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Chinese are great travellers, and among the male population are many seamen and firemen on ships, and many returned emigrants from America and other countries, whose wide experience acts as a continual solvent on the narrow ignorance of their fellow countrymen. Education of any kind has always appealed powerfully to Chinese, and they are probably more ready than any other people to defer to the voice of learning. In every village appeal is made to the lettered man to settle points of dispute, and he receives the place of honour in all local gatherings. It must be admitted that this respect was formerly due not only to his intrinsic merits and his superior knowledge, but to the advantages that he possessed in - being able to write and thus to draw up petitions in proper form and present the cases of litigants to the courts. With the coming of British rule these advantages have largely disappeared, except that it is still usual for a litigant or other petitioner to submit his petition in due form."
J
101. But the demand for education, mostly on the old fashioned lines, has been rather stimulated than otherwise, and there is practically no family which cannot obtain elementary education for the sons of the family, at a cost of from $3 to $6 per annum for each boy. Government schools on a small scale have been opened at centres in the New Territories providing an elementary instruction in English; the fee for these is 50 cents per month. There is not however a great demand for this instruction of a more modern type in most of the districts, for the people still cling to the old-fashioned learning and particularly dislike giving up their control over the teacher. In the ordinary Chinese school if the teacher does not gain the approval of the parents, his wages are curtailed or he is dismissed; and the hours and the curriculum are in their discretion. Those too who cannot pay their full fees, may make small gifts of food instead. In fact they feel the same objection to this as to other Government institutions that it is too rigid and this dislike is sufficient to counteract the desire to acquire a knowledge of English. The number of Government Schools in the New Territories outside New Kowloon is only three with an average attendance of some 20 each out of a total of 224 schools in the Territories with an average attendance of 16 each. (Appendix G.) According to the Census of 1911, out of 37,331 male inhabitants questioned, 21,168 or about 57 per cent. stated that they characters", ie., could read and write the simple characters. Girls are seldom taught such accomplishments and at the same census out of 33,890 females questioned, only 466 or some 1 per cent. were entered as thus equipped.
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102. There is no need to fear for the educational future of the New Territories, and it can safely be predicted that as money comes into the country and new ideas spread, there will be an increased demand for learning both ancient and modern. The railway will bring European residents with their customs and institutions into the New Territory, and the Territory into closer contact with Hongkong and Western ideas. The only fear is that this intercourse may spread that veneer of Western civilisation which is such an unhappy feature of the half-educated Chinese in Hongkong. For it is a sad fact that natives of all countries colonised from the West, when introduced to the luxuries and excitements of our modern competitive life, have been apt to lose their simple old-fashioned virtues, and fall easy victims to the novel temptations besetting them. Hitherto it has been the policy of the Government in the New Territories to restrain the popular weakness for gambling, which was admitted by the better conscience of the people to be a serious obstacle to their peace and prosperity: but to abstain scrupulously from radical innovations, or from interference with local customs and institutions. In them our superior knowledge may find much that is absurd or even degraded, but their improvement will not spring from legislation or coercion, but only from the growing enlightenment of the people."
9th June, 1912.
G. N. ORME,
District Officer.