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Petitions which accompanied Sir HENKY BLAKE's despatches No. 343 of the 3rd September and No. 380 of the 24th September last; and you have expressed your approval of the principle in your despatch No. 408 of the 6th December last. Whether the principle should be carried out to its logical conclusion and applied to a school like Queen's College which has for many years been a school of mixed races, is a question which receive the careful consideration of the Education Committee, whose arguments in paragraphs 36 to 39 and elsewhere appear to me, in spite of Dr. WRIGHT's remarks, to be sound. But as Mr. InvING left Hongkong on leave of absence a few days before Dr. WRIGHT's Memorandum was sent in to Government, and he has not yet had the opportunity of reading and considering it, I would suggest that before coming to any decision upon this part of the Committee's new educational scheme it might be advisable for you to coinmunicate the terms of Dr. WRIGHT's Memorandum to Mr. IRVING and ascertain whether its arguments are such as to induce him to reject or modify the conclusion which he and his colleagues arrived at after several months' mature deliberation.
4. Dr. WRIGHT's experience of educational matters in this Colony is so extensive and covers so large a portion of the history of the Colony that any opinions expressed by him on local educational problems are of considerable weight and must command respect. Apart from the principle, moreover, to which Dr. WRIGHT objects, it is conceivable that the new scheme may be produc- tive of serious injury to the prosperity and prestige of Queen's College, and for that reason I hesitate to recommend that Dr. WRIGHT's views should be set aside without careful examination. If all European boys, on the one hand, are with- drawn from Queen's College, and all the children of the richer and better c'ass Chinese, on the other hand, are eventually sent to a Chinese High School there may be grounds for apprehension that Queen's College may fall very materially in the estimation of the Chinese public and that the numbers of its pupils may diminish to a serious extent as a consequence. It seems clear to me, however, that the present system is an unsatisfactory one and should be altere. reason to believe that the statement made by Sir HENRY BLAKE in paragraph 4 of his despatch No. 343 of the 3rd September last, is in no way exaggerated, and that through no fault of the Headmaster or his staff-neither the English nor the Chinese boys of Queen's College are properly educated.
I have every
5. If the Committee's recommendations are adopted I do not anticipate that it will be found possible to reduce the staff of masters, unless the numbers of the pupils come to be very largely reduced. The Committee recommend (section 39A) that the duties of the staff should be so re-arranged as to enable every Division of every Class to receive instruction in English from an English master for not less than one and-a-half hours a day; and such a system will keep a large staff fully occupied. In connection with this subject I have to refer you 10 your despatch No. 416 of the 13th December last, and also to the attached copy of a letter which has just been received from the Headmaster, in which he points out the pressing necessity for filling the vacancies at present existing on the English staff.
6. The suggestion of the Committee at section 96 of their Report does not call for any action at present. I concur in their opinion, however, that the Education Department should not have more than one head, and that the Inspector of Schools, who is responsible for all the other Schools connected with Govern- ment, should, when occasion offers, be made responsible also for Queen's College.
7. I observe that Dr. WRIGHT states in paragraph 5 of his Memorandum that Sir HENRY BLAKE was "strangely misinformed" when he wrote that European Scholars are obliged to regulate their progress by that of their Chinese classmates, who are painfully endeavouring to assimilate Western education taught to them in a foreign language." Dr. WRIGHT affirms on the contrary that, as a matter of fact, in combined classes "Chinese are more rapidly qualified for promotion, and leave behind them in the lower class non-Chinese boys." I think that the Head- master must either have misunderstood Sir HENRY BLAKE's remark or must hold an opinion at variance with that held by other educational experts in the Colony. Unless it is to be taken as proved that the intellectual abilities of Chinese boys are decidedly superior to those of European boys, it must surely be the case that when the results of Western civilisation and experience are conveyed in the English language to a mixed class of Chinese and English boys, it is impossible for the