the same of the local - system of education.
Powers and prejudices kept all Chinese girls in town out of our schools. We succeeded, by means of the Grant-in-Aid system, and without a compulsory attendance law, in overcoming all obstacles and in bringing the girls largely under our influence. We believe we shall equally succeed, in time, in drawing the boat girls within the meshes of the education net, without branding them with the mark of pauperism by opening a floating or other school for their separate instruction. Boat girls will in time come to feel a pride in being admitted, as is the rule in all Grant-in-Aid schools, on terms of perfect equality with the resident girls in the schools.
As soon as they can be got to go to school at all, and an ordinary school, which subserves the existing movement of absorbing the boat people in the mass of the Chinese community will, in my opinion, have far more chance of doing sound educational work than any separate floating school for boat children only.
(signed) E. J. Eitel.
22nd March, 1873.