LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES
89
The education of the people was not calculated to improve matters, either over their own disputes or in taking a sensible attitude towards trouble from outside. I have already mentioned the educational process by which the literati obtained their degrees. The great majority of the people, by contrast, were illiterate and superstitious and for the most part were bereft of any formal education. Cattle tending and crop watching came first: schooling a bad second. Education was the result of parental initiative and favourable circumstance. As I have already said, there appear to have been schools in the larger villages, but they were private and were usually attended by a small proportion of village children, those whose fathers were willing and could afford to educate them. At Ho Chung near Sai Kung, for instance, a large village of nearly a hundred families in 1898, the number of children in the school, which was held in the schoolmaster's private house, was around twenty. The children came and went, some spending three years there, others less, and none but the brightest spent longer. Many children received no education at all, since in addition to the cost of tuition, parents had to pay for books, desk, pen, ink, and stationery. Study consisted of portions of the Four Books and Five Classics and reading, recitation, and dictation based upon them. The number of characters learned at school was limited, and the classical terms and characters learned by rote were not always of much use in daily life in the country, whilst practical subjects such as arithmetic and geography were unknown. Only clever children with well-off and determined parents continued their education and, by going mostly to Canton, learned something of the outside world.
Life was therefore constricted and uncertain, dependent as it was to a great degree on a lack of natural disasters, and the epidemics which invariably followed in their wake, and sometimes did not require such prompting. There is a catalogue of such things in the District History.12 Life was also essentially local and personal. It was not therefore surprising that disputes over land, whether rents or taxes, were considered of great moment in the minds of the people. There is evidence for this throughout the New Territory, where court cases relating to land were sometimes held to be of sufficient importance to warrant their being inscribed on stone tablets inside the more important temples.
LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES
89
The education of the people was not calculated to improve matters, either over their own disputes or in taking a sensible attitude towards trouble from outside. I have already mentioned the educational process by which the literati obtained their degrees. The great majority of the people, by contrast, were illiterate and superstitious and for the most part were bereft of any formal education. Cattle tending and crop watching came first: schooling a bad second. Education was the result of parental initiative and favourable circumstance. As I have already said, there appear to have been schools in the larger villages, but they were private and were usually attended by a small proportion of village children, those whose fathers were willing and could afford to educate them. At Ho Chung near Sai Kung. for instance, a large village of nearly a hundred families in 1898, the number of children in the school, which was held in the schoolmaster's private house, was around twenty. The children came and went, some spending three years there, others less, and none but the brightest spent longer. Many children received no education at all, since in addition to the cost of tuition, parents had to pay for books. desk, pen, ink and stationery. Study consisted of portions of the Four Books and Five Classics and reading, recitation and dictation based upon them. The number of characters learned at school was limited and the classical terms and characters learned by rote were not always of much use in daily life in the country, whilst practical subjects such as arithmetic and geography were unknown. Only clever children with well-off and determined parents continued their education and, by going mostly to Canton, learned something of the outside world."
Life was therefore constricted and uncertain, dependent as it was to a great degree on a lack of natural disasters, and the epidemics which invariably followed in their wake, and sometimes did not require such prompting. There is a catalogue of such things in the District History.12 Life was also essentially local and personal. It was not therefore surprising that disputes over land, whether rents or taxes, were considered of great moment in the minds of the people. There is evidence for this throughout the New Territory where court cases relating to land were sometimes held to be of sufficient importance to warrant their being inscribed on stone tablets inside the more important temples
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.