[
    {
        "id": 209234,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 137,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "JUAN YÜAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 123\n\ncome about by which most of the Shui-sheung-yan under the age of 35 now have the choices which ability to read and write gives.\n\nHow important a part is education of the F.M.O.'s activity? Its official report rather downplays it - a neat little diagram in 1979 showed no more than 2.2% of its expenditure going on education. If, however, one adds in the government's subsidy to the F.M.O. schools to both the receipts and expenditure, one sees that in fact 22.7% of the money actually spent by F.M.O. officials is spent on education; it would not be unfair to say that it represents nearly a quarter of the department's activity.\n\nThe Comparison with European Gypsies\n\nIt is thus a serious and sustained effort, and much more comprehensive, than any provision for Gypsies in Western Europe, where illiteracy rates remain high, and probably than Eastern Europe also, where Gypsies are more likely to take advantage from ordinary schools.\n\nIt is perhaps possible to make a direct comparison, in terms of the size of population catered for, between the Hong Kong F.M.O. schools and the largest project for Gypsy children in England, one jointly financed by eleven West Midlands Local Education Authorities, which replaced previous charity-financed projects in 1973/74. The West Midlands projects had in 1974 a target of up to 1,500 children from nomadic families estimated not to be receiving adequate education, with, by rough rule of thumb estimate, as many Gypsy children again already settled, as a secondary target. The F.M.O. schools have over 3,600 children attending them. There are many differences, however.\n\nAlthough the West Midlands Gypsy population is probably more distinct culturally from the majority population than are the Hong Kong Shui-sheung-yan, the West Midlands scheme is more flexibly integrated to the general school system. Although several of the West Midlands teachers work in separate units, most become additional resources in ordinary schools receiving Gypsy children. The West Midlands project has never had more than 16 teachers. The F.M.O. schools in comparison, have over 130 teachers, and have no declared intention of integrating their organisation into the normal school system at the primary school level, despite the shrinkage of the fishing fleet, and the lessening of social prejudice against fisherfolk since the founding of the system in 1947. As we have noted, the fifteenth school, on Apleichau was opened only in 1980.",
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    {
        "id": 209237,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 140,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "126\n\nTA ACTON\n\n+\n\nan oppressed and pariah people without social status.\n\n20\n\nIt must be emphasized that this picture of an ethnic group with a long history was not the image of a few scholars only. It was the socially constructed reality of pre-1939 China. Even though since the mid-1950s modern scholarship and the views of the officials most directly concerned, both in the People's Republic of China21 and in Hong Kong have demolished it as though it had never been, it lingers among ordinary people and even some British officials not directly concerned.\n\n22\n\n23\n\n26\n\nFrom the early 1950s one British social-anthropologist, Barbara Ward, has carried out recurrent field-work on a community of the kind that used to be called 'Tanka', on the little island of Kau Sai.29 She found that with minor exceptions they were ethnically Cantonese, with similar models of the world, marriage and death practices, and religious beliefs to other Han Chinese.24 Other scholars endorsed her view; even their language, apart from an enormous, specialised fishing vocabulary was said to be virtually the same as ordinary Cantonese. In fact, Hong Kong fishing people in the larger ports can tell each others' origins partly by the fact that they speak with different, local coastal accents - for example, a 'Yeung Kong' accent.;\n\n26\n\n27\n\nOfficial policy in Hong Kong also now sees the boat-people as an occupational, and not an ethnic group, whereas the British Government in Britain sees the Gypsies now as an ethnic and not an occupational group, both viewpoints having reversed themselves over the past thirty years.\n\n28\n\nIt should be emphasized, though, that these perceptions of ethnicity, whatever relation they may have to the form and organisation of education (and the vigour with which it is pursued), do not usually affect the content of special educational provision by the state, for either group. Both the curriculum and language remains that of the ordinary school, and the amount of exotic cultural material included is meagre. Despite some pioneering work by voluntary projects, the Gypsy dialects are not used in the West Midlands Local Authority projects, and \"Gypsy material\" is limited to commercially published books featuring Gypsies, and the occasional pasted cardboard caravan. Equally, in the F.MO. schools in Hong Kong, one might find general readers, with a carefully laudatory couple of pages on the brave fishermen, or, once or twice, beautiful collections of strange fish and other marine creatures in jars, that have been contributed by parents; but the main task was to give them the same education other Chinese children received.\n\n29",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209249,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 152,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "138 \n\nTA ACTON \n\nindividuals, though rare in Hong Kong, might find their way through the system more easily if the F.M.O. schools were to become part of the general educational system, which they now so closely resemble. \n\nConclusion \n\nSpeaking at the closing ceremony of the 12th annual summer camp of the F.M.O. schools, at Wukaisha Youth Village, the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Hon. J.M. Riddell-Swan J.P. said: \n\n\"There are clear advantages in completing secondary education, whether a child wishes to follow a career in the fishing industry or ashore. In common with other industries, fishing and fishing vessel technology are advancing rapidly, and the well-educated fisherman will obviously be able to take better advantage of this and so increase family prosperity.' \n\n* 46 \n\nThe two major themes of this education policy appear in this speech: its benefit to the efficiency of the fishing industry, and its contribution to slimming it down (“a career in the fishing industry or ashore”). It is noteworthy, however, that the speaker applies these themes specifically to secondary education. The battle for primary education has already been won (give or take the odd thirteen-year-old who suddenly appears at a remote school, refusing to admit to any previous schooling; but this happens far less often than in Gypsy school projects.). \n\nThis is an indication of how much more educational policies for the Shui-sheung-yan in Hong Kong have \"achieved\" than those for Gypsies in Britain. There has been a much greater penetration by the schools system, and by the dominant attitudes of industrial society to education among the Shui-sheung-yan than among the Gypsies. This paper quoted the SOCO study which showed that 32.5 percent of 263 poor Shui-sheung-yan respondents declared they wanted no more than primary education for their children. If such a question were asked of a sample of nomadic Gypsies in Britain, the figure would be nearer 90 percent, one would guess. \n\nIn Hong Kong progress towards better education for the Shui-sheung-yan is general throughout the territory. The 11 British West Midlands Local Education Authorities, with their claims of achieving 800-1,300 children attending out of their estimated 1,500–2,000 constituency, are merely the brightest spot in Britain. Many other local education authorities are doing nothing, and the Department of \n\n47",
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    {
        "id": 209252,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 155,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n141\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Inside front cover, programme of the F.M.O. schools Joint Graduation Ceremony, 1979. It is to be sung to the tune \"Walk, for the Night is coming\". This translation was by the writer and Mrs. Belinda Chiu-Bing Acton.\n\n2 F.M.O. Annual Report 1978-9, p. 7\n\n3 F.M.O. Schools Summer Camp Programme, 1980\n\n4 T. Acton, Gypsy Politics and Social Change, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974) pp. 170-1\n\n6 T. Acton 'Educating the children of herdsmen and fishermen' in China Now No. 89, April 1980\n\np. 28\n\n8 A.J.S. Lack, \"The Yaumatei Typhoon Shelter\" in the JHKBRAS (1973)\n\n7 F.M.O. Annual Report 1978-9, p.3\n\n• Ibid.\n\nBarbara E. Ward. \"Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: Their post-peasant economy\" in M. Freedman ed. Social Organisation: Essays presented to Raymond Firth, (London, 1967) pp. 271-2.\n\n10 Wu Yuey Len \"Life and Culture of the Shanam Boat People\" in the Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly, 9:4 (1937) pp. 837-46.\n\n12\n\n11 F.M.O. Annual Report 1978-9, p. 12 and Appendix 1.\n\nDick Worrall Gypsy Education Van Leer/Walsall Council for Community Relations (Walsall, 1979) ch 5,9.\n\n13 West Midlands Education Authorities Education Service for Travelling Children Gypsy Education in the West Midlands, (Wolverhampton, 1976) p. 25.\n\n14 F.M.O. Schools Joint Graduation Ceremony programme, 1979, p. 3.\n\n16 Romani, i.e. descended from a group that left India at the end of the first millennium AD, and has since spread over much of the world, retaining a sanskritic language, Romanes, often in a form creolised with the language of the host country.\n\n16 T. Acton, Gypsy Politics and Social Change, ch. 7,8,15,16,17.\n\n18\n\n17 T. Acton, \"The Ethnic Composition of British Romani Populations\" in Roma, Journal of the Indian Institute of Romani Studies, 4:4 (1979) p. 48.\n\n18\n\nS.F. Balfour \"Hong Kong before the British\" in the JHKBRAS 10 (1970) reprinted from the Tien Hsia Monthly, (Shanghai), vols. 11 & 12.\n\n19 Wu Yeuy Len, op.cit. and also \"The Boat people of Shanam\" in the Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly 9:3 (1936)\n\n20 Ho Ke-en, \"A Study of the Boat People\" in the Journal of Oriental Studies (1965) pp. 1-41.\n\n21 T. Acton \"The Dissolution of the Tanka image”, to be published in China",
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