CO129-567-1 Education Department 8-6-1938 - 3-2-1939 — Page 68

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of music and some form of arts and crafts as a part of the ordinary

curriculum.

The Board further resolved that a Sub-Committee should

be appointed to advise the Board of the nature and form of the subjects

to be introduced, the method by which they should be introduced, and

as to an appropriate time for their introduction.

The Director of

Education himself expressed the view that, by distinction from

physical training which should be, and is, compulsory, such subjects

4.

The Board of

as music and the arts and crafts should be voluntary.

Education accepted the Sub-committee's report, and I append a copy of

it for your information. When submitting it the Director of Education

minuted that it was adopted 'nemine contradicente' by the Board but

that he himself abstained from voting: presumably his view, expressed

above, remained unaltered. I myself concur generally with its

recommendations, provided that funds for the not inconsiderable

additional expenditure entailed can be made available in due course.

All schools devote some period in the curriculum to the

teaching of hygiene, and whereas three or four years ago hardly a

single Chinese boy received any physical training, to-day every pupil

in all urban English schools is receiving two periods of half an hour

each week at least, and several vernacular schools have followed suit.

Under the system of training special instructors through the agency of

the physical training supervisor, much more rapid progress has been

possible than would have been the case had a beginning been postponed

until a number of suitably qualified university-trained teachers was

available to assist in this work. I agree with the Director of

Education that it would not be feasible to expect that the great

majority of the existing staff of Chinese school teachers could become

efficient teachers of physical training: the whole tradition of

Chinese scholastics tends in the opposite direction. Only when the

teacher class begins to be recruited from a generation which has learned

the science at school will that be possible. In the meanwhile the

instructor engaged specially for this duty offers the only practicable

solution.

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