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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
with a view of promoting a more general knowledge of English amongst the Chinese the Government proposed in future to sub- sidise only those schools in which special attention is paid to the teaching of the English language and modern subjects. His Excellency remarked that it had often struck him as extraordinary-not to say discreditable-that, after fifty-five years of British rule, the vast majority of Chinese in Hongkong should remain so little Anglicised; he had thus been led to enquire more thoroughly than he had hitherto done into the system of education adopted in the local schools, and he was of opinion that too much attention has hitherto been paid to purely Chinese subjects. The new policy announced, His Excellency said, he hoped would tend to educate the rising generation of Chinese to more enlightened views and
[December 4, 1895. colony are Chinese, whose daily necessities do not absolutely require a knowledge "of English." It would seem therefore that in
the interests alike of those children whose education may ultimately to embrace English and be intended of those whose education cannot be car- ried beyond what is absolutely required for their daily necessities the elementary verna- cular schools should be allowed to parti cipate in the benefits of the grant-in-aid sys- tem. Last year the enrolment of scholars in the various schools of the colony amounted to 10,750 and as many as 5,964 of this num ber attended nineteen religious grant-in-aid® schools offering a purely Chinese education. To compel these schools to teach English would probably more than double their expenses and would, it is to be feared, lower their general efficiency, as, hav children remain at school, the English teaching could not be carried to a point at which it would be of any practical utility, and the time spent upon it would be lost to other subjects. The idea of making every child in the colony learn to speak. English is very nice in the abstract, but it cannot be carried into effect. If His Excellency wishes to look abroad for a model for the educational system of the colony he should look to India rather than to colonies where the English language is universally spoken. We do not wish to be understood as discouraging English educa- tion within practicable limits; on the contrary, we would encourage it by very liberal grants; but it would be unfair and impolitic to deprive the purely vernacular schools of all aid or to impose impossible conditions upon
a short time cannot be expected to provide themselves with passes. Clerks and others, moreover, have an objection to being com- pelled to carry a light when going home from their places of business. The effect of the present crusade of the police is that shops which were formerly kept open until nine or ten o'clock at night are now closed before eight. Such an interference with the trade of the colony is, we submit, alto- gether undesirable. The production of a night pass should be required only from persons abroad after ordinary business hours and when it may fairly be assumed that all respectable persons except those having special reasons to the contrary will be in- doors. Ten o'clock, we should say, is the earliest hour at which the production of a pass should be required, and probably eleven o'clock would be early enough. It would be more reasonable to prevent crime by an in-ideas, and to dispel the ignorance and blinding regard to the average period the crease of the Police Force than to enforce the suspension of business in the colony at seven o'clock. The recent alleged armed robbery, on the genuineness of which some doubt has been thrown, is said to have taken place between nine and ten o'clock at night, but very daring robberies have also taken place in broad daylight. There will always be a certain amount of crime in the colony, and it would be absurd to regulate the hour of closing business by the particular hour at which the most recent crime happens to have been committed. If such an absurd rule as that were adopted the colony might as well put the shutters up altogether, for crimes are committed at all hours both of the day and night. The police, we submit, should be able to preserve order up to the usual hour at which the shops close without such drastic measures as those now in force, but after eleven o'clock the regulation requiring a light and pass to be carried, if permanently enforced, would be very useful to prevent burglars prowling about.
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superstition which have proved and still are proving such a stumbling-block to the pro- motion of their moral and physical well being. These are fine sounding phrases, and are not without a certain amount of sense, but the policy announced by His Ex- cellency is too extreme for practical applica- tion. That it is most desirable to encourage the sturly of the English language by Chinese no one will be found to dispute, but to exclude purely vernacular schools from the benefits of the grant-in-aid scheme would be inequitable and undesirable. His Excellency would no doubt like to see the population of Hongkong a purely English speaking one, as in the West Indian colonies, and as a matter of sentiment that would be rather an alluring object to strive for; but it must not be forgotten that this island is merely a chip off the vast Empire | them. of China and that the bulk of the population is Chinese, having their homes in China, and residing here, like the Europeans, merely as birds of passage. Under such circumstances Chinese must necessarily re- main the common language of the great mass of the population, and it is essential to the welfare of the Chinese children in the colony that they should receive an educa- In the report of the Inspector of Schoolstion in their own language. If they for last year the following passage occurs:- can in addition be taught the Eng- "At the suggestion of the Honourable Dr.lish langjiage so much the better, and Ho KAI, the Board of Examiners passed, if the Government proposed simply to "in June 1894, a stricture on the system of teaching English in local Schools for Chi- nese, which is virtually a repetition of the complaints which I repeatedly made dur- "ing the last few years. I regret to have failed to convince Her Majesty's Govern- "ment of the reality and serious nature of "the defect referred to, which is painfully "in evidence by the fact that the promotion "of the use of the English language in the "Chinese commercial and social life of this 'colony makes no progress because it is not materially aided by local schools. What "I refer to, is a resolution of the Board of "Examiners which has been brought by the "local Government to the notice of the "schools concerned in the following words:
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"L
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THE GRANT IN AID SCHEME AND ENGLISH EDUCATION.
-Resolved, that it is desirable to solicit "the attention of the Government to the "fact elicited by the examination lately held "with reference to vacancies under the Gov. ernment of Perak, as well as by previous examinations, viz., that in the education "of Chinese youths insufficient attention "seems to be bestowed in Hongkong on English colloquial, the Chinese candidates "examined by the Board being generally "unable to speak English idiomatically.'
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The Governor has evidently given serious attention to this recommendation, for.in his speech at the opening of the legislative session His Excellency announced that
encourage English teaching by giving an extra grant for it the policy would be a sound one. But there are many children who can remain at school for a short period only, on account of the poverty of their parents, and who have no time for acquiring another language than their native tongue. Dr. EITEL, while he has in previous reports drawn attention to the defective teaching of English, has also insisted upon the necessity of grounding every child in its own language before launching it ou the study of another. In his report for 1887 he says that "the well-to-do classes of the Chinese community are now from year to year becoming more alive to the advant- ages of an English education (based on "three or four years previous study of the "Chinese classics) and the existing educa- "tional machinery is quite capable of any 'modifications that may be required in order to keep pace with the gradually increasing demand for a higher and broader standard "of school teaching." And in his report for 1888 he speaks of enabling every child "first to learn to express thought and feel- ing correctly in the vernacular tongue "before attempting to acquire a foreign language as an educational need" and sound pedagogical principle." In the same report Dr. EITEL also remarks that “the vast majority of the residents of the
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THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE DRAINS.
A correspondent in the China Mail, sign- ing himself " Physician," ascribes the fever so prevalent this year to the drainage sys- tem. More weight would have attached to this expression of opinion had the writer given his own name. Far be it from us to decry anonymity in the discussion of public ques- tions; on the contrary, in dealing with matters of argument and opinion on known and recognised facts it is conducive to im- partial judgment that the views of those taking part in the discussion should be pre- seuted simply for what they are worth on their merits without any extrinsic import- ance or otherwise they might derive from the disclosure of the identity of the writer. On purely technical and professional ques- tions, however, questions on which the average layman is not supposed to be able to form an opinion for himself, we must necessarily be guided by authority, and in that case anonymous correspondence is to be severely deprecated. What a professional man afraid to say over his own name on matters relating to his profession he ought not to say at all. Furthermore, it is open to lan anonymous writer to adopt any nom de plume he likes, if he can get his letter published on such terms, and doubt might be entertained in the case of a person using a professional title as to whether he was entitled to do so. We do not for a moment suppose, however, that our contemporary would open his columns to a correspondent making use of a fraudulent designation, and we are therefore compelled to accept "Physician's" letter as the deliverance of one of our local doctors, though not without difficulty, for it seems well high inconceivable that a medical man should gravely pronounce the prevalent
is