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Appendix 2.

The Education of Chinese Children in Hongkong.

In this Colony there is an Education Department well fitted to deal with the education of all classes of children. Schools are provided for many classes, and though from time to time complaints may have arisen about individual schools, the general work of the schools under Government direction is satisfactory.

From the reports of the Director of Education it is evident that during the past decade there has been very considerable advance in many directions, and a larger number of children have come under the scheme of education arranged for by the Department.

All schools in Victoria and Kowloon are registered, and thus it becomes in- creasingly possible for the Director of Education to control this branch of the Colony's industry.

The Committee of enquiry into the economic resources of the Colony does not seem to have taken up the theory that child life is potentially one of the principal economic resources. An educated people will progress, an uneducated people will deteriorate.

It is very evident that there is not yet adequate provision for the education of all children, because children swarm in our streets, even at times when they ought to be in school, and the question of the education of these children is one that is constantly in the minds of some people.

An examination into the state of affairs in regard to the children, reveals the fact that child labour is being exploited far beyond what should be allowed in a modern city. In factory and workshop, business house and office, on steamers and launches, in domestic service and such casual labour as burden bearing, there are multitudes of children employed, and besides these many may be seen playing in the streets, often gambling, or going about in bands, birdnesting, or insect hunting, or for other purposes, and incidentally many of them are probably developing into the future criminal classes, and the inmates of our prisons. Already they have a keen eye for the police and the detective.

It is therefore, evident that the Education Department should be further ex- tended, and larger powers should be given to the Director of Education to compel the attendance of children in schools provided under Government supervision. At the discretion of the Director of Education, perhaps in conjunction with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, certain children in special cases might be exempted from full attendance at school, but, in such cases, guarantees should be secured that such children are not allowed to work so many hours a day that they would be too tired to benefit from classes of instruction, which they should be compelled to attend.

If all children were immediately withdrawn from their present employment. it might be a hardship to the employers, the children and their parents, but these cases could be met by the permission of the Director of Education.

A question that will naturally arise is that of the cost of such education to the Colony, and that no doubt is an important one, but the financial problem is not impossible of solution. In all probability the result to the Colony in its developed resources would far outweigh the small amount spent on this most important project.

It

The Education Department at present spends large sums on English and Anglo-Chinese education, but these would not enter, at least for the present, into the calculation, as the education required now is elementary Chinese education. appears from the report for 1918 that the amount spent per head on this type of education was less than ten dollars, and if the number of children of school age