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56
"Christian
published on 12th March, 1866, he announced that he had done away with all Bible reading and teaching in the Central School, or, to put it as he afterwards explained in one of his reports, it bad "not beate abolished, but only allowed to fall off." In the same report, that for 1868, Mr. STEWART says "and secular education must for the present be accepted as to two distinct fields of operation in Hong- "kong; the Missionary will make his choice, the Govenment its choice." The reason he assigns for the adoption by the Government of the socular field, is "the great repugnance which the Chinese mind has to religious instruction." The reason here assigned is not the true one and Mr. STEWART himself has ad- mitted in another place that it is at best but half the truth,
Now, whatever the reason for the change, here is a distinct avowal that the Government Schools were not what they had been, but had become and were to remain purely secular.
If the Central School had continued, after this declaration, to be as orignally designed, a school for Chinese and for Chinese only, Roman Catholics, however they might regret the change, would have had nothing to complain of. We have always admitted that the Government was in a difficult position as regards the vast and rapidly increasing Chinese population, that their children must be taught somehow, that Government alone could provide adequate school accommodation and that such schools must be non- proselytising. But in 1866 the Central School was thrown open to Europeans of all classes and denomi nations. Mr. STEWART has said that this was done against his wish and in opposition to his opinion and advice. Be that as it may, in his report for the year 1866 he expresses his pleasure that the School was no longer to be confined exclusively to the Chinese, and goes on to say that he expects a large number of Scholars, not Chinese, to join at once. In this he was disappointed, for it was not, I believe, until 1869 that any number of Pupils of the new categories availed themselves of the permission accorded them.
The resolution to open the Central School to the world was the work of Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL It at once brought the Governmat and was taken almost immediately after his arrival in the Colony. Schools into direct conflict with the Roman Catholic Schools, and Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL emphasized this by openly inviting the Portuguese Catholic boys frequenting our schools to go to the Central Schools. He did this at a public distribution of prizes at our principal school, St. Saviour's, on the 22nd December 1866, when he presided. In the following month of January (1867) he said publicly, at the Central School that he would be glad to see the Government Schools made sufficiently attractive to draw the children of "the Portuguese and Hindoos" and since that date, the educational policy of the Government has been to make the Central School as attractive as possible to the Portuguese Catholics and to establish an opposi- tion to the Roman Catholic Schools. To attain this end the original design of the school has been set aside and with hundreds of Chinese children begging for admission and with thousands wandering about the Colony in utter ignorance, place has been made for European children, for whom other sufficient provi- sion existed and thousands of dollars have been uselessly expended.
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If, in 1866, when Sir RICHARD MCDONNEL. arrived here, he had found the Catholic children unedu- cated and without the means of getting an education and he had then thrown open the Central School for their benefit, he would have done well and we would have had only ourselves to blame. But our schools had then been open and in operation for between six and seven years, and were increasing in number and improving in quality every year. From 1867 forward there was ample accommodation in our schools for children of all the Catholic children in the Colony, for the boys at St. Saviour's, for the girls and both sexes at the Convents. We had also schools for Chinese and a Reformatory or Industrial school with forty-two inmates. The education given at St. Saviour's was of a superior grade, fitting boys for a commercial life, and it was to all intents and purposes free. No boy was ever refused admittance because his parents were too poor to pay the school fees Not only were our schools sufficient for the needs of the Catholics of the Colony, but we were able to take in and educate children from the Spanish Colony at Manila, and children of non-Catholic parents. Mr. MERCER, then Acting Governor, examined St. Saviour's School in 1865 and distributed the prizes. Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL was present in 1866 and again in 1867 and gave us the highest praise, especially for what had been done in our schools towards the instruc- tion in Chinese of boys of other nationalities. "To the Roman Catholic Missionaries chiefly," said he in 1866 "do we owe any earnest efforts to provide an adequate body of future interpreters of European parentage." In 1867 he said that "although there was no more strenuous supporter than himself of the Protestant Church, still he must confess that in this Colony, the efforts of the Roman Catholic brethren far outstripped and were in excess of those of all other denominations," and he thanked Father RAIMONDI and those connected with him for the results they had so sucecssfully accomplished. He was speaking at our school examination and of our schools.
Our report for 1867 showed that out of 121 Portuguese boys over seven years old in the Colony, 115 were being educated in our schools. There was abundant room for the other six, and as for the girls and infants they were even more liberally provided for in the Convent schools.
In 1872 Sir ARTHUR KENNEDY distributed the prizes at St. Saviour's and in the course of his speech on the occasion, he remarked that the educational requirements of the many nationalities belonging to Father RAIMONDr's Church were, he believed, fully supplied by that school.
From year to year our schools have gone on increasing in numbers and efficiency and we have spared no pains to render them fully adequate to the needs of our people. It has never been questioned that they were and are efficient and sufficient. No reason therefore can be assigned for Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL'S desire to render the Central School attractive to the Portuguese, but hostility to religious education and a strong bias in favour of secularism. There has been no justification for it, when numbers of Chinese were seeking admission and could not be taken in for want of room, but the desire on the part of the two or three gentlemen, who inspired the educational policy of the Government, to emancipate the Catholic youth from the influences of their religion. It is useless to say that the Central School was thrown open for the benefit of non-Catholic children other than Chinese. In 1866 when the opening of the Central School to the public was first spoken of, there were hardly any non-Catholic children in the Colony of European or Indian parentage of an age to go to school. The number has considerably increas- ed since, it is true, but they would have been fully provided for by the other denominations or by private enterprise, but for the competition of the Central School.
Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL made the Government Schools secular and set them in open opposition to the denomination schools. No expense was spared to make the Central School draw, and of course it had some success. Catholic parents who sent their children to the Central School in opposition to the dictates of their conscience were openly complimented by government officials on their "independance." Their children had the best chance of Government employment. Mr. STEWART was a Government servant and his recommendation was far more valuable than that of any poor priest. Government threw its whole weight into the scale in favour of the secularists and nearly the whole of the monies voted for educational purposes went to the secular Central School. What was spent on the Village Schools was but a small part of the whole sum voted. The denomination schools got nothing.
Sir ARTHUR KENNEDY followed in the footsteps of Sir RICHARD MCDONNELL and pronounced for the secularists and against any religious teaching in schools. At a public meeting called, I believe, in April 1872, to consider the question of providing a middle class school for the non-Chinese portion of the population, Sir AurпUR presided and his speech declared himself opposed to anything in the shape of a denomination school. If there was to be a new school, it ought, in his opinion, to be a secular school. He had no earthly sympathy, he said, with Sectarianism. Mr. SrawART also spoke in favour of secularism and, while denying that the Central School was atheistic, admitted that the education given there was unchristian. The proposed middle class School was never opened, but the Central School as a school open to Europeans of all denominations got fresh impetus and additional support.
A little later, I found it necessary in the performance of my duty to warn the members of my flock that they were violating the rules of the Society to which they belonged in sending their children to a secular school, that no Catholic father or mother could, with a safe conscience before God, commit their children to the teaching of a school where the Catholic religion could not be learned. An Honorable Member of the Legislative Council opposed a grant of a small sum of money for the rebuilding of the soldiers' Church blown away in a typhoon, on the ground that I was attempting to exercise a tyrannical power that ought to be put a stop to.
In 1873, denominational schools other than Roman Catholic, having increased considerably in number and importance, a grant-in-aid scheme was engrafted on the educational policy of the Government, but that policy did not cease to be intensely secular, and the grant-in-aid scheme was framed in accordance with the views of the secularists.
It stipulated for four hours "secular" instruction on 200 days in each year; no religious instruc- tion to be given within those four hours and it was so worded that the Inspector of Schools, whoever he might be, had very large powers of interference with the discipline and teaching in each school, and had in his own hands the means of enforcing his authority by recommending a diminution of the grant wherever the management did not please him. The amounts to be paid under this scheme, were, however, so insignificant that while the Government was spending at the rate of from $20 to 30 a head on the pupils in the Central School, it contributed about $2.00 a head on the average towards the expenses of the deno- minational schools,
We gave it a trial for one year, but found it to work very unsatisfactorily. The changes we would have had to make in our system of teaching, if we were to continue under it, were so considerable and so utterly useless as affecting the results that it was not worth while to make them for the purpose of gaining so small a contribution tewards our expenses. We found too that our acceptance of the grant-in-aid scheme was held to denote our acceptance of the whole of the Government policy on the education question. This we could not tolerate for a moment. We therefore withdrew our schools from the operation of the grant- in-aid scheme.
As that scheme has been recently amended, the money grants obtainable under it have become much more valuable and we would gladly come in under it, if we can do so without sacrificing our princi- ples, but the system of secular education is still so powerfully supported by Government money and Govern- ment patronage as to render it impossible for us to compete with it. Government is now about to spend some sixty or eighty thousand Dollars in the construction of new and spacious school buildings and in
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