664249-1887-Annual-Report-on-Education-1886 — Page 7

SUPPLEMENT TO THE HONGKONG GOVTM GAZETTE OF 14TH MAY, 1887. 541

continues, as before, to distinguishitself by combining with solid teaching in the ordinary Standards also the special subjects of physicl geography, algebra and euclid, good results being exhibited in every Standard. St. Joseph's College has made a new move, in the year 1886, which is a move in the right direction. Whilst formerly teaching Portuguese and. Chinese youths in separate classes, an arrangement has been made to confine this separate system to the lower Standards, and to move all Chinese scholars who have passed Standard III into the European Division where now Chinese and Portuguese youths are taught side by side. By this arrangement, the Chinese gain the advantage of association with Portuguese who arebetter speakers of English, and the Portuguese gain at the same time the stimulus arising from emuation. The consequence of this measure was also a considerable increase of numbers in the Chinese Division. At the annual examination, this Chinese Division did very well in all subjects, and in some classes the English reading was exceptionally good. As to the European Division of St. Joseph's Cdege, there has been manifest progress in all directions. Quarterly examinations were introduced in 188, in addition to the weekly examinations, and the organisation, method and discipline of this Division now leave little to be desired. The boys in Standard III were somewhat weak in grammar, and thce of Standard V in composition (principally in consequence of the admixture of Chinese), but the composition in Standard VI was very good on the whole, and so also the arithmetic in all Standards. The cheerful spirit animating all the classes of the European Division is, side by side with the strict iscipline of the whole School, a very noticeable feature of St. Joseph's College.

17. The needle-work examination as conducted in 1886 on the plan resorted to in 1885 and explained in my last Annual Report. The needle-work submitted for examination was done in my presence and then forwarded, together with a Schedule detailing the particulars of each child, to a Lady who chose her own Committee andhdjudged the merits of each piece of work. This Committee reports having observed real progress made since the previous year. The Committee find that most teachers have been very successful, butthat some seem hardly qualified for their position as needle- work teachers. In some cases the Committee were sorely puzzled, the needle-work done in the presence of the examiner being bad and dty while the other portion of the work was good and clean. It is possible that this may be account for by assuming that the children were nervous in the presence of the examiner, but even thatdoes not fully explain the very great difference noticed in 'some specimens of needle-work. The thnks of the Government are again due to the Lady and her Committee who conducted this needle-workxamination with such painstaking minuteness and scrupu- lous impartiality.

18. The educational movement of theColony received a considerable stimulus in the year 1886 by the introduction of the system of the 'ambridge Local Examinations and by the arrangements made for establishing a Medical School in canection with the Alice Memorial Hospital, admission to which may soon become a keenly contested pize, like the Scholarships of the Colony, if the students receive regular and progressive teaching. Wh the increase of stimulants tending to promote mental exertion, it behoves educationists also to kee an eye on the encroaches which stimulated mental exertion is, especially in this climate, labic to take upon health, and to discern at an early stage what children are and what children are not fitted fc the severe and protracted exertion of the mind called forth by a multiplication of competitive examirtions. In this Colony, where there is hardly any sphere for the industrial education of the childre of European and Portuguese residents, the tendency which Mr. GLADSTONE has described as the filt of modern education, is specially strong, viz., to overcrowd the professions that depend upon the md as distinguished from those dependent on the hand. There is serious risk in trying might and maito fit young people for the learned and clerical professions that they may be spoiled for handicraft nly in order to discover too late that they have not the natural gifts indispensable to success in the ore intellectual order.

19. I enclose the usual Tables, I to XVI, containg the Educational Statistics for the year 1886.

I havthe honour to be,

The Honourable F. STEWART, LL.D.,

Colonial Secretary,

Sir,

Yar most obedient Servant,

E. J. EITEL, A.M., PH.D.,

Inspector of Schools.