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Committee of Management will take into con- sideration the various questions of organization which present themselves, such as the amount of the fees to be charged to students, the numbers and salaries of the Professorial Staff to be engaged, and of local lecturers, the extent to which residence in the University shall be enforced, and the charges for food, washing, &o. Until the scheme is fully inaugurated, however, it is premature to discuss these. The only decisions at present therefore are that the two faculties which shall first be established are Medicine and Applied Science-and that the University shall be open to all races and creeds.
As regards the claims of the Faculty of Medi- oine I may quote the following passage from the draft appeal of the College of Medicine :-
It is an admitted fact that the ignorance of the Chinese population in reference to sanitation has had much to do with the tremendous com- mercial losses sustained since plague became endemic in Honkong. To dispel that ignor ance there can be no more potent agency than to spread broadcast among the Chinese com- munity men of their own race, carefully trained in Western medicine and Wastern sanitary science, to go from house to house inculcating the principles they have been taught, and leavening the masses of the people with con- fidence in these principles. And this College has done. is doing, will do, in this respect, what can be done in no other way and by no other agency.
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[January 18, 1909.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
only be found most difficult if not impossible to "I have heard, too, that Chinese parents find express Western technical terms and instruction by experience that their sons often return from in it, but also it would not serve as a medium for a course of study in a foreign country with re- Chinese from different parts of China. Stud-volutionary ideas and become a danger to the ents from different provinces would require State. It should be the special care of the separate interpreters. In order, however that Hongkong University to see that no such Chinese students may benefit to the fullest pernicions doctrines are encouraged or tolerated extent, I have said that, in my opinion, a small here. staff of assistant teachers should be engaged to, explain lectures and enable the Chinese to obtain an explanation of any matter they did not fully understand.'
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The advantages both to China, to the British Empire, and to this Colony of establishing a University are thus summed up by Dr. Ho Kai, c.M.G., Senior Unofficial Member of the Hong fall qualifications both kong Legislative ouncil, who himself holds in Law and in Medicine:---
"There remains Japan. Education there is not so expensive as in Europe and America, but I learn that the Chinese Government has ceased to send pupils to that country. The experience of the past has shown that students from Japan are to contract revolutionary ideas, and I believe that there is also a feeling. among Chinese that the Japanese are but recent pupils of Western knowledge them- selves, and that it is better to learn from the fountain head.
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Moreover, a pupil in Japan would hardly re- "(1) European youths in this Colony and the tion close at hand affording them professional language as he would in an English University numerous ports of China will have an institu:ceive, such facilities for acquiring the English and technical edcuation equal to that given by and I hold it to be essential to the granting of a where the medium of instruction is English, similar establishments at home, thus saving Western degree, that the holder should have a tion from their parents and families; Chinese thorough grasp of the language in which the them much expense, trouble, and long separa- boys here and from all parts of the thinese literature of that knowledge is written, and be Empire derive similar benefits, only perhaps able to read the original authors for himself. nationalities profit in the same manner. in a greater degree; and young men of all other stitutions in China itself based on Western turn to the other point-the growth of in- models. We have heard recently of a Training College for candidates for the Imperial Mari time Customs in Peking, and incidentally I am glad to note that it is stated that half the suc- cessful candidates at the first part of the en- trance examination were from Hongkong. Here the medium of instruction is to be English, the course to be for four years, the subjects Finance, Foreign Languages and Composition, Mathe- matics, Geography, International Law and Treaties. It is probable that we may obtain many useful suggestions for our University, when the time comes to open its doors to students, from the experience of this admirable institution.
(2) The prestige and influence of Great Bri- tain will thereby be enormously increased and extended in China, and indeed throughout the Far East.
(3) The commerce, industry, wealth and prosperity of this Colony will be promoted by the large number of men of substance and in- fluence bringing their sons and relatives hither to be educated, and by the presence of a con- siderable number of persons having a useful knowledge of modern arts and science."
As a matter of fact, most of the licentiates already qualified settled in the Colony itself. All the dispensaries established by the Chinese themselves in various parts of Victoria, in Yaumati, Hunghom and old Kowloon City, for the express purpose of assisting the Government to enforce its sanitary laws, are manned by licentiates of this. College. Other licentiates are in direct Government service in the New Territory and on the Railway works; some are resident surgeons in the hospitals for the Chinese; and several are practising their pro- fession privately among their own people in various parts of the Colony, and in this capacity No one will, I think, be found to deny the gaining access to the homes and the confidence statement that the Empire of China has of the Chinese, rich and poor alike. These men awakened to the necessity of acquiring Western are exerting a wide, and a widening, influence knowledge, and I think that it will be no less towards the breaking down of Chinese pre-readily admitted-looking to the close proximity judices and Chinese obstruction to that better sanitation in which it is recognised on all hands, lie a happier future and a yet greater commercial prosperity for this Colony.
Medicine takes the first place since human life comes before commercial profit, and because the existing Medical College in Hongkong forms the nucleus of the scheme. The second faculty is that of Applied Science, and it needs no demonstration to show how greatly China stands in need of engineers, surveyors, electricians, etc., for the railways, and the mechanical works which are now being inaugurated.
In putting forward the scheme I have emphasised my view that the University should be under the management of a Senate of its own, and should rely upon its own funds. The Hongkong Government, if the Secretary of State concurs, is willing to give a fully adequate and very valuable site, but it can accept no financial responsibility for the success of the project. The continuance, for some years at least, of the grants at present given to the Medical ollege and Technical Institute (aggre- gating $15,800) may be hoped for, "but the rights of the Legislative Council in voting the Annual Estimates, and of the Secretary of State must be maintained unimpaired."
Discussing the question of the necessity of employing English as the vehicle of instruction I observed:-
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My own view both as to the advantages of the scheme, and the objects which should be kept in view were explained in the following passages of a speech to the General Committee:
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of Hongkong to China and to the fact that the large majority of the population of this Colony are Chinese, and to the traditional relations which have existed between the British and hinese that there is no community which can more efficiently assist in promoting the acquisition of that knowledge than ourselves.
"The proof of hina's desire for Western knowledge is found in the increasing number of young mer who leave their homes to study in Europe, America, and Japan, and in the increasing number of institutions based on Western models which are springing up in China itself. On each of these two phenomena I have a word to say
"I have already said that the cost involved by a parent in sending his son to Europe or America amonnts to £200 or £300 per annum, in addition to passages. Many are therefore de- barred from going.
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But the question of cost is not the only one. A Chinese gentleman, who had received his education in England, recently told me that in response to many inquirers he had always insisted that it was useless to send a boy abroad for a less period than 10 years. A hinese parent has therefore to reckon with the fact that he will not see his son again until he has changed out of all recognition, and in so long a residence in a foreign country it is inevitable that he should become greatly denationalised. The same "It is not, in my view, to establish a Univer-gentleman told me that it was the common sity on lines which might equally well be adopted in Canton, where students could be taught in Chinese and be entirely disassociated from British influences: On the contrary we desire to promote a closer understanding of the two races, and this can best be done by the acquisition of the English language. We believe that the language is the best medium for impart ing Western knowledge, and that by acquiring a fluency in it students will best fit themselves for success in after life whether they adopt a profession or become officials in the service of their country at the apitals or abroad. Nor must it be forgotten in this connection that if Chinese were adopted as a medium, it would not
experience to find these young men on return to China despising their country and their paren- tage-a hybrid European with a foreign manners badly laid on a Chinese frame- veneer of work.
Surely it needs no demonstration that a University in Hongkong where Chinese youths maintaining a Chinese mode of life, and brought up in a Chinese environment, whence they can, during vacation, proceed to their own homes, or where they can be visited by their parents, and so keep touch and retain their family affections, and their patriotism-will appeal to Chinese parents even if the cost be no less than education in Europe?
"I see, too, that it is announced in the papers that an Imperial University is to be established in Peking. There is also the French Medical College at Chengtu which issues degrees and was intended to develop in a University; there is the admirable Anglo-Chinese College at Amoy; the 'ollege at Tientsin, and nearer home, the Ta Hsueh Tang at Canton, which boasts of Japanese professors. The Hongkong University will not be in opposition to or a rival of these Chinese Colleges, but will co-operate with them, especially with the College at Can- ton in the endeavour to provide increased facilities for Higher Education.
"From all these I hope to obtain data to guide us in our decisions as to the scope, the fees to be charged, the general management and all other matters in which their experience may be of value to us, and from some of them no doubt will come English-speaking candidates through our Ambassador at Tokyo and the Minister for Education in Japan some useful information regarding Higher Education in that country together with copies of the Imperial University Calendar, the Higher ommercial School alendar, the Technological School Calendar, and the report of the Education Department. I have also received from the Bishop useful books referring to the Liverpool University. All these I will lay before the Managing Committee.
rapid development, may it not be assumed that "But it may be asked, looking to this already
hina will provide her own Universities if she needs them, and may we not therefore find the Hongkong University superfluous? The reply. with a population of four hundred millions, to that question is I think that for a country there can be no fear that any University will find a lack of students. There are moreover Colonies to be provided for. I saw it stated the populations of our own and neighbouring
recently in the local Press that 58 Chinese youths, sons of rich merchants at the Straits, were passing through Hongkong on their way to Nanking to study Chinese and Western knowledge, after which some of them would proceed to England. For students such as these our University might prove a great boon. By the time China has provided Universities ours will have attained too assured a position to fear any rivals. Merchants do not fear that the dockyards in which they have embarked their
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