53
X
X
B
IL THE SCHOOLS TO-DAY.
(1)
(Organisant of
Ignoring three "*
uncontrolled" institutions* which contain between them only some 450 pupils, the rest of the schools in the Colony, numbering 1,065 according to the latest information available, are all "controlled "* by the Education Department. This control means one of three very different things, viz. :—
(a) There are 20 ** provided "' schools; the cost of their equipment and maintenance is a charge on the Colonial revenues and, except for a few temporary appointments, the teachers are civil servants on the permanent establishment of the Colony. These schools will be referred to henceforward as Government schools.
(b) There are 382 schools partly dependent on assistance from public funds. This assistance takes the form either of per capita grants, or of a subsidy paid quarterly as a lump sum. Generally speaking, vernacular schools conducted by private individuals as a means of livelihood will receive a subsidy, if they receive any assistance at all. Their existence is often precarious and the number of their pupils may fluctuate from week to week. The Grant-in-Aid schools are much more stable institutions, conducted for the most part by missionary bodies; there is no difficulty in their keeping proper registers and other records. Though somewhat less generously staffed than the Government schools, their standard of work, at any rate in the better ones, does not seem to be inferior.
(c) There are, or were recently, 718 other schools subject to registration and inspection, but not receiving any assistance from public funds. The teachers may have any qualifications or none at all, and the premises range from reasonably good to intolerably bad. This fact creates a problem which is dealt with later in this
Report.t
In round figures, there were, according to the 1981 Census, some 253,000 children and young persons, between the ages of 5 and 20 inclusive, in the Colony. The pupils in all registered schools in 1933 numbered 72,917‡, or rather less than one-third of the total. It should be mentioned, however, that about 24,000 out of the total of 253,000 lived afloat, in junks or sampans. It would be difficult, anywhere in the world, to provide education for children living in those conditions. Further, the total of 258,000 almost certainly included a number, impossible to estimate, of migrants, on their way to Malaya or the Dutch East Indies, or returning to China from those countries. In short, to say that about one-third of the possible pupils are in the schools is, though a substantially true statement, one that does less than justice to the educational effort which the Colony is making. Moreover, though the age-range of 5 to 20 has been chosen for reasons which will appear later, there is not, it is believed, any nation in the world which is educating the whole of its population between those age-limits. If we consider only the population aged 5 to 14, the period of compulsory education in England, the total in Hong-Kong falls to about 148,000. Making all proper corrections and adjustments, the fraction one-third becomes something not very far short of one-half.
It is, of course, probable that, among the boys and girls of school age who at any given time are not on the books of any school, there will be a number who have had some schooling and have left school early. It is also probable and regrettable that many of the poorest children in Hong Kong receive no education at all, for fees are charged everywhere except in one or two schools provided by Chinese philanthropic bodies, and though the fees may be as low as 50 cents (about 10d.) per month, even that is an appreciable tax on the resources of the poorest section of the community in a country where the standard of living is as low as it is in China. Chinese peasants reckon their wealth in "cash,' one cash "
being equivalent approximately to one- five-hundredth part of a penny.
11
C
In Hong Kong coolies earn about 40 cents a day, with free lodging if they are Government scavengers; shop-assistants earn $7 or $8 per month, with rice.
(8) Ľ
་ ། ་
What kind of education are the schools giving? Taking the younger children first, there were recently in Government and Grant-in-Aid" schools combined, 1,867 children under eleven years of age. At the same time, returns which were unavoidably incomplete showed that
• One is a school maintained out of army funds for the children of soldiers serving in the garrison.
Chapter IV.
Such figures as are available for 1934 suggest a drop to about 53,000. This total may be incomplete, or not compiled on the same basis as the other. But the prevailing economic depression would account for some decrease in the total number of pupils.
9
more than 23,000 such children were in private vernacular schools. In other words, it is in these schools that the vast majority of the children receive their primary education. Further, about. two-thirds of the 28,000 were in non-subsidised schools, which presumably had not yet managed to attain the very modest level of efficiency that qualifies for a subsidy. In such schools there is no guarantee that education means anything better than spending long hours in learning to recognise and write a number of the Chinese characters, and in memorising, without any attention whatever to their meaning, texts from the Chinese classics. These activities prepared the pupils in the age-old Chinese system of education which prevailed till the revolution of 1912, for the composition of the 8-legged essay." This essay, and calligraphy, were the sole subjects of the famous examinations which admitted successful students to the Civil Service. Old-fashioned Chinese teachers, uprooted from Canton by revolutionary reforms, found refuge in and after 1913 in Hong Kong, and there resumed the only means of earning a living which they understood. Some of their schools still continue. Though in many of the private vernacular schools the children are now taught to read with more or less sensible books, and learn something of the elements of arithmetic and perhaps a little geography, there is still far too much stress laid on sheer memorising and too little attempt made to arouse in the children's minds an intelligent interest in their work. This is particularly noticeable in the teaching of hygiene; the children commit to memory rules of health which are most flagrantly violated by the environment of their studies. Moreover, school life for these children consists of study only, unrelieved by those activities which nowadays are held to constitute an indispensable part of primary education. Indeed, in few, if any, of the schools would such activities be possible— there is no room for them. Further, the age range of a class is often far too wide; the writer found a girl of 12 and a young man of 20 in one class. Finally, the premises of these schools are usually inadequate and sometimes abominable, a matter which is dealt with in some detail in Chapter IV of this Report.
It is a serious weakness in Hong Kong's educational system, with results felt throughout the school careers of many of the children, that the schools in which the primary foundations are laid should be of so poor a quality. This is the more regrettable when it is remembered that for many of the children education ends at the primary stage. In fact, it is evident that the Government's expenditure on Higher (including Secondary) Education is out of proportion to its expenditure on Primary Education.* On these grounds it is recommended that the Government should assume as soon as possible larger responsibilities in primary education, and the best way of doing this would be to build, as a start, two or three large primary schools in the City of Victoria, staff them only with fully trained teachers, inspect them properly, and thus make them fit to serve as models for schools conducted by private enterprise (see also Chapter IV). These new schools should be free, an innovation which would not be very costly, since any fees charged could only be very small.
Only in the Government and "Grant-in-Aid Schools is any planned system to be found. Of the 20 Government schools already referred to, four are for children of European British parentage, one is the Junior Technical School, opened in 1933, two are Normal Schools, one for men and one for women, and one is the so-called Vernacular Middle School. The remaining 12 Government schools are English" schools, by which is meant that the medium of instruc- tion is English, though the vast majority of the pupils are Chinese, with a number of Indians and Eurasians in the minority. There are 18 English Schools receiving Grants-in-Aid from public funds, and these 25 schools, containing some 9,000 pupils in 1934. may fairly be con- sidered as constituting Hong-Kong's attempted solution of its very difficult educational problem. It has already been suggested that this solution is unsound in so far as it fails to provide adequately for the primary education of young children.
In the Report of the Director of Education for the year 1924 it was stated that the numbers of Chinese children are so large that it is impossible for the Government to take charge of the education of all. The principle adopted is to endeavour to set a good standard of work in Government schools while giving assistance by grants or subsidies to all private schools which reach the required modest standard of efficiency."
The only money spent by the Government on primary vernacular education, i.e., on all primary education other than that given in a few grant-aided classes and in the so-called "British" schools for European British children, is the $120,000 of the subsidies vote. This works out to about $6.20 per pupil in the Urban Districts and $4.20 per pupil in the New Territories, and is on an average about half the cost of the schools. The total expenditure on education in 1933 was $1,617,274. The expenditure on Government schools, which may be regarded substantially as secondary schools, was $1,336,228. To this must be added a large fraction of the $229,000 (approx.) spent in Grants-in-Aid and the $350,000 grant to the University.
X
X