HONG KONG—Before the 8 a.m. bell rings at high schools across the city, uniformed students at some of them gather to join hands, chanting protest slogans or singing “the revolution of our times,” words from a popular protest anthem.
Hong Kong officials had expressed hope the city’s biggest protest movement in decades would begin to subside when classes resumed in September.
Instead, violence between demonstrators and police has intensified, producing some of the bloodiest days since the protests began in June—and schools have become a driver of the city’s uprising against China’s ruling party.
This week, clashes paralyzed Hong Kong, disrupting commutes and shutting down schools. Violence escalated Thursday when protesters at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University shot arrows at policemen, who responded with volleys of tear gas. Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at a summit in Brazil Thursday, blamed protesters for the violence and urged a tough police response.
Confrontations between protesters and police have turned university campuses into battle zones. Clashes at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and other universities prompted hundreds of mainland Chinese students to flee. The action on college campuses is bolstered by protesters not yet old enough to attend; high school students are turning up at the forefront of battles throughout the city.
Young people drive protest movements across the globe, but the extreme youthfulness of Hong Kong’s protests has alarmed Chinese and local officials. Though college campuses have been the scenes of violent confrontations, the fight is rapidly spreading into high schools, where a new type of front line is emerging.
High schools serve as natural points of contact for protesters to find like-minded supporters, organize and plan. They have also become venues for dispute between student protesters and students who support mainland China’s rule. Teachers say that even as they try to mediate arguments on playgrounds and classrooms, they are under scrutiny, too, and fear losing their careers if they are seen as advocating protests.
Local pro-Beijing figures have urged school heads to expel student protesters charged with rioting. Last month, the city’s education chiefs asked school principals to report children who wear face masks to school in defiance of a recent ban.
Chinese officials have demanded that education officials punish teachers who advocate protests against Chinese rule. On Tuesday, Chinese state media announced that Beijing had published new education guidelines that included the goal to build a stronger national identity for students in Hong Kong and Macau.
More than a third of 4,000 protesters arrested are age 20 and younger, according to police records. Among those, dozens are 14 or younger. The youngest protester arrested is 11.
Last month, two teens—one of them 14 years old—were shot by police during street battles. Both survived and the older teenager was charged with rioting, an offense which carries a prison term of up to 10 years. A high school student was charged with wounding a police officer with intent for allegedly jabbing a boxcutter into his neck. Recently, a 13-year-old arrested on the subway was carrying two undetonated Molotov cocktails.
“This is the most important fight of our generation,” said Adam, a high school senior who turned 17 in October, and who estimates that about 60 out of 400 students in his Hong Kong high school actively support the protests. “We can’t back down now, no matter what the teachers say or how they try to stop us.”
Adam, who did not want to be identified by his full name for fear of repercussions, says he suspects teachers called the police on him when he and a classmate chanted protest slogans outside his high school asking classmates to join him in a school boycott as a way to support the protests. He said police officers searched students on the playground after teachers called them to break up a protest. School officials did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Zack Ho, 18, heads the Hong Kong Student Strike Alliance, which advises high-school students on organizing protest events at schools and how to deal with opposition from teachers and principals.
At his own high school he said he had met resistance from schools officials and push back from mainland Chinese students.
His principal rejected his idea to set up a wall for people to post sticky notes of support for the movement. The principal also told him she won’t allow protest events in school over fears that it would increase tensions with mainland students at the school. The school principal declined to comment.
Mr. Ho found workarounds. While walking between classes, he shouted pro-democracy slogans. In response one day, a mainland Chinese classmate threw a piece of paper with a hammer and sickle drawn on it. “I support the Chinese government. Long live China!” Mr. Ho said the boy shouted.
Lau Pak-ho, a high school junior, said he was cut out of his class photo for boycotting classes in support of protests. The 17-year-old high school junior, said his school issued a notice to parents to warn against students taking part in class boycotts. The school said anyone who took part would be excluded from class photos, said Pak-ho, who boycotted anyway, with around 40 classmates.
Across the city, more than 390 high schools—more than 80% of secondary schools—have formed “concern groups” to organize protests, according to Samson Yuen, assistant professor of political science at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University.
More than a third of arrested protesters were born after China reclaimed Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, according to police records.
In a June survey of more than 1,000 Hong Kong residents age 19 to 29, 2.7% of respondents said they identify as Chinese. In the same survey two months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, 29% of Hong Kong residents in that age group said they identified as Chinese.
Kyle Chan, a vice principal at Marymount Secondary School, has allowed students at the prestigious girls’ school to engage in peaceful protest. On a recent morning, the vice principal stood watching as 100 uniformed students joined hands outside the school gates and chanted protest slogans.
“We’re sensitive to the different opinions, especially because those supporting the movement are more vocal,” Mr. Chan said. “This experience has taught the students about the importance of critical thinking.”
So far, two Hong Kong secondary school teachers have received warning letters from education officials over alleged social media posts that suggested violence against police officers and their families amid public anger of how officers have handled the protests.
“Teachers serve as students’ role models through teaching by words and examples,” Hong Kong’s education bureau said. “It is heart-breaking to see students getting injured, breaking the law or being arrested.”
Some academics who support the ideals of the protest movement said as the protests grow more destructive, they fear the youngest protesters are easily manipulated into riskier actions.
Steve, a high school English teacher, said fears of losing his job prompted him to delete Facebook posts in which he expressed his views supporting the protests. He said he no longer feels comfortable openly discussing current news events in class. Officials at his school, however, have allowed students to chant slogans in favor of protests at school assemblies.
In his homeroom, in which about a third of students are from mainland China, students are divided, he said. When he showed a news clip in class that included protests and a Chinese national flag thrown into a river, some students shouted “dirty cops” while mainland students sat silently.
Concerned that Beijing’s scrutiny of secondary schools might make him a target, Steve changed his Facebook profile name and picture. Click by click, he deleted posts in which he objected to police use of force against protesters and criticisms of China’s ruling party. He unfriended students.
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Beijing blames the school system for failing to inculcate Hong Kong’s youth with a sense of Chinese national identity. Some Chinese officials claim teachers are helping foment the protest movement.
“Some educators use their power and resources to spread the seeds of violence and hatred,” said Xu Luying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government’s office responsible for Hong Kong. Teachers who encourage students to boycott school or engage in protests “should be severely punished.”
Tin Fong-chak, the vice president of Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, said he “felt deeply wronged” and that Beijing’s comments about teachers “are only excuses” for poor governance of Hong Kong.
Pro-Beijing figures point to a liberal studies curriculum—akin to social studies in the U.S.—made mandatory by local officials a decade ago. Some of the subjects included in the curriculum would be off-limits in mainland Chinese schools, including civil disobedience. Teachers have leeway to choose study materials and often incorporate current events into lesson plans.
Many Hong Kong teachers say they may raise the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre as a routine part of the course work. Some said they are now less willing to incorporate discussions on current protests, fearing they could lose their jobs.
“The class encourages the teaching of half-truths,” said Regina Ip, a government adviser. “We need to be teaching our children China’s rich history. How can kids themselves identify as being part of China if they have no knowledge of the country?”
Educators fear a renewed attempt to push Chinese patriotic education, which promotes Communist Party ideology. Local officials tried to bring in such a course in 2012, only to shelve plans after 10 days of street protests led by teachers and students. Among the protesters in 2012 was a then-14-year-old Joshua Wong, now the international face of the city’s democracy movement. At that age, Mr. Wong said, teens aren’t likely to shoulder real economic burdens or think strategically about their personal careers. “The only idea in your mind is how to get a better future for your generation,” he said.
Adam, the 17-year-old student, says he has boycotted class a few times in September. He’s asked his teachers to allow him to form a concern group on campus, but was rejected.
On September 30, as students called for a citywide student boycott, his school held an assembly to raise the Chinese flag in celebration of the following day’s 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China.
Some classmates ran into the hall, singing their own protest anthem. He and a few others stood outside the campus, chanting protest slogans. Through a loudspeaker, he shouted up at the classrooms urging children to not be scared to come join the boycott.
After two hours of chanting, and refusing orders from a school administrator to go back to class, a group of police arrived at the sidewalk outside the school and told the group they were suspected of illegal assembly, Adam said. The officers searched the students’ pockets and bags, but left without taking any action, he said.
Adam and other teenage protesters say they are driven by a desire to install young lawmakers—many of whom were removed from office or prevented from running. On Wednesday, Adam boycotted his high school classes join protesters at a college campus.
“That’s all I want to see: someone in government who will listen to me and fight for me, not for some distant government far away in the north in Beijing,” he said. “Who else can we entrust our own futures to?”
—Chun Han Wong in Hong Kong contributed to this article.
Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com, Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com and Frances Yoon at frances.yoon@wsj.com
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