GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.-No. 208.
The following Annual Reports on Education in Hongkong, for the year 1883, which were laid before the Legislative Council on the 29th instant, are published for general information.
By Command,
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 31st May, 1884.
Report by the Inspector of Schools.
FREDERICK STEWART,
Acting Colonial Secretary,
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT,
HONGKONG, 3rd April, 1884.
SIR, I have the honour to forward herewith the Annual Report on Education and the Blue Book Returns for the year 1883.
2. The total number of Schools, subject to supervision by the Government, amounted in the year 1883 to 87, as compared with 47 in the year 1878, and 36 in the year 1873. The total number of scholars enrolled during the year 1883 in Schools subject to supervision and annual examination by the Government amounted to 5597, as compared with 3152 enrolled in the year 1878, and 2280 enrolled in the year 1873. There are now 51 more Schools and 3317 more scholars under Government supervision than there were ten years ago. It appears that both the number of Schools under Government supervision in the Colony and the number of scholars attending such Schools have been more than doubled within the last decade.
3. The Schools subject to Government supervision and examination are popularly distinguished as belonging to two separate classes of Schools, viz. secular Schools and denominational Schools. This distinction is somewhat incorrect and requires, at any rate, considerable qualification.
4. The so-called secular Schools are Government Schools. They are now 39 in number and sub-divided into Government Schools properly so-called, and Government Aided Schools, that is to say, there are Schools (in town and in some villages), organized, controlled and provided for exclusively by the Government, and there are Schools (in some villages), organized and partially controlled by the natives, but aided by the Government (by a monthly grant of $5) and supervised by the Government. These Schools may, in one sense, be called secular Schools, because the predominating tendency of the teaching given in these Schools is non-Christian, for the reason that hardly any of the parents of the children attending these Schools are Christians. But it should be kept in mind that these so-called secular Schools, by using the ordinary text-books or classics of China, give not only a great deal of moral teaching in the sense of Confucianism, but serve also to propagate Chinese ancestral worship and even some of the superstitious tenets of Buddhism and Tauism. They are therefore not strictly secular but in one sense also denominational Schools, though they are popularly referred to as secular Schools.
5. The so-called denominational Schools, now 48 in number, are either Protestant or Roman Catholic Mission Schools, subsidized by the Government, as Grant-in-Aid Schools, by annual grants given on the principle of payment for definite results as ascertained by annual examination. These denominational Schools are certainly not secular Schools, because the predominating tendency of the teaching given in these Schools is decidedly Christian. But it should be kept in mind that, under the revised Grant-in-Aid Code, which entirely excludes all distinctions of secular and denominational or religious teaching, the Government subsidizes all these Schools without regard to any kind of religious teaching, simply and solely in proportion to the actual results obtained in the following subjects, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, composition, algebra, geometry, etc., that is to say, in secular subjects only. As Grant-in-Aid Schools, these Schools might therefore, in one sense, be called secular Schools. It must be further understood that all those Grant-in-Aid Schools which give a Chinese education in the Chinese language, being attended by the children of non-Christian Chinese parents, use the ordinary Confucian text-books, the contents of which urge the duties of ancestral worship and the precepts of Confucian morality. Those Chinese school books which contain Buddhist and Tauist teaching are not used in any of these denominational Schools, but the Confucian text-books are used side by side with Christian books. It will thus be seen that the popular distinction of secular and denominational Schools is somewhat vague under the circumstances.
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