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The University should be for
China as well As for Hong Kong.
Why are
Chinese Studies
so unpopular?
to use Kwok Yu as a medium of instruction in schools might help to remove a difficulty which is now felt in certain cases where applications are made by headmasters for exemption from the obligation to pass in Chinese at the Matricu- tion Examination. In such cases the Chinese candidates, on whose behalf the applications are made, have been educated at first in schools in China and have come to schools in Hong Kong a year or so before they hope to appear at the Hong Kong University's Matriculation Examination, and one plea made to account for their inability to take Chinese at this examination is that they have been unable to follow the Chinese instruction given at their Hong Kong schools through the medium of Cantonese.
47. The considerations raised by such applications go beyond the question of the medium of instruction. It was the intention of the University's founders that it should attract students from China and such has always been the University's aspiration. The standard of English knowledge on which the University is con- strained to insist as a condition of matriculation was originally the stumbling block in the way of these students from China proper who wanted to be admitted into the University. A further stumbling block seemed to have been placed in the path of such students, when the Government of China abolished the teaching of classics in middle schools.
on the
48. We do not hold it to be our business to record any opinion questions which we have just raised. We mention them because the actual pro- vision made for the teaching of Chinese in the schools (not only in Hong Kong but also elsewhere) to which the University should look for students has an im- portant bearing on the question of the Chinese courses which the Faculty of Arts of the University is likely to be able to undertake with any real hope of success. Meanwhile we notice that the revised syllabus of examination in Chinese Language and Literature in accordance with which the Chinese Matriculation test will now be conducted does not make it obligatory for Chinese candidates to satisfy the examiner in any Chinese Classic.
a
49. As regards the Chinese medium through which the Chinese courses of the Faculty of Arts should be taught, Sir Reginald Johnston at
the 2nd December, 1931, meeting with His Excellency the Governor on a memorandum of which was supplied to the Committee, was clearly of It seems opinion that the medium of instruction in Chinese should be Kwok Yu. to us that if the Chinese courses of the University are to attract students who are not local, as it is very desirable that they should, it will be necessary to provide for such students instruction in the Chinese medium which they understand. would seem to be necessary that facilities should be made available for the teaching of Chinese in the Faculty of Arts through the medium of Kwok Yu as well as Cantonese.
VIII.
It
What provision for Chinese teaching should the Faculty of Arts provide?
50. Having decided that such Chinese teaching as the University may be in a position to undertake should be confined to the Faculty of Arts, the Com- mittee passed on to the consideration of the question of the sort of provision for Chinese teaching the Faculty should make. The general opinion was that the curriculum of the Faculty of Arts should include a group of studies designed to produce a type of graduate who would combine a knowledge of Chinese Literature and Chinese History with an effective capacity in the use of the English language and some knowledge of English literature. Some provision for post-graduate studies in Chinese was also held to be desirable. It was decided after careful con- sideration in consultation with the Professors in charge that it was impracticable to make any change in the existing groups without destroying the unity and balance of those groups.
51. The discussion which led up to these conclusions suggested two pertinent questions. It has already been explained that when the University was started Chinese was taught in the Faculty of Arts as a subject which could be studied through the four years curriculum of that Faculty and offered as one of the subjects for the B.A. degree. The Committee learns that from 1920 to 1926 Chinese did not appear anywhere in the curriculum of the Faculty of Arts except as a subject What is the explanation in the first and second years of the Teachers' courses. of this? This is the first question.
10
52. The second question which is allied to the first is why, when the University has provided since January 1927 courses and instruction in Chinese in the Faculty of Arts leading up to the B.A. degree, has no student of the Faculty of Arts ever during this period availed himself or herself of the extended facilities for studying Chinese beyond the intermediate stage. Figures have been quoted above to show that during 1931 in the Faculty of Arts only eleven students of the first year studied Chinese out of a total of thirty-three students of that year, and that of twenty-six students in the second year four only took Chinese as a subject. How is this general avoidance of Chinese by the students of the Faculty of Arts to be explained?
53. No satisfactory answer to the first question was forthcoming. The reduction of the Chinese course appeared to be due to a lack of interest on the part of students in a degree course in Chinese and to the fact that the finances of the University at the time were unable to bear the strain of maintaining a depart- ment which was apparently not meeting any real need. It must be remembered that the founders of the University had, by assuming the responsibility for carrying on and developing the work of the Hong Kong College of Medicine, practically made the maintenance of an efficient medical faculty a first charge on their very limited funds. Indeed, it was definitely the intention that the University should be opened with a Faculty of Medicine and a Faculty of Engineering only.
54. As regards the question how is the general avoidance of Chinese in recent years by students in the Faculty of Arts to be accounted for, one of the explanations offered is that as a knowledge of English is essential for a degree Chinese students found it to their advantage to concentrate on English and to avoid Chinese-the allegation being that even to Chinese students Chinese is a more difficult language than English and one the study of which demands more time and more effective application. Another view seems to be that the Chinese courses now prescribed by the Faculty of Arts, especially the courses laid down for the third and fourth years of the curriculum, are too exacting.
55. The Committee regards it as primarily essential that the articulation of the Groups of studies now offered by the Faculty of Arts in which provision is made for the teaching of Chinese should not be interfered with or affected in any way by the suggestions which follow, These suggestions involve as a recommendation of first importance that a new group of studies for Chinese and English (called, for convenience, Group 6) should be constituted on something like the following lines:-
First Year :
Group 6-Chinese and English.
English, Chinese Language and Literature, Translation and Com- parison, History or Logic.
Second Year: English, Chinese Language and Literature, Translation and Com-
parison, Chinese Philosophy.
Third Year: English, Chinese Language and Literature, Translation and Com-
parison, Chinese History, Ethics. Fourth Year English, Chinese Language and Literature, Translation and Com-
parison.
In the opinion of the Committee a new group of studies constituted on the lines above outlined should be regarded as the most necessary and urgent new provision in the matter of Chinese teaching which the Board of the Faculty of Arts should be called upon to consider.
A naw Group 0.
56. The Committee also suggests that, if funds permit, the University A new Group 7. authorities should consider the organization in the Faculty of Arts of another additional group of studies designed to aim at a more intensive study of Chinese than the suggested course above outlined as Group 6. This group, which we call for convenience, Group 7, might perhaps be constituted on something like the following lines:-
Group 7-Group of Chinese Studies.
First Year :
English, Chinese Philosophy, Chinese History, Chinese Language and Literature, Translation and Comparison,
Second Year English, Chinese Philosophy, Chinese History, Chinese Language
and Literature, Translation and Comparison.
Third Year Chinese Philosophy, Chinese History, Chinese Language and
Literature, Translation and Comparison, Ethics.
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