者照監院意見在大書院教習華文若欲妥當則莫如依華人之法教華文勿效西人之法而教也 誦天之古文一段以試驗大書院最高班之華童亦准伊用英華字典及古文評註竟亦未見有能安譯且其間多有未明註解之意 十九分矣而以成化年製四字試之竟不能讀無何試以讀唐書三載之女孩竟能寫此四字敝監院亦嘗用尋常業師講解學童 年之久近日持有署掌院荐書來見做監院在該荐書内言此童由華文譯英文工夫絕妙他去歲杪考甄別時按六十分計已得五 實少也在院掌教華文之師内有門秀士二位伊亦不悅如此教法又有一英人小子天資極厚聰敏過人甞在大書院肄業七八 路惟講解經書摹字作課則有同時合作一班者耳而大書院教小子讀書亦用此分班之法故亦難怪教習華文之功效無多獲益 而天聰之不同與記性之不同又稍有差別是以業師成知不能律以班大務照其資質之高下記性之强導之循序漸進以行其 記性凡知其中趣味者未有以斯言爲何漢也故在中國書塾訓蒙用日積月累之法教以恒心養其記性但孩童資質各有不同 千字甚爲扼要凡爲教師之人必須留心記憶而莫能舍棄者且華文無變化之句語纏繞之文法如西國文字然故學華文最要是 書必須誦讀指但在大書院禁止讀書之聲惟有觀書之法况華言又無字母如外國而四萬四千字異而不同者之中有六千人,
多尋
民則删除不教
有顧教門之一
英書時書内凡
之道理而教讀
能甘絕無教門
院所教者實不
談亦認在大書
有華人教師聚
者敝監院客見
亦有言及教門
在大暑院所學
vogue in England and in English schools, is here
even more glaring. The experience of centuries
has taught the Chinese a method of teaching based
on the peculiarities of the Chinese language. As
it is a language with tones, it is considered an
imperative necessity, all over the Empire, that boys should read and repeat their lessons aloud.
This is prohibited in the Central School. As the
Chinese written language is devoid of an alphabet
and consists of 44,000 different characters, 6,000 to 8,000 of which are indispensable for the require-
ments of an educated man, and as there are no
complicated inflections taxing the intellect, it is
an indisputably patent fact that an acquaintance
with the written language of China depends al-
most exclusively on the cultivation of a good
memory. For this reason it has been found ne-
cessary in every school in China to give to tech-
nical memoriter exercises an unusual amount of
time, and as boys differ far more widely in elasti-
city of memory than in range of mental compre- hension, collective teaching in reading lessons is considered impractical in China, and boys are taught to rend Chinese individually, going on,
each his own way, as fast or as slow as his memory
will carry him. Whilst therefore in all the schools in China class teaching is reserved for explanation of the classica, for teaching copy-writing and com. position, it is applied in the Central School even to the teaching of reading, in a modified form. The consequence is, that the results of Chinese teaching in the Central School are extremely
meagre and the teachers themselves, two of whom are graduates, are thoroughly dissatisfied with the system adopted. An English boy, a smart lad who had been 7 to 8 years in the Central School
and who came to me the other day with a certifi- cate from the Acting Head Master stating his attainments in translation, from Chinese into English, to be “excellent, " he having received 59 marks out of GO at the last annual examination in this branch of study, could not read such sim- ple characters as 成化年製, which Chinese girls, after three years' teaching, wrote from dic- tation under the eyes of His Excellency the Governor. And the best Chinese boys in the school, when I gave them a passage from one of the Chinese reading books, which had been read and explained in class, to translate into English, allowing them to use Chinese-English Dictiona- ries, could not do it without being allowed the use of the Commentary. And when that was placed in their hands too, none could translate the
passage correctly, and every one showed that even the Chinese Commentary was unintelligible to them. It is my conviction that if Chinese is to be taught properly in the Central School it
must be taught according to Chinese and not ac- cording to foreign methods.
As to religious teaching in the Central School, I noticed myself, and the Chinese masters, ac- knowledged in conference, that the teaching given in the Central School is really not secular teach- ing, pure and simple. In English reading lessons, books are used which contain religious lessons, but these are invariably skipped. The fact that