CO129-623-6 Education Department- annual report 1-5-1950 - 31-12-1950 — Page 52

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HONG KONG

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for speed or expansion. The practice of these modern skills opens up a new future to Solomon Island youth.

(3) Another most pleasing characteristic of the education in these small residential schools is the acceptance of the principle that a child has the right to a free use of his leisure something so sadly lacking in many places as Professor Read and I remarked after our visit in 1947 to Central Africa. It was most comforting to discover that in both boys and girls schools, the mission authorities were allowing them to make their own play huts or hides-out, to do their own cooking, to engage in their own leisure time activities and fish and hunt and swim provided that they observed generously planned bounds. I would not like to give any impression that there is a standard of education in the Islands but there are interesting experiments from which standards can grow which at the same time have much to teach more progressive territories.

The contrast between the British Solomon Islands Protectorate and Hong Kong is about as great as any that the Empire could afford. Here in this compact little territory consisting of the island and the small leased section of mainland is crowded a population of more than 2 million of whom over half are floating and ever changing. It is said that over 2 million a year actually come in and go out of Hong Kong, more than the population of the territory at any one time. This overcrowded and ever changing population creates a singular number of problems of which the problems of education are only a small section, but serious enough fur all that. 125,000 children are in schools of one kind and another but schools include a greater number of private schools than those which are either government or grant-aided. One out of every two of the child population probably gets some kind of education, and it is reasonable to believe that most of the children of bcra-fide Hong Kong residents are in school.

1.

The overwhelming impression of Hong Kong is one of exhilerating confidence and energy. The degree of rehabilitation already achieved is remarkable and it is most encouraging to see new buildings in permanent materials shooting up both as houses, shops, schools, factories and hospitals. Just one example shows the best of this achievement. A new Junior Middle Public School, that is a school in which the Government and the village elders contribute dollar for dollar was put up for £12,000 in 12 weeks for some 500 children and consisted of a really big and most useful hall, class rooms, common rooms and offices. Those who plan can see their plans realised within reasonable time and that in itself produces confidence and further plans.

2. Hong Kong makes provision for the training of teachers in 2 training colleges. The Northcote Training College in the heart of Hong Kong is a building designed specially for the job but on a site so restricted that expansion for out-door activities is virtually impossible. This College has an important role to play in the building up of a cadre of teachers able to bring to Hong Kong the most modern educational developments for a highly urbanised society. The Rural Training College in the New Territories has had an interesting and slightly chequered career as far as its buildings are concerned but it is now happily, though I understand temporarily, housed in a rented Chinese private house with delightful gardens and a hard court which lends itself admirably to out-door physical activities. Whereas the language of instruction in the Northcote Training College is English, in the Rural Training College it is in Cantonese. This is a co-educational College and the students are cheerful, alert and enterprising, judging from the little I saw of their work and achievements. The most outstanding feature of the organisation of the Rural College is the Cooperative. Each student contributed 10 dollars and stock was bought, pigs, goats, ducks, hens, etc. and within a year a dividend of 10 dollars had been

I understand that paid and the stock had multiplied out of all recognition. students on completing their training are instituting similar cocperative schemes in their village schools.

3. Pressure on school accommodation is so great that many schools have to be used for double sessions.

This of course

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