1867

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPI-NOT TO

BE REPRODUCEO PHOTOGRAPHIC- ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

24

f

1

nd

[291]

147

No. 22.

GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.

The following Annual Report on the state of the Government Schools in Hongkong for the Year 1867 is published for general information.

By Command,

Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 14th February, 1868.

CECIL C. SMITH, Acting Colonial Secretary.

Hongkono, 2nd January, 1888.

Sin, I have the honour to present to you the Annual Report on the Government Schools in this Colony for the year 1887, and in doing so I shall commence with the Village Schools.

2. I regret that I am not in a position to report much progress in these. Although I am quite satisfied that the children who attend these schools derive certain advantages from the purely Chinese education that they receive in them, it cannot be concealed that education in the Villages remains in a very unsatisfactory state.

3. Whatever improvements may have been made in attendance, regularity, discipline, and attention to duty on the part of the Masters, there is still a sad want of intelligence among the children. To the simplest questions—“ What do

you call

the part of your body with which you see?"--"What is the orgau of hearing?”—in the majority of cases no answer can be obtained. When, failing to get the desired answer in this way, one points to the characters for eye and ear and asks the use of these organs, they seem to have no conception of what they mean. Beyond the fact that the character pointed to has a certain sound they are in perfect ignorance of the idea which is attached to it.

4. I have witnessed curious scenes on such occasions. Sometimes the Master will lose his temper at such displays of stupidity, and, taking up the question himself, try in vain to get an answer, even when he has communicated it in a whisper trusting that it may not be audible to me. And yet, some of these boys will repeat, without a single mistake, the Four Books" of Confucius. In one instance, in the Hakka School at West Point, a boy brought up, on the examination day, an armful of books, consisting of the "Shi-king," portions of the "Kú-nian," the "Four-Books," the "Odes for Youth,” and one or two others,some ten goodly volumes in all. When asked what he did with so many books he said he knew them all. He began with the "Four-Books," and, to my astonishment, went on repeating, as rapidly as lip and tongue could more, for a quarter of an hour when I thought it time to stop him. I believe he could have repeated the whole had there been time to listen to him. But this boy, whose powers of memory were so great, and whose application must have been intense, could not explain one word of all this which he must have so laboriously committed to memory.

5. It is almost impossible to get the Masters to understand that one-tenth of this, fully understood, would be infinitely jmore valuable to their scholars than such a Body of Chinese ethics which is wholly unintelligible to them. This weary plodding, day after day and year after year, in the sterile region of sound without one glimpse at the knowledge which it contains, produces the inevitable result, as conspicuous sometimes in the Master as in the Scliular,—an incapacity to evolve a single thought or idea beyond what has been handed down, by tradition, for ages.

6. The question is often asked-Why is this state of things allowed to continue, and why are not suitable books translated, and suitable Masters provided to teach them? In a Western country no question could be more natural, and great blame rould attach to those who had the power to make the necessary reform without at least attempting it. To those who are unacquainted with Chinese literature and education it is almost impossible to explain why a reform connot at once be made Hongkong. I believe that every such attempt will fail until the Chinese as a nation come, by continued intercourse with the West, to have a higher idea of our civilization and institutions. To say nothing of the difficulty-in itself not an Inconsiderable one, of getting the more appropriate lessons of English school books translated into Chinese,-and of training Masters, for that would be indispensable, to teach the schools, one who knows anything of the people would pause before displacing Confucius by such works as these. Those who have seen the undisguised contempt with which an educated Chinese looks apoa an English school hook when he is made acquainted with the nature of its contents will understand what mean. Ignorant as the villagers are of even their own literature, and unable as they are to give any opinion on education, they have one potent argument in store which would defy contradiction-they would not send one of their children to school. 7. The comparative success of the Central School, where English school books are used, is no argument against what I pare stated. I do not believe that one of the two hundred and odd boys in the school comes to be educated, in the proper ease of the word. Their only aim is to obtain such a knowledge of the English language as will enable them to get situations hich prove more Incrative than any which they could hope to get without it I am afraid that, before long, this will receive

o disagreeable a confirmation. Complaints are often made by the boys of the difficulty they now have in getting employ. aent. The popularity of the school, therefore, would thus seem to depend very much, if not entirely, on the varying. Prosperity of the Colony, and not on the nature or amount of real instruction communicated in it.

8. I have sometimes been asked why the best scholars in the Central School were not trained as Masters for the Village chools. These, it is said, with suitable school books in their bande, would completely meet the want that is felt, and the present intractable race of Masters could then be dispensed with. It may appear strange to say that, in the meantime, is is impossible, but such, however, is the case. It would involve the necessity of a separate department in the school, with separate Muster for the work. This, it is evident, would entail a very considerable addition to the present Estimate for Education, with the probability, I might say, the certainty, that the special training thus to be given would, if it were through e medium of English, so familiarize the boys with the language that they would not accept such situations, and, if it were be done through the medium of Chinese-in itself a difficulty, I need hardly say that scarcely one would be found willing. undergo it.

9. I cannot doubt that the time will come, in the history of the Colony, when the Village Schools will in some such way, supplied with Masters, and when the villagers will appreciate the education which such Masters would impart; but, for 10 very obvious reasons, this cannot be accomplished at present. The first is that the boys can get higher salaries elsewhere an Government could afford to pay them. The second is that the Chinese, to say nothing of the estimation in which they ld them as regards character,--to which reference will be made hereafter, look upon them, in the meantime, as totally educated and unfit to teach their children.