RAS-2000 — Page 251

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A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong

But let's start at the beginning. How did it all commence? First, though it is interesting to recall that that great man, Henry Ford, once said:

"History is bunk. We don't want tradition.

We want to live in the present,

And the only history that is worth a tinker's damn

Is the history that we make today."

Those words of Henry Ford contrast markedly with those of Winston Churchill, who is purported to have told an American boy entering a British public school:

"Young man, study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statehood."

Early days

So, as a great admirer of Sir Winston Churchill, I accept his words rather than those of Henry Ford. And if we delve deeply, history tells us that in Hong Kong, as early as 1863, vocational training in carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, printing, bookbinding, and gardening was being provided for 12 boys. Numbers later reached 30. These classes were held in a Chinese building under a Father Raimondi, not far from the Roman Catholic Mission House, which then stood in Wellington Street, in what used to be called the City of Victoria.

You can almost picture the carpentry classes using the same kind of Chinese tools and labour-saving stools cum-benches which we still employ today. With the latter, one can hold a piece of timber being worked with one's foot and plane downhill, which makes good "work-study" sense. As a footnote, I recall one of our carpentry instructors at the old Technical College always using a Chinese plane when he wanted to get an especially good finish on a piece of timber. There is a lot to be said for Chinese tools.