HONGKONG.
REPORT OF THE EXAMINERS OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE.
Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of Ilis Excellency the Governor.
No.
50-21.3.03.
HONGKONG, 19th January, 1903.
SIR,-We have the honour to lay before you a report on the examination of the upper portion of Queen's College which we have recently conducted.
Before giving our remarks in detail on each of the subjects offered it would perhaps be well to make a few general observations.
The work shown up was on the whole satisfactory. The writing was good and the general neatness was highly to be commended. Some really excellent work was done by the boys at the top of IA. But there is often an enormous difference between the boys at the top and the boys at the bottom of any given form. The boy at the top of IA., for instance, out of a possible 1,700 marks gets 1,257, while the boy at the bottom obtains only 520.
The work offered by IB. appeared to us to be too advanced, few of the boys in this class were able to cope with the questions set them.
The answers presented to us shewed that the boys had been very carefully taught; but the great fault which we noticed in all the classes examined was a disinclination or disability on the part of the boys to think for themselves. Too great a reliance is placed on mere effort of memory. For instance, one of the ques- tions set for class IIA. in History was: "What do you know of Judge Jeffreys ?" A great many boys evidently imperfectly remembering what they had been taught, answered this by saying: "He was a ready tool." In fact much of the nonsense written by many of the boys is due to the fact that, instead of trying to think what the question means and attempting to write an answer in their own words, they strove by mere effort of memory to reproduce verbatim what had been taught them.
But when it is recollected that all the work is done in what is, to the Chinese boys, a foreign language, the results are very satisfactory; it is all the more to be lamented that boys who can do such work in English should, with one or two exceptions, be so ignorant of their own written language.
We now append our remarks on each subject.
Reading and Conversation.—The reading was good throughout the school. The examination in colloquial was unfortunately held before the written examination, and it is very difficult to judge of the boys' capacities. On the whole the boys ex- plained the phrases which came in the course of their reading and appeared to understand the questions which were put to them.
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Dictation.-In some forms this was very well done. In Class IIIC. 14 boys obtained full marks. Class IA. was not very satisfactory, and Class IB. collapsed entirely eight boys out of the eleven in this form failing to obtain any marks.
Grammar was very well done by all the school.
Composition.-Class IA. did not appear to understand the question set them. One or two boys, however, did good papers.
The composition for story read aloud to them. They then had to write down what they thought they bad heard. The results were fair.
Classes II. & III. & N 2 & N 3 consisted of a short
Geography. This was well done.
The map drawing of Class IIA., was very good indeed.
8 1903