1345
a mere
is not avowedly
form" Dr Eitel seems to think that the Head Master himself is a non-entity, so it is not surprising he has the same opinion of his deputy in Chinese School. Vide par 13 of last year's Report published this year.
"Anglo Chinese translations" introduced into hours already too short for Chinese Studies, not deserving of serious consideration is a suggestion.
"$29 a month" was the salary attached to these posts when I came, and I do not think it excessive for good and respectable markers.
Method.
I think the head of an English Grammar School would have some difficulty in recognising in the system of Victoria College much resemblance, still less "a slavish imitation" of the methods he is accustomed to.
Chinese boys aged 13 to 19 on admission cannot well be treated as "babies". Infant School Object Lessons would be quite out of place. Dr Eitel's suggestion to teach them to talk English before they learn a letter of the alphabet would simply result in their acquiring "Pidgin English", an abominable lingua which once acquired can never be displaced, to say nothing of the probable result that boys would leave and go elsewhere to worry.
The speed with which the studious boys pass through the Preparatory School is an absolute proof to the contrary.
It is somewhat absurd to talk of Chinese child nature as if we had a Chinese Infant School. A lanky boy at 10 is generally more of a man than an English boy at 16, and our boys range from 13 to 19.
Why has not Dr Eitel made the experiment proposed in this paragraph in the Anglo-Chinese Schools at Saiyingpun and Wantsai? If he would do so and in three or four years allow me to test the success of the experiment, I should be more inclined to try what appears to me a more wildly impracticable scheme.
In Minute II of my Letter No. 54, I have made some remarks on the curriculum in force and the reason for it.
"Universal History" appears to me highly objectionable. Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman Empires - what can be the good of cramming boys' heads with names which present enough difficulty to European boys? Here again Dr Eitel is inconsistent; he says Chinese cannot understand descriptions of English life, and yet he desires them to be taught Ancient History, the reality of which is not grasped by nine-tenths of European schoolboys learning the alphabet.
I have never seen signs of boys finding the learning of English letters and sounds a worry.
10 Books. Special books can at present only be prepared for the use of the College, if the master chooses to follow my own example and publish them.