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consider that the education of the European children suffers very much from the fact that Europeans and Asiatics are mixed, and the European child has to be educated side by side in the same class with large numbers of Asiatics.
As regards the acquirement of knowledge, this mixture of races operates very injuriously upon the European. The Chinese come to these schools to learn English, not to acquire general knowledge.
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We do not wish to call in question the wisdom of the Chinese in this matter; but we would point out that in a school in which the majority of boys are Chinese, who come to learn English and not for the sake of acquiring knowledge, the European boy, who comes to acquire knowledge and not to learn English, must be at a very serious disadvantage.
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The methods of education, moreover, have to be adapted to the ins- truction of the Chinese, and many an English boy is of necessity kept back, whilst instruction is laboriously imparted to those who have a very inferior knowledge of the medium of instruction."
These extracts are from the Petition headed by His Lordship, given in
Appendix A of the Report. (Section 2.)
In the Report above quoted His Lordship is regarding the question from the English boy's standpoint. Regarding it from the Chinese boy's standpoint, he subscribes to Section 21 B of the Report: "Western Knowledge........should be taught in Chinese."
If however the instruction is in Chinese, it is unintelligible to non-Chinese scholars. Thus it seems plain from His Lordship's own statements that a course of study suited to non-Chinese does not suit Chinese, and vice versâ ; and that therefore an education attempting vainly to combine mutually in incompatible courses of instruction is not a "proper education" for State Aid.
4.—“It is with curious inconsistency that this same proposal is not made to apply to the Government Belilios Girls' School."
There is no inconsistency, and the suggestion that a Government School has been favoured as opposed to Grant Schools is hardly fair. The Committee believe that Female Education is not yet ripe for the proposed reforms. The benefit of this opinion is given equally to the Grant Schools, such as the Italian Convent or the Diocesan Schools for Girls.
5. “The proposal that it should be compulsory, etc.”
The proposal is on the contrary, that it shall be compulsory to schools desiring to earn a more than doubled Grant. Those content to go on in the present unsatisfactory way will remain practically unaltered until their places can be filled by the English Classes of the Vernacular Schools. (See Section 49.)
6-"I would further lay very great stress, etc."
His Lordship though invited to do so did not give us any suggestion as to how he proposed to overcome the obvious practical difficulties in the way of establishing a satisfactory Training College. (See Section 94 of the Report.)
Apart from that, His Lordship does not appear to have mastered the details of the scheme proposed.
7.—“ Some of these experiments have been tried before.”
We are not aware to what experiments His Lordship alludes unless it can be to the proposal that admission to Anglo-Chinese Schools shall depend upon passing an entrance examination. But this principle was approved by him in Part II Section 21 C.