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The Great War.
The Training of Civil
Survants for China.
The Armistice and after.
Sir Kai Ho Kai produced guarantors for a fund to provide for a Faculty of Arts. A Faculty of Arts was, therefore, hurriedly organized. The subjects offered at the outset were English, History, Political Economy, Chinese and Mathematics.
was
7. Originally Chinese was taught in the Arts Faculty as one subject up to the final year. The range of this subject though called simply "Chinese Chinese Classics" (or ancient Chinese Philosophy), Chinese History, and Chi- nese Literature. Mr. Lam Tung who is a member of this Committee has stated that he and Mr. Li King Hong took "Chinese" as a subject for their respective degree examinations; that later on it was found that the Chinese course was so exacting that it had to be split into two different subjects, namely (1) Chinese Literature, including Classics, and (2) Chinese History, and that several students took one Chinese subject for their degree and some took two such subjects. The Committee has been given to understand that some of the more successful students at this time were well above the age
of 20.
8. The Faculty of Arts in common with other departments of activity suffered owing to difficulties created by the Great War. In 1915 only three of the original class of sixteen who joined the Faculty in 1912 graduated. By the begin- ning of 1916 it was clear that the Faculty of Arts was not fulfilling its expectations and that if Mr. Cheung Pat Sze, who was then a regular subscriber to the expenses of the Faculty, stopped his contribution, the Faculty would become a heavy charge on the University's already over-strained resources,
9. It had always been in the mind of Sir Frederick Lugard and of the late Sir Charles Eliot that the University should, as soon as possible, take up the comparative study of Chinese and Western culture. It was hoped that in this way it would provide administrators and civil servants for China. In 1916 the number of students in the Arts Faculty had fallen to thirty-two and changes had to be made. The Dean, (Professor W. J. Hinton) and the late Mr. K. Brayshay, Lecturer in International Law, reorganized the courses. The Commerce subjects were grouped together into a two years course, leading not to a degree but to a diploma. The pass degree course was organized in two sections, one suitable for prospective teachers and the other more general. An honours degree course in economics and political science offered a curriculum of advanced studies considered suitable for those aspiring to Government service in China. Honours courses in mathematics and classical Chinese were also designed. The honours courses covered five years. No student ever came forward for any one of these courses, for no one was willing to spend an additional year in securing the B.A. degree, especially when there was a pass group leading to the same degree which admitted of two Chinese subjects out of a minimum requirement of three subjects. This group was so easy that
it had subsequently to be abandoned.
10. The session 1918-19 was the first session after the Armistice, and in the course of it the Faculty of Arts made great progress. Then the staff was found to be quite inadequate and casualties increased the strain. The number of students in the Faculty of Arts had risen during 1918-19 to fifty-seven. Hope was in the air and teachers in the Arts and other faculties were called upon for schemes for expansion. New schemes were evolved and these schemes were estimated to entail an additional capital of $3,000,000. No difficulty in raising this amount appears to have been anticipated. Many new appointments were made before the troublesome preliminary of raising the money had been tackled. The books of the University were in such a state that no balance sheet for 1917-18 could be produced, but the financial position of the University in 1918-19 must have been obvious. So far as the Faculty of Arts was concerned, Mr. Cheung Pat Sze was dead and his financial support of the Faculty had died with him. The University had spent a large part of its endowment on buildings. The Faculty of Arts had nothing to look to but its fee income and the shadowy prospect of a share in the mythical three million dollars.
II. In 1919-20 there were seventy-three students on the rolls of the Faculty of Arts. The staff consisted of three whole-time teachers with a professor of mathematics common to the Faculties of Engineering and Arts. All the rest of the teachers were part-time men, but the Calendar for 1919-20 shows ten posts "in the course of appointment." By March 1920, a professor of chemistry, a professor of physics, a professor of education, a lecturer in English, two tutors in English, a lecturer in political science, a lecturer in mathematics, a lecturer in biology, and a Registrar had all been appointed. In September 1920 six students graduated from the Faculty of Arts.
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12. The Court of the University learning, as it did at a meeting held on the 29th April, 1920, that all these and other appointments had been made and that the University was insolvent, refused to adopt the income and expendi- ture account for 1918-19 and the estimate of the income and expenditure for 1919-20. Instead, the Court asked the Governor-in-Council to enquire into the whole position and working of the University. The Governor appointed a Com- mission but, before the Commission had met, three professors and one lecturer of the Faculty of Arts had resigned. As the result of this Commission, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts was told that he must discontinue the honours courses, pro- vide fewer alternative courses, and convert the commerce course from a diploma course of two years to a degree course of four.
13. In 1920 the Faculty of Arts was again reorganised, this time into three departments, one for pure arts and science, one for the training of teachers and one for commercial training, As a result of this reorganization, Chinese was relegated to the position of being a subject which might be taken as an alternative in one of the courses of the Arts Faculty, and that up to the inter- mediate stage only.
III. The Willingdon Delegation; the Mission to Malaya and its sequel,
14. This was the position when the present Vice-Chancellor took up
his appointment in 1924. In the fore-front of the programme which the University prepared and laid before the Willingdon delegation which visited China in 1926, the University placed a scheme for a Chinese Faculty. The programme for the University as a whole was estimated to cost something like a million and a quar- ter pounds.
15. Those who were then contemplating a Chinese Faculty had a three- fold aim in view. It was recognised that Chinese classics would of course have to be taught but the idea was that the efforts of the University should not be con- fined to the production of old-fashioned Chinese scholars. The intention was that the University should undertake the comparative study of Chinese and western history, philosophy, law and some day perhaps, art. A scheme for the comparative study of Chinese and Roman law was also outlined. It was also considered desirable that a School for teaching the Chinese language should be established. It was hoped that in this way the Faculty of Chinese would do something towards helping modern China in the tackling of the problem of a unified language for the whole of China. A beginning was made in the direction of the Chinese language school by an arrangement whereby cadets and police recruits to the Colony were sent, on joining, to the University to learn Chinese. This experiment has now been abandoned and the idea of a Chinese Language School may be regarded as in abeyance.
16. For the realisation of these dreams a great deal of money was required. It was generally felt that a beginning should be made at once, So in August, 1926, the Vice-Chancellor went with Dr. Lai Chi Hsi to Malaya. Gifts amount- ing to $40,000 were received. On the strength of this money although was quite impossible to start a Chinese Faculty, Dr. Lai Chi Hsi and Dr. Au Tai Tin were appointed as full time Readers in the Faculty of Arts and Mt. Lam Tung was engaged as a Translator. Some $10,000 were spent on the University's Chinese Library and arrangements were made for the teaching of certain courses of Chinese classics up to the degree stage of the Faculty of Arts.
Financial 4- culties. 'The University Commission.
The aspirations underlying the proposed Chinese
Paculty.
Money raised in Malaya.
tion difficulty.
17. No student has taken advantage of the extended facilities for studying The matricula. Chinese in the Faculty of Arts. Meanwhile, Dr. Lai Chi Hsi and Mr. Li King Hong (Headmaster of the Government Vernacular Middle School) had, with the assistance of Mr. A. E. Wood, who was then Director of Education, drawn up a syllabus of studies for a Chinese School. This syllabus went before the Senate in 1926 and that body decided that the proposed syllabus could not be The recognized by the University as a course leading to a University degree. standard of English was considered to be altogether too low. Indeed, such an examination as it was then considered necessary to hold as a test for admission to the proposed school, an examination which has since been adopted, could not be accepted as equivalent to the University Matriculation test--a test which is required under the University Ordinance. In this connection we invite atten- tion to what Mr. Lam Tung has pointed out, namely, that the fact that the
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