a
25-
26.
27.
28.
29.
very much accustomed to hard work and to a systematic life. When he follows his academic training by a period in commercial workshops he is frequently disheartened, not by its hardness or dirtiness, but rather by its slug- gishness, its lack of method, its seeming futility. All too frequently he finds himself merely "messing about, and instead of obtaining rapidly good experience of practical methods and processes he has every opportunity of becoming a slacker.
If our graduates or undergraduates could look to "a definite system of apprenticeship covering a reasonable period in well-equipped and efficiently controlled works under effective supervision" (This excellent description is taken from G.R. Para. 39), we believe a large porportion of them would "make good," and we should be measurably nearer to the realisation of those high hopes, for China, and the British Empire, and their mutual relations, expressed in 1909 by Mr. J. H. Scott and H.E. the Governor. (See G.R. Para. 32).
Some thing of the kind seems now to be realised by Messrs. John Swire & Son, and Taikoo Shipyard is now making fresh arrangements to meet the needs of its tech- nically-trained apprentices. G.R. Para. 14 records that under the new system our students are showing keen interest and making good progress.
It seems appropriate to mention here that those few Hong Kong graduates who have been so fortunate as to secure modernised post-graduate practical training in Britain have in fact "made good," and favourably impressed their employers.
We readily agree with the contention of G.R. Para. 115(3), that only a very limited number of our engineers
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