56
57
The
University Employment Committee.
The repre-
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the school curriculum. We are not depreciating the vital importance of linguistic training, nor criticising the school curriculum. We have already set out (see paragraph 4 above) the syllabus in Chinese Language and Literature in which it has been always obligatory on every Chinese student, as a condition of entering the University, to qualify. Whether this syllabus represents the minimum knowledge of his language and literature which every educated Chinese, whatever he is going to do in life should possess, is a question which it is beyond our scope to investigate, but it does occur to us that a Chinese boy who wanted to be an engineer can not with the demands of the University matriculation ever before him, have had very much time during his school course for such subjects as applied mathematics, drawing and manual instruction. And the handicap thus involved was and is the more serious, because, as has so often been said before, there are almost entirely lacking in the Chinese boy of the social and economic status from which the University recruits its students that passion for things mechanical which is so marked a characteristic of some European and American boys. If a stray Chinese boy had had this taste, he would not easily have found opportunities for developing it. It is quite a common thing to come across a Britisher of the middle or upper economic strata of society whose work is in no way mechanical but who has fitted up a small workshop in his home. Such a thing is practically unknown among the Chinese -apart from wireless enthusiasts.
Messrs. John Swire &
36. In 1927 the University Employment Committee was confronted with the decline in the number of students in the Engineering Faculty generally and with the fact that the special fourth year courses in mechanical and electrical engineering were not attracting students. The Managing Director of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co. Ltd., suggested on this occasion that the University's Engineering Faculty was starting at the wrong end; that instead of taking Chinese of the middle and upper classes and trying to turn them into practical mechanical engineers, the Faculty should aim at attracting selected apprentices with a view to giving them an education calculated to make them capable of being efficient engineers to whom more respon- sible executive work could be entrusted. This view was accepted by the Employment Committee and the Senate of the University was then approached with a view to seeing whether the Matriculation Examination could be simplified for these selected ap- prentices. The Senate agreed to modify the Matriculation Examination to this extent -namely that an apprentice who had qualified in English and mathematics could take the other subjects necessary for a matrienfation certificate during his University course, but the Senate found itself unable to modify, in favour of the apprentice, the obligation to qualify in Chinese Language and Literature, except in so far as that subject might be taken by the apprentice during the engineering course-which is in fact a concession generally allowed to all students entering the Engineering Faculty. No apprentice was forthcoming and, the matter having in the following year, come before the Employment Committee again, that Committee decided to ask the Vice Chancellor to approach Government with the request that they would establish and maintain, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Dockyards, a technical school which would organize and conduct off-shift classes for apprentices. Nothing has come of this proposal so far as Government are concerned. As has been explained above the off-shift instruction of apprentices in dockyards is limited to the English and technical classes which are now working at the Taikoo Yard and to the Hop Ying English Evening Free School at the Kowloon Docks.
37. The position remains practically unchanged but more protests are in the sentations of field. We have already referred (para. 22 above) to the letter which Messrs. John Swire & Sons Ltd., addressed to His Excellency the Governor in 1929. Their point is Sons Ltd. that the University trained engineer is of little use until he has gone through the shops in addition to the University course; that the present system of technical education in Hong Kong which is practically confined to the University requires too high a standard of general education and is too limited in its scope, that by starting from the top it is ineffective, so far as practical training is concerned, and that the system requires to be reorganized. The line of reorganization suggested is the estab- lishment and maintenance by Government of a technical school near one of the big docks where technical engineering education could be given to selected apprentices after work hours. These evening classes were definitely to lead the most promising apprentices into the Engineering Faculty, while to those who did not come up to that standard there would be good and useful careers available. The firm expressed the
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view that those boys "who passed a certain standard (.e. at the technical school) would then be really fit to enter for a university degree course at the Hong Kong University from which they would emerge, qualified, educated, practical engineers. Even those who did not qualify for a university course would be practical educated men who would be of use to, and readily find a job with, Chinese undertakings or foreign firms, and be the article which we have all been in vain trying to produce by starting from the top."
review.
38. The Vice Chancellor was away on leave when this letter from Messrs. John The Vice Swire & Sons Ltd. was received and dealt with. After his return the Vice Chancellor Chancellor's reviewed the position in a letter dated the 16th June, 1930, which he addressed to Messrs. Butterfield & Swire. Hong Kong. This letter has been placed before us and we quote as relevant to the problein before us the following passages from it :—
"I was, and still am, a zealous advocate of the recruitment of boys of the artizan class to the Engineering Faculty of the University, if that be possible. But even with the modified Matriculation Examination which the Senate is pre- pared to accept in the case of such students, I am exceedingly doubtful whether any but the most exceptionally gifted apprentice would ever get to the Univer- sity via his apprenticeship and the evening classes of a school for apprentices, however efficient that school might be........
Your Principals want practical men and they are not I imagine, only thinking of graduates. We must, I think, concede that it is only the rare apprentice who would rise to graduate rank, but even so, an apprentice not capable of be- coming a graduate, might if he had a better general education and a working knowledge of English make a capable foreman or something of that kind. That where your technical school for apprentices should come in. But technical schools can not be conducted by the University
I feel strongly
that the aim of your Principals will not be fully achieved, unless the educa tional needs of the artizans are considered and met
I have dealt
my
at some length with the problem of producing in Hong Kong effective and practical engineers of various grades, not only because it is in opinion vital to do something to orientate educational influence (and the rush in Hong Kong into schools is now a flood) away from the clerical into the mechanical, but also because it is just this aspect of the general educational problem of Hong Kong which the administrative machinery of the Colony is so ill-adapted to tackle. The educational system of the Colony has grown up round a few Government Schools for general education..... The University of Hong Kong did not grow out of the school system; it was rather superimposed on it.'
39. The Vice Chancellor endorsed the view of Mossis. John Swire & Sons Ltd. that a university course in mechanical engineering was not calculated to produce the required article, unless that course was supplemented by a course of practical training in a commercial workshop but he saw that the solution of this difficulty advocated by Messrs. John Swire & Sons Ltd. would involve the closing of the University's mechanical engineering course altogether: that if the Engineering Faculty was to be recruited, so far at least as mechanical engineering was concern- ed, from apprentices alone, students would not be fortheoming, unless the whole standard and purpose of the Faculty as part of a British University were reduced in status a remedy which he regarded as impossible. Turning to the question of the practical training of such boys who come from the ordinary schools of the Colony to the Faculty of Engineering with a view to qualifying as mechanical en- gineers the view recorded was :-
"It seems to be beyond question that such training as the University can give, even though that training inches workshop training as obligatory cannot be regarded as a process which can be expected to produce qualified practical engineers. To do this, the University course must be supplemented by a. definite system of apprenticeship covering a reasonable period in well- equipped and efficiently controlled works under effective supervision. No university course in the world can be regarded as an adequate substitute for this period of apprenticeship. I think that the Engineering Faculty should do everything in its power to render the practical work which the student, is com- pelled to do in the University workshop, as thoroughly effective as possible and
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