in which one set of gardeners is busily occupied in planting weeds which the other set of gardeners laboriously strive to pull out one by one. Seeing the impossibility of learning English and Chinese pari passu, the mass of Chinese parents now put their sons first for four years or more through local Grant-in-Aid Schools to read Chinese books before sending them to Victoria College to learn English and to keep up their Chinese attainments. But this only adds to the difficulties. The boys' tongues and ears are less pliable for English work and the great disparity of age among the scholars necessitates rapid promotion of individuals to the detriment of regular progress. The consequence is great unevenness in the attainments of every single class such as compels Masters in the highest classes either to neglect rapidly promoted individuals or to teach the A B C over again. It stands to reason that the system, and not the Headmaster is to blame, if the results of both the elementary English and the elementary Chinese teaching of the School are unsatisfactory, as indeed they are in all but exceptional cases. Under the present system the School produces but smatterers in Chinese and stammerers in English. I can only admire the pertinacity with which the Headmaster continues to work on, in the face of manifest failure and in the old traditional groove, towards a solution of this Anglo-Chinese problem which Bishop Smith in St. Paul's College and Dr. Legge in his Anglo-Chinese College long ago acknowledged themselves unable to solve. But the inherent difficulties of an Anglo-Chinese School naturally unable to produce good elementary English results have been terribly increased
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