CO129-260 - Governor Sir Robinson Acting Governor O-Brien - 1893 [9-12] — Page 117

oun

therefore for want of anything better, to give you my unsupported and Incre or less crude notions derived

own limited

from my observation of human nature as exhibited by the population of the Canton Province and of HongKong

Fiill

0

very briefly detail

The man must main

charactera

first those mental indow- his own m ments which predominate in the Chinese school boy

authority.

and then those in which he is particularly deficient.

In the

first

instance Chinese-

boys come to school richly. indowed by ancestral inheritance

with

unbounded reverence

in

for constituted authority, and for the teacher's auth

-authority particular. They come prepared not only to obey but to worship

you

116

Mind, they do not come prepared to love

you. Love on the part of a pupil Europe a multitude

covers in

in

of sins on the part of the teacher. But the Chinese

boy neve

never loves his teacher,

The very idea of it is unintelligible

to him. He does not love- his paren

ents. He reverences them. Now a jude

cious teacher

judicious

will observe at once that he

can

and

only secure the continuance

grouth of this

reverence

with which the Chinese school

boy approaches his teacher, by carefully maintaining

his own moral character andr authority.

In a Chinese school,

far

more than in.

any European school, order and -discipline depends entirely the personal character of

the