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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.
HONGKONG, 22nd January, 1868.
SIR,I have the honour to present to you the Annual Report on the Government Schools in this Colony for the year 1867, 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 you call of the Masters, there is still a sad want of intelligence among the children. To the simplest questions--" What do the part of your body with which you see?""What is the organ 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 rye 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
And trusting that it may not be audible to me. 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 arruful of books, consisting of the "Shi-king," portions of the “Kú-man," 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 move, 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 more valuable to their scholars than such a Body of Chinese othics 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 Scholar,-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 blarne would attach to those who had the power to make the necessary reforin without at least attempting it. To those who are unacquainted with Chinese literature and education it is almost impossible to explain why a reform cannot at once be made in 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 pause before Masters, for that would be indispensable, to teach the schools, one who knows anything of the people would displacing Confucius by such works as these. Those who have seen the undisguised contempt with which an educated Chinese looks upon an English school book when he is made acquainted with the nature of its contents will understand what I mean. Ignoraut as the villagers are of oven 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 have stated. I do not believe that one of the two hundred and odd boys in the school comes to be educated, in the proper sense of the word. Their only aim is to obtain such a knowledge of the English language as will enable them to get situations I am afraid that, before long, this will receive which prove more Incrative than any which they could hope to get without it. too disagreeable a confirmation. Complaints are often made by the boys of the difficulty they now have in getting employ- ment. 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 Schools. These, it is said, with suitable school books in their hands, would completely meet the want that is felt, and the the present intractable race of Masters could then be dispensed with. It may appear strange to say that, in the meantime, this is impossible, but such, however, is the case. It would involve the necessity of a separate department in the school, with a separate Master 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 the medium of English, so familiarize the boys with the language that they would not accept such situations, and, if it were to be done through the medium of Chinese-in itself a difficulty, I need hardly say that scarcely one would be found willing to 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, be supplied with Masters, and when the villagers will appreciate the education which such Masters would impart; but, for two very obvious reasons, this cannot be accomplished at present. The first is that the boys can get higher salaries elsewhere than Government could afford to pay them. The second is that the Chinese, to say nothing of the estimation in which they hold them as regards character, to which reference will be made hereafter, look upon them, in the meantime, as totally uneducated and unfit to teach their children.
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