment, it can only be reckoned to be a significant failure on the part of the educators who spearhead education reform.

Of course, education cannot be made to bear the whole blame. There are profound social and other factors contributing to it.

Anyway, burning textbooks that seem to be no longer relevant is worth probing both within and without the education sphere.

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