OIT.
THE HONGKONG
Government Gazette.
Published by Suthority.
VICTORIA, SATURDAY, 24TH MARCH, 1866.
VOL. XII.
A
No. 13.
No. 12.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.
His Excellency SIR RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL, C.B., Governor and Commander-in-Chief as been pleased to appoint LIEUTENANT HOPTON SCOTT STEWART, of Her Majesty's 11th Regiment of Foot, to be Aide-de-Camp and Private Secretary, from the 12th instant inclusive.
By Command,
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 13th March, 1866.
GOVERNMENT HOUSE, 20th March, 1866.
W. T. MERCER, Colonial Secretary.
NOTICE is hereby given that LADY MACDONNELL'S hours for reception of Visitors are from half-past 2, till half-pest 4, P.M.
HOPTON SCOTT STEWART, 11th Regiment, A.D.C., and Private Secretary,
No. 43.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.
The following Annual Report on the State of the Government Schools in Hongkong for the Year 1865, is published for general information.
By Order,
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 19th March, 1866. .
W. T. MERCER, Colonial Secretary.
VICTORIA, HONGKONG, 12th February, 1866. SIR.I have the honour of presenting to you the Annual Report on the Government Schools in this Colony for the Fear 1805.
In reporting on the Central School it unfortunately happens that I have to review the principal part of my own duties. My report, in this respect, will not therefore, assume the form it would have done had I been differently situated.
The instruction given in the School, I need hardly state, still of an elementary character. Nothing has yet been tempted beyond the most common branches of an English education as taught in the National Schools at home.
The Seliool-books used are those of the Commissioners for National Education in Ireland. Complaints are not unfre- atly made at home against the series, and graver objections might be made to their suitability for the Chinese; but, with their faults, it would be difficult to find others which could advantageously be substituteil for them. To have proper Mool-books would entail the necessity of compiling a series for the special use of the School. The modes of life and the s of thought in the West are so different from those that prevail in the East that a lesson which would be simplicity itself a class of English children is beset with numberless difficulties to a class of Chinese-difliculties, too, which tax all the Powers of the teacher to obviate or explain.
As to the progress of the boys I have every reason to be satisfied. Up to a certain period it is, in fact, remarkable. During two or three first years of their stay at School they advance rapidly in reading, spelling, writing, and the simpler rules of Athmetic. After that, progress is not so marked; and, out of a class of thirty, not more than five or six, perhaps, attain great degree of proficiency in those subjects which depend more on the independent exercise of their own intellectual alties than those just referred to.
Translation and Composition are subjects of considerable difficulty, arising from the great disparity between the English the Chinese idiom. The first or highest class have translated into English Esop's Fables, by Thom, and the First Hook Mencius. If a stranger were to examine them on these books he would at first he struck with the translation, but more enquiry would show him that memory had been cultivated at the expense of judgment; and, if he were to set them a age they had not previously read, he would immediately discover where the weak point lay. Nothing seeras, at first sight,
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