V
No.2
al. Capur $6.144/1904)
310
of the scheme of Government Scholarships adopted during the administration of Sir George Bowen and abandoned in 1893.
It is important for the Colony that English boys should learn Chinese, and that Chinese should learn English, but the result of the present system of mixed teaching is that English boys leave the Government School half instructed and Chinese boys leave knowing neither their own language nor English. The report of the last examination held at the Queen's College, which I attach, shows this clearly.
I have spoken on this subject many times with the Bishop of Victoria, who has had a long experience of educational matters in China, and I agree with him that English should be taught to the Chinese students as a special subject, that they should have some knowledge of the characters of their own language before they enter upon the study of English, and that their instruction in the ordinary Western School curriculum should be imparted in the Chinese language. There are, I understand, an ample supply of suitable books for the purpose translated into the Chinese language.
In the same way, Chinese—at least Colloquial Chinese—could be taught as a subject to English boys, for whom it would be necessary if the sphere of their future labours were to be in the Far East.
It must be remembered that the children for whose education the establishment of a European School is desired are the children of respectable parents who cannot afford to send them home and who, in many cases, are driven by the present system to the abandonment of their education as...