A report this week in a local newspaper about students cleaning toilets as a character-building experience made a deep impression on me. It also reminded me of my glamorous career as a jakes-scrubber back in my freshman year of high school.

A reader who writes me occasionally on e-mail to express views on my columns sent these words this week: “The first thing I saw on this sorry Monday was Mr. Fang's ugly commentary [on page 4 of The China Post], and ... I wonder if Father Dan can gently take issue with ... [these] remarks, but in a polite, gentlemanly way that won't get you fired from the op-ed page. But his words cannot go unanswered ...

Many reactions came to my mind this week when I read of the tempest in the teapot that arose over President Ma Ying-jeou's visit to St. John's University in Tamsui last Sunday.

Headlines are funny things, “funny” not always in the sense of humorous, but “funny” as strange or bizarre.

Local media are covering questions that affect students' lives and learning with such gusto these days that it is hard to keep up with it all.

These words are an effort to bring two news stories about honesty together. One of the stories is recent, and the other is still unfolding.

I had recently heard that a group of 27 students from the Asian Studies Department of Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan were studying Mandarin for a three-week period at my university.

Just hours ago, I sat at a meal with several confreres, during which a somewhat heated discussion about capital punishment broke out.

American “first ladies” typically adopt a few favorite causes, and use their celebrity status to promote those causes. Michelle Obama is no exception.

Four weeks have passed since my words “Students need more than discipline” appeared in this space (Jan. 22). That column touched on Amy Chua and the tiger mother debate in the United States and elsewhere. In case you don't know, that debate shows no sign of abating.