127
No.-90
5
99
HONGKONG.
REPORT ON QUEEN'S COLLEGE BY THE EXAMINERS APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNMENT FOR 1899.
Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor.
HONGKONG, 3rd February, 1899.
SIR, I have the honour to transmit the report of the Examiners on Queen's College for 1898. The Governing Body suggest that it be printed along with the Head Master's report.
I have the honour to be,
The Honourable
THE ACTING COLONIAL SECRETARY,
&c.,
fc.,
fc.
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
A. M. THOMSON,
Hon. Secretary,
CANTON, January 27th, 1899.
GENTLEMEN,We have the honour of laying before you the following report of the Annual Exa- mination of the Upper Part of the College, which we have, by order of the Government, lately conducted.
The
We carefully set papers in accordance with the schedule of work that was given us beforehand, taking care that none of the questions were above the standard indicated by the schedule. The work as a whole was fairly satisfactory; the teaching was obviously very careful-so much so that, in many cases, the boys seemed to consider anything in the shape of independent thought unnecessary. large proportion of failures in some of the forms is not to be ascribed altogether to idleness or stupidity; careful work of some ability was shewn by many boys, who were, however, clearly beyond their depth. We understand that the cause, this year as last, is the rapid promotion necessitated by the influx of large numbers of boys at the bottom of the School; with the result that boys are required to do senior work, before they have acquired a sound elementary grounding. The dangers of this system are su obvious that we would suggest some change: for instance, that the promotions in case of need should be made merely nominal, for the sake of getting a more convenient division of the numbers of the boys. We venture to think that, though this system may seem to imply a lowering of the standard of the higher forms, the final results would shew an improvement. To make a boy do work that he cannot fully understand, if it does not result in mere confusion, furthers the tendency to an absolute reliance on memory-the besetting fault of the Chinese boy, as instanced in this Examination: the adoption of any system that would foster independence of thought would have the best results. This criticism is prompted by a general review of all the papers, but more especially by a comparison of the General Intelligence papers with the rest of the work offered. The style of answer in the General Intelligence was a pleasant surprise: the boys could not trust to memory, and consequently there were few or no instances of the catch phrases that ruined so many of the answers in the other papers.
The English of the Chinese boys was on the whole satisfactory. Some of the questions were misunderstood, and some of the answers were unintelligible but with a few exceptions, and in spite of an entire lack of style, the boys managed to make their meaning clear. A common fault in the whole School was a want of concentration; at times there would be pages of manuscript bearing no relation to the questions of the paper. This is the more to be regretted, as it appeared more often in the case of the better boys: many wasted so much time in giving irrelevant (though correct) information, that they were forced to leave unattempted questions which were probably within their scope- fault which resulted in a heavy loss of marks.
The writing and general neatness, especially of the Chinese boys, was very good, in spite of the fact that, in some cases, boys who could write let themselves be hurried into untidiness and carelessness, A little more care might have been devoted to formulating and tabulating the answers.