Sessional_Paper_1902 — Page 481

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a temporary necessity. Good Chinese scholars who know no English are plenti- ful. Chinese who combine a competent knowledge of English and their own language are hardly to be found.

39. As regards the organisation of the school the following recommendations are submitted:

(A.) The duties of the Staff should be so re-arranged, that every Division of every Class may receive instruction in English from an English master for not less than one and a half hours a day.

The assumption that Chinese masters of the quality at present obtainable are competent to teach the beginnings of English is unwarranted, and results in stock mispronunciations and mistakes of idiom being handed down from generation to generation. The Preparatory and Lower Schools are at present taught English almost entirely by Chinese masters, some of whom are pupil teachers from the up- per Classes.

(B.) The English masters should each be in charge of a Class: the Divisions of Classes should be each under a Chinese master subordinate to the English Class Master.

No Class Master should be in charge of more than three Divisions, and no Division should contain more than fifty scholars reckoning by the

average attendance.

Thus every unit of fifty scholars would receive not less than one and a half hours' instruction daily from an Englishman, and would for the rest of the school time be under a Chinese Division Master subordinate to the English Class Master.

(C.) The salaries of the Chinese Staff are inadequate and should be increased.

The present scale of pay gives $1,138 a year to the First Assistant Master; $898 to the Second Assistant Master; and so in a descending scale to the Tenth, who receives $328. These rates are not sufficient to attract suitable men even with the present modest requirements, much less masters capable of teaching translation from and into Chinese.

If at any future time it shall become possible to find Chinese masters compe- tent to teach the Chinese Written Language and English Subjects without the assistance and supervision of an English Class Master, large reductions in the cost of the Staff will become possible. Such masters would be well worth the salaries now given to First Class Translators in the Colony, viz., $1,500 to $2,400 a year. Meanwhile the rate of pay of the Division Masters should be increased to the standard which experience has shewn to be necessary in other Government Departments.

(D.) Pupil Teachers should be organized under a practical system. They

should receive instruction from a qualified Normal Master.

The presentpupil teachers" are pupil teachers in name only. They should be bound for a term of years, and receive instruction daily, out of school hours, both in general subjects and in the science of teaching.

(E.) Subjects like Algebra, Euclid, the more advanced parts of Arithmetic, Mensuration, and Book-keeping, which are taught more as a mental exercise than for practical purposes, should not be taught to boys who have not attained to a thorough knowledge of English. Western Know- ledge on the other hand should be taught from the lowest Class upwards.

Theoretically no doubt, and if properly taught, these subjects are an excellent mental training: but as a matter of fact Chinese boys, with their strong bias towards memorising, learn these subjects by rote or by formula more often than otherwise.

$85