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continues, as before, to distinguish itself by combining with solid teaching in the ordinary Standards also the special subjects of physical geography, algebra and euclid, good results being exhibited in every Standard. St. Joseph's College has made a new move, in the year 1886, which is a move in the right direction. Whilst formerly teaching Portuguese and Chinese youths in separate classes, an arrangement has been made to confine this separate system to the lower Standards, and to move all Chinese scholars who have passed Standard III into the European Division where now Chinese and Portuguese youths are taught side by side. By this arrangement, the Chinese gain the advantage of association with Portuguese who are better speakers of English, and the Portuguese gain at the same time the stimulus arising from emulation. The consequence of this measure was also a considerable increase of numbers in the Chinese Division. At the annual examination, this Chinese Division did very well in all subjects, and in some classes the English reading was exceptionally good. As to the European Division of St. Joseph's College, there has been manifest progress in all directions. Quarterly examinations were introduced in 1886, in addition to the weekly examinations, and the organisation, method and discipline of this Division now leave little to be desired. The boys in Standard III were somewhat weak in grammar, and those of Standard V in composition (principally in consequence of the admixture of Chinese), but the composition in Standard VI was very good on the whole, and so also the arithmetic in all Standards. The cheerful spirit animating all the classes of the European Division is, side by side with the strict discipline of the whole School, a very noticeable feature of St. Joseph's College.
17. The needle-work examination was conducted in 1886 on the plan resorted to in 1885 and explained in my last Annual Report. The needle-work submitted for examination was done in my presence and then forwarded, together with a Schedule detailing the particulars of each child, to a Lady who chose her own Committee and adjudged the merits of each piece of work. This Committee reports having observed real progress made since the previous year. The Committee find that most teachers have been very successful, but that some seen hardly qualified for their position as needle- work teachers. In some cases the Committee were sorely puzzled, the needle-work done in the presence of the examiner being bad and dirty while the other portion of the work was good and clean. It is possible that this may be accounted for by assuming that the children were nervous in the presence of the examiner, but even that does not fully explain the very great difference noticed in some specimens of needle-work. The thanks of the Government are again due to the Lady and her Committee who conducted this needle-work examination with such painstaking minuteness and scrupu- lous impartiality.
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18. The educational movement of the Colony received a considerable stimulus in the year 1886 by the introduction of the system of the Cambridge Local Examinations and by the arrangements made for establishing a Medical School in connection with the Alice Memorial Hospital, admission to which may soon become a keenly contested prize, like the Scholarships of the Colony, if the students receive regular and progressive teaching. With the increase of stimulants tending to promote mental exertion, it behoves educationists also to keep an eye on the encroaches which stimulated mental exertion is, especially in this climate, liable to make upon health, and to discern at an early stage what children are and what children are not fitted for the severe and protracted exertion of the mind called forth by a multiplication of competitive examinations. In this Colony, where there is hardly any sphere for the industrial education of the children of European and Portuguese residents, the tendency which Mr. GLADSTONE has described as the fault of modern education, is specially strong, viz., to overcrowd the professions that depend upon the mind as distinguished from those dependent on the hand. There is serious risk in trying might and main to fit young people for the learned and clerical professions that they may be spoiled for handicraft only in order to discover too late that they have not the natural gifts indispensable to success in the more intellectual order.
19. I enclose the usual Tables, I to XVI, containing the Educational Statistics for the year 1886.
I have the honour to be,
The Honourable F. STEWART, LL.D.,
Colonial Secretary.
Sir,
Your most obedient Servant.
E. J. EITEL. A.M., PH.D.,
Inspector of Schools.