CO129-260 - Governor Sir Robinson Acting Governor O-Brien - 1893 [9-12] — Page 87

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store but in a dilapidated condition through disuse from

which also the stores of the chemical laboratory appear to

suffer. The playgrounds are virtually useless anu none of

the Masters considers it his calling to encourage or organize

any use of them.

5.

Aim of the School. This School established in 1861

for the special benefit of the Chinese community has aimed

from the beginning at giving at the same time both an ele-

mentary Chinese education in the Chinese language and an ele-

mentary English equcation with the use of both the English

and Chinese languages, but for the sake of unity the orai-

nary methods of teaching Chinese have always been more or

less anglicized. The hybria Anglo-Chinese character of the

School, whibh has no counterpart in social life, involves

enormous difficulties. Two languages and two codes of civi-

lization of absolutely irreconciliable tendencies are for-

cibly welded together. Two sets of Masters, English and

Chinese, who cannot or will not work in mutual he subordi-

nation or even cooperation, because each set retains its own antagonistic national bias, have to be employed. As co- operation is, with the present Chinese staff, impossible, some classes are taught by Englishmen only, others by Chi-

nese teachers only. Englishmen unable to read, speak Chinese with facility have to teach Chinese transla- tion for which they acknowledge themselves incompetent and to supervise classes under instruction in classical Chinese.

Chinamen anti-English to the backbone anu unable to pro-

nounce English correctly or to speak it idiomatically,

and even history and to teach English dictation, grammar composition. Consequently the school resembles a garden in

which

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write or

have