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respects it could be improved without any serious difficulty. It would be a great benefit if they could be made competent instructors in Physical Training, and there are, it is understood, no important obstacles to prevent this being done. The benefit would be shared with their pupils by the teachers themselves. Further, the number of these teachers recruited annually is so small that it should be easy for the Inspectors to keep an eye on them during their school- practice and also during their first year of service. At present they are merely passed or failed in practical teaching by certain Head Masters nominated for the purpose by the University. Nor is it desirable, for obvious reasons, that teaching practice should be confined, as it is at present, to one school where the Head Master happens to be Master of Method in the University Training Department. Complaints are heard frequently that these Chinese teachers are weak disciplinarians. A less limited experience of teaching during their training, and a careful supervision of this by the Inspectors, should do something towards remedying this weakness. And a teacher really competent in Physical Training gains a degree of confidence in himself which goes with him quite naturally from the gymnasium or playground into the class-room,
It was noticed by the writer that Chinese men and women teaching in English often spoke that language most imperfectly, being, in extreme instances, difficult to understand. The importance of this is obvious, for it is usually from these teachers and not from Europeans→→ at any rate in Government schools that the Chinese pupils begin to acquire their pronunciation of English, forming sometimes faulty speech-habits which it is very difficult to eradicate later.
It is true that the University-trained teachers usually attain a respectable standard in the oral use of English, as indeed they should after ten or twelve years of hearing and speaking that language, but even they are apt to deteriorate instead of improving as English speakers during their teaching careers. This is undoubtedly due in some measure to the racial segrega- tion practised in the Government schools and sometimes in the Grant-in-Aid schools. European and Chinese teachers have separate common rooms, with the result that, although working daily in the same buildings, their social intercourse is very slight indeed. This seems regrettable for both parties. It is, as is well known, in accordance with the general British custom in the East, which is not the custom of the French. This is not the place to argue about the reasons for this custom or about its merits and demerits, but it may well be doubted whether its observance in schools is consistent with the open-minded and receptive spirit which should inform any educational institution, or is in the real interests either of the Chinese or of the Europeans. The better that the two can know each other the beiter chance there is of a bi-lingual system of education working successfully.
Further, the writer was forced with regret to the opinion that there is in the atmosphere
Xof Hong Kong's scholastic world something unfavourable to the zeal and legitimate ambitions of young teachers. This something" is difficult to define, but its consequence is clear enough—a young teacher begins perhaps with plenty of enthusiasm for his work, finds that this enthusiasm brings him more snubs than encouragement from his seniors, and tends therefore quite naturally to content himself with a merely routine attention to his profession, reserving his energies for employment in his leisure. The remedy for this is in great measure in the hands of the teachers themselves, and it is believed that something is already being done by a Teachers' Association in the Colony to encourage the younger members of the profession to contribute nothing less than their best to its all-important work. Something further can be done by authority. It should be a well-understood rule that seniority cannot be regarded as giving a right to promotion, regardless of merit; plainly the claims of seniority cannot be ignored, but those of proved zeal and ability should not be ignored either, and the possessors of those qualities should not be disqualified for promotion by comparative youth. A unified education service in Hong Kong and Malaya, if this could be achieved, would be of great value in opening a wider field of opportunity to youthful energy and enthusiasm. Hong Kong is small enough to be somewhat stuffy, and there are good grounds for the opinion that young teachers, both Chinese and European, need to be convinced that in their profession no doors will remain closed too long to genuine merit.
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Turning to the Grant-in-Aid schools, their Certified Teachers are appointed and paid by those responsible for the conduct of the schools, and the Government's Education Department is concerned only with the efficiency of their work. This, as far as can be judged on incomplete evidence, is not notably below the standard found in Government schools, though the Grant- in-Aid teachers receive lower salaries and teach rather larger classes. The arrangements for the training of the Student Teachers employed in these schools at the Technical Institute
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have already been mentioned; they are in the main satisfactory, but if time continues to be given, as it has been given, to English Literature, it is very important that the subject should be treated in such a way as to rouse in the students an interest which they will want to com- municate to their pupils, and to connect the study of the best literature of the past with the living language as spoken and written to-day. It was pointed out by the writer during his visit that this is unlikely to be achieved by a treatment following at all closely the lines of a History of Literature, with its habit of bringing too much into prominence such abstractions as
tendencies," development," influences," etc.
For the training of the teachers in private Vernacular schools very little is done, except in the rural areas of the New Territories, and in present conditions very little can be done. These schools appear and disappear in an incalculable manner, obtaining their staffs, perhaps, from whatever branches of commerce are least flourishing at the moment. It is a great weak- ness in Hong Kong's system that so much of the Colony's primary education is carried on in institutions as Il-staffed and ill-housed as these schools frequently are. If the remedy advocated in Chapters II and IV of this Report is applied, there will be a new demand for trained Chinese teachers. Until the extent of that demand can be determined, it will best be met by an expansion of the existing classes in the Technical Institute for the training of teachers. Eventually a new Government Normal School, or considerable additions to the present premises, may be necessary.
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