When asked, 'Is punctuality of great importance?', most of the public's answers were positive. According to a recent survey in which the respondents are teachers or people who work in schools, there is a rising number of students continuously arriving late to schools. It manifested that this has become a phenomenon. This staggering phenomenon has many eyebrows raised and put the issue in the limelight: 'Why are secondary students always late for school?'.

Fundamental to the emergence of this phenomenon is the rebellious mind of our adolescents. According to a recent report from a student union, most of the secondary students are late, not because of laziness, but because they are deprived of a sense of freedom. In the Hong Kong city, parents are overprotecting their children, there are even some becoming 'helicopter parents'. Parents are in fear that their children are not walking on the right life path and will do things that they will regret later in life. However, the adolescents are eager to be adults and want to respected by their parents as mature individuals to enjoy more freedom. Therefore, they ask for freedom to arrive when they want to.

Another root of this phenomenon is the strict regulation of the secondary schools. According to the reflections of our adolescents online, they say that their schools' rules are unreasonable and too strict. This manifested that those schools' rules are old fashioned and opposing the original purpose of creating school rules. To illustrate, some schools require the student to get a signed note from the school offices for permission to go to the washroom. Imagine you are the students, how inhuman is this to you? It's easy to break the rules as we are sometimes in a hurry when going to the washrooms. As this is the case, students have a thought about breaking multiple school rules as they think the consequences are the same. Therefore, they choose to get more sleep and better rest, regardless of the rules.

Lamentably, there is an unhealthy trend among our adolescents. Nonetheless, we should think about what is the problems of our society and think in those students' perspectives. For the sake of our own future, we should all work together to create a better future.