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Faculties of Science and Engineering.
POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENTS:
10.
In recommending the establishment of two specifically post-graduate Departments we are not suggesting that post-graduate Courses should be limited to those provided by them. We have indeed already indicated some of the lines upon which we think that post-graduate work would be particularly lcsirable in the Departments which we have already instanced. The two specifically post-graduate Departments to which we wish to refer are those of Education and Social Studics.
11. The Department of Education for the time being, can, perhaps, best be organised within the Faculty of Arts. Its function would be to train graduates of the University for work in Hong Kong schools in the increasing numbers for which there is demand, and also graduates of Chinese Universities for work in secondary schools in China. It has been brought to our notice that the Chinese Ministry of Education is concerned that English should be well taught in the schools in its charge. It is a reasonable hope that Chinese graduates would not only be trained in English phonetics and in a modern approach to language teaching, but would gain that appreci-tion of English ideas and habits of thought that would give vitality to their teaching. It will be for the Senate to consider whether the normal one year course for a Diploma ought not to be lengthened to two years for graduates who desire and can give the time to widen their knowledge of English literature and thought.
A
12. The training for other school subjects will of necessity depend for its effectiveness upon the aid and stimulus that will come from such members of the Departments in the Faculties of Arts and Science and have an alert interest in teaching method in their own subjects.
13. The other post-graduate Department proposed is one in Social Studies. Hong Kong graduates in Social Science would be admirably prepared for this, but it shoull not be confined to them. The groups of studies proposed include practical field studies and research in Government and Administration, and in contemporary social and economic conditions with special refereme to China and Hong Kong. In the scheme which we envisage, the chief emphasis would fall on actual working institutions without neglect of the principles embodied therein. The staff would
be that of the Department of Docial Sciences in the first instance.
GENERAL.
14. It is important that all these studies, but especially those in the social Sciences should be pursued with complete objectivity and that there should be no attempt at political control of the expression of opinion by the staff in their lectures and writings. If that is impossible, it would be better to have no Social Studies and, indeed, no University.
15. The staff that we would suggest as the minimum capable of carrying out this scheme in the Faculty, keeping in mind the
/obligation
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