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It was considered advisable to hold the Inspection at Midsummer instead of at Christmas as in former years, in order to interfere as little as possible with the Christmas examination for promotions and prizes.
THE ARRANGEMENT OF CLASSES.
The school is divided into Classes, numbered from I to VIII, of which the first three constitute the Upper, and the rest the Lower School. Each Class is divided into two, three, or four Divisions, distinguished by letters A, B, C, D. The Divisions of a Class do the same work; but they are otherwise quite independent, each under its own master.
Promotions take place twice a year as a rule in the Lower School, and once a year in the Upper School. The top boys go from Division A of one Class into Division A of the next. The number of scholars in a Division varies between 20 and 60, reckoning by the average attendance.
The great majority of the boys are Chinese, but there are also a number of Portuguese, Indians and Eurasians, with a very few English. The Headmaster has, since the last inspection, given up the two special Classes in the Upper School for non-Chinese. The Headmaster does not identify himself with any Class or Division, but exercises supervision over all.
RESULTS ATTAINED IN THE VARIOUS SUBJECTS.
The inspection (which lasted about a fortnight) included the examination of individual boys, the inspection of note books, and a study of the methods employed by the masters. Below are given the conclusions we have drawn, arranged under the different subjects.
Colloquial English. In order to be able to make a more thorough investigation of the results obtained in this subject, we confined ourselves for the most part to an examination of a selection of 5 boys in each Division, so chosen as fairly to represent it. In Class VIII, representing 6 months to a year's work, a fair beginning seemed to have been made; and the boys understood a number of sentences relating to their work, such as "Put away books," "Clean your slates." The master gave such orders in English, though he made the mistake of translating them into Chinese immediately afterwards. We did not find any attempt made to teach the boys to do the talk- ing till much higher Classes were reached. We regret that the colloquial acquired in Classes VII, VI, V and IV by boys who have presumably been studying from 2 to 5 years by no means shewed a sufficiently rapid improvement. In fact only in IV A under a European master did the boy's begin to talk a little. All we could get was a Chinese version of English sentences spoken to them by us.
To give examples of very general faults, in Class VI A., the master was still giving the orders "Put away your slates" and "Stand up" in Chinese, in VB none of 4 boys asked knew the names of the four seasons.
In the Upper School we took the boys out on the verandah and asked them to describe what they saw in the streets and shops before them. Except in Classes I and II there was little attempt at conversing. We noticed that boys in a Class taught by an English master were much more willing to make an attempt than those in a Class under the direction of a Chinese master.
In the Lower School there was a general unwillingness to attempt to say anything. No doubt this was partly due to nervousness. Colloquial is a difficult subject to teach; but when every lesson can be made a lesson in colloquial, we cannot help thinking that much of the inability to speak or understand English is due to the fact that the Chinese masters employ Chinese and not English, when giving directions connected with the ordinary routine work. We have no wish to question the zeal of the Chinese masters; they appeared to be carrying out to the best of their ability a very difficult task, but in the Lower School, Chinese as a medium of communication between master and boy was, as we have said, far too
common.
What is sometimes called the New Method, the Gouin, and other related systems, are now almost universally employed in France and Germany and very generally in England, but are apparently unknown or not approved of at the Col- lege, as means of teaching colloquial English.