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continue to teach its pupils Chinese will also have to initiate them into English. So far at least as boys who are going to be apprentices in the Engineering and Ship- building Industry is concerned the curriculum will not be difficult to suggest. As regards the Department of Further and Technical Education for Workers, the arrange- ment for the teaching of apprentices in the dockyards which will be part of the work of this department of the Technical School will not be difficult to formulate in outline. But we do not propose that the Technical School should be confined to the Engineer- ing and Shipbuilding Industry. We therefore postpone the elaboration of the School's work until we have discussed another Industry which has been brought prominently to our notice. We refer to the Building Industry, the needs of which we now proceed to investigate..
Building
85. The Building Trade is probably the largest individual trade in the Colony. The We believe that at the moment there is something like $2,000.000 worth of building Industry. going on. Colonel M.. H. Logan, D.S.O. of Messrs. Palmer Turner & Co., whom we Colonel have already quoted, has put in a strong indictment of the standard of building
Logan's work Indictment. in this Colony which he contrasts most unfavourably with that which obtains in Shanghai. "I wish" he wrote to our Chairman from Shanghai, "That you could in- fluence the Government and the general body of business men (in Hong Kong) to send a commission up here to see how industry and building methods have progress- ed." Colonel Logan further contends that the work of the contractors is bad largely because the general level of labourers' and coolies' work is low and because the experienced foreman does not exist. In Colonel Logan's opinion there should be in Hong Kong a technical school which should aim at turning out, for the building trade, intelligent and trained men who could rise to the position of foremen. We have already referred to the Building Construction. Class which is being conducted by the Technical Institute. Those who attend this. Class are, we were told, in the main the daytime employees of architects and contractors.
MacKichan's
86. It has been ascertained from Mr. MacKichan of Messrs. Leigh & Orange, Mr. that those who are destined to become workers in the building industry as carpenters, statement blacksmiths, fitters, founders, plumbers, cementers, etc., usually go to a vernacular primary school and then after an interval they become apprentices for three years after which, without satisfying any test, they can join the various guilds and work at their trades. Mr. MacKichan thinks that it is necessary that something should be done to improve the general standard of capacity and intelligence of the workers and he admits that the standard of work is deteriorating. He is, however, very anxious that the attempt now contemplated to make the workers in the building industry more effective by means of instruction should not tend to distract boys from their hereditary avocations into clerical and other "white collar" lines of employment. He was at first more inclined to limit any attempt to improve the capacity of the young workers by education to attendance at evening classes during apprenticeship. When asked what he contemplated teaching carpenters in evening classes he suggested: -
(a) the reason for, and the use of, tools;
(b) joints and finishing;
(c) the uses of the various kinds of timber and how to prevent the deteriora-
tion of timber.
As regards blacksmiths, fitters, founders and plumbers, Mr. MacKichan thought their curriculum in evening classes should be much the same as that designed for engineering apprentices. Mr. MacKichan regards it as very necessary, that the carpenter apprentices, and indeed all apprentices, should learn some English, also how to calculate. with specific reference to figuring out dimensions, quantities etc. Confronted by the problem, how the apprentices of the building trade were, in their present educational condition, to study in evening classes the principles of their various crafts and at the same time acquire some facility in English expression (it must be assumed that when the apprentice starts his apprenticeship he will know no English and indeed be practically illiterate and it must be remembered that his ap- prenticeship covers a course of 3 years only), Mr. MacKichan admitted the need of some special school which the building apprentice that is-to-be could attend for two or three years before entering his apprenticeship and in which he could study some simple English and arithmetic. Mr. MacKichan thought that the establishment of such