687817-1878-Prize-Day-Proceedings-School- — Page 5

THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 2 TH JANUARY, 1878.

29

knowledge whatever of the English language. These three Chinese teachers spoke no English; and of the pupils in that particular class-room not one could speak English. These pupils, I was glad to see, were reading the Chinese classics. During the whole of the year we have had six hundred and ten pupils attending the school. I asked Mr. STEWART this morning how many of these were able to speak English, and he said under fifty or sixty, and this small number very imperfectly. Now, these are grave facts. They point to that which Mr. STEWART wishes to the desirability of our endeavouring to keep the pupils a little longer in the school. In this English Colony we must not be satisfied with 60 out of 600 being able to speak English in our principal Government school, and that imperfectly. Afte Hongkong has enjoyed thirty years of Colonial Government and large annual grants for education, I expected to find the new generation with something like a knowledge of English. The system unfortunately is that after learning perhaps only what we might call a smattering of our language, a few of the pupils leave the school and go at once into native business houses, whilst nine tenths leave the Government school entirely ignorant of the English language. I believe Mr. STEWART will be able to suggest to me means by which we might induce the pupils to devote a longer period to their school studies. I do not mean a longer period each day, but a greater number of years. But it also suggests something else. With whom do those boys that I now see before me mix after they leave this school-how many English speaking associates or friends have they? Very, very few. In this Colony--and in that respect it is unlike Singapore

don't meet with many Chinese who in the ordinary course of business can speak or write English. I think one of our principal duties as educationists should be to increase the number of English speaking and English writing Chinese inhabitants of Hongkong. We must endeavour to do that not only by means of this valuable institution, but also by the other educational agencies in this Colony.

you

Now, Mr. STEWART has placed in my hands a list of the one hundred and forty-eight pupils of this school who left the school during last year, and I find on glancing through it that many of the pupils left the school to obtain employment in life. I find the first pupil is now a master in this very school, another pupil is a clerk to one of our leading merchants, another pupil is now employed in a piece goods shop, another pupil has become a compradore. I see another pupil has become an assistant in his father's business. Some of them have gone into business on their own account. One of them, I see, has become a medical student. Well, I read that with great interest, but on looking a little closer at the list I see it is not a Chinese boy who has become a medical student, and this brings me to a suggestion I have to make to Mr. STEWART. I should like very much to ask Mr. STEWART whether it might be possible in connection with this school to do anything in the way of promoting medical education among the Chinese. (Applause.) We all know that there is in this Colony a large and excellent institution called the Tung Wah Hospital, supported and managed by the leading Chinese residents. Can we in any way combine clinical teaching which might be received in that establishment with a little instruction in physiology in this school? Will it be possible for Mr. STEWART, having consulted with the Colonial Surgeon and with some of our medical friends and the committee of that institution, will it be possible, I say, for Mr. STEWART to form a scheme by which we might have some young Chinese trained to a knowledge of European medicine? If he succeeds in putting a plan, a practical plan, before me, I certainly will consult my honourable friends on the Council as to providing funds for carrying it into effect.- (Applause).

you come

I am bound, as the Governor of this Colony, to say that there is one object of public instruction that above all others should engage my attention. Nothing is now so universally recognised as this fact, that education is the greatest enemy to crime, and therefore it is my duty, and has been since I arrived here, to consider how far our educational system co-operates with the Government in the repression and in the prevention of crime. On this subject, I noticed a paragraph in the last report of my friend Mr. STEWART which is undoubtedly a very serious one. At the end of his report he mentions the fact that whilst there were 26,247 children in the Colony, only 4,640 were attending school. Deducting those under the age of six, there are, he says, no less than twelve thousand children of age to attend school who are attending no school whatever. Where are they? Well, as you go along to East Point, you have an opportunity of seeing some of these little boys. They are running about in the streets, picking up bits of coal or other articles that may fall from the bags that are carried from the stores to the ships. They are the very class a Government is bound to educate. As along here, you see numbers of them also. I say it is my first duty to endeavour with Mr. STEWART to educate as many of these uneducated children as we can. (Applause). I therefore contemplate consulting my Council upon the establishment in this Colony of an industrial school, and of extending the reformatory system, such as it is at this moment. It is our duty to do so, a duty we owe not only to the children, but a duty we also owe to the tax-payers of this Colony, to prevent our juvenile population from growing up into a criminal class. It is our duty on all hands to endeavour to diminish that serious number of twelve thousand which Mr. STEWART mentions. (Applause). I may tell you of my own experience in the very last Colony I had the honour of governing--I was looking only a few weeks ago over a parliamentary return laid before the House of Commons, in which it is said by the legislature of that Colony, that one in eighteen of the population are attending school. Well, in this Colony the number is only, as far as I have been able to ascertain, one in fifty-two, so that there is here a very large margin for educational work. We have much to do, and crowded as this hall is to-day, we must have many halls like it filled before the public instruction of Hongkong will be on the