Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 219

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The University Employment Committee.

The repre-

the school curriculum. We are not depreciating the vital importance of linguistic training, nor criticising the school curriculum. We have already set out (see paragraph 4 above) the syllabus in Chinese Language and Literature in which it has been always obligatory on every Chinese student, as a condition of entering the University, to qualify. Whether this syllabus represents the minimum knowledge of his language and literature which every educated Chinese, whatever he is going to do in life should possess, is a question which it is beyond our scope to investigate, but it does occur to us that a Chinese boy who wanted to be an engineer can not with the demands of the University matriculation ever before him, have had very much time during his school course for such subjects as applied mathematics, drawing and manual instruction. And the handicap thus involved was and is the more serious, because, as has so often been said before, there are almost entirely lacking in the Chinese boy of the social and economic status from which the University recruits its students that passion for things mechanical which is so marked a characteristic of some European and American boys. If a stray Chinese boy had had this taste, he would not easily have found opportunities for developing it. It is quite a common thing to come across a Britisher of the middle or upper economic strata of society whose work is in no way mechanical but who has fitted up a smail workshop in his home. Such a thing is practically unknown among the Chinese-apart from wireless enthusiasts.

36. In 1927 the University Employment Committee was confronted with the decline in the number of students in the Engineering Faculty generally and with the fact that the special fourth year courses in mechanical and electrical engineering were not attracting students. The Managing Director of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co. Ltd., suggested on this occasion that the University's Engineering Faculty was starting at the wrong end; that instead of taking Chinese of the middle and upper classes and trying to turn them into practical mechanical engineers, the Faculty should aim at attracting selected apprentices with a view to giving them an education calculated to make them capable of being efficient engineers to whom more respon- sible executive work could be entrusted. This view was accepted by the Employment Committee and the Senate of the University was then approached with a view to seeing whether the Matriculation Examination could be simplified for these selected ap- prentices. The Senate agreed to modify the Matriculation Examination to this extent -namely that an apprentice who had qualified in English and mathematics could take the other subjects necessary for a matriculation certificate during his University course, but the Senate found itself unable to modify, in favour of the apprentice, the obligation to qualify in Chinese Language and Literature, except in so far as that subject might be taken by the apprentice during the engineering course--which is in fact a concession generally allowed to all students entering the Engineering Faculty. No apprentice was forthcoming and, the matter having in the following year come before the Employment Committee again, that Committee decided to ask the Vice Chancellor to approach Government with the request that they would establish and maintain, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Dockyards, à technical school which would organize and conduct off-shift classes for apprentices. Nothing has come of this proposal so far as Government are concerned. As has been explained above the off-shift instruction of apprentices in dockyards is limited to the English and technical classes which are now working at the Taikoo Yard and to the Hop Ying English Evening Free School at the Kowloon Docks.

37. The position remains practically unchanged but more protests are in the sentations of field. We have already referred (para. 22 above) to the letter which Messrs. John Messrs. John Swire & Sons Ltd., addressed to His Excellency the Governor in 1929. Their point is Sons Ltd. that the University trained engineer is of little use until he has gone through the

Swire &

shops in addition to the University course; that the present system of technical education in Hong Kong which is practically confined to the University requires too high a standard of general education and is too limited in its scope, that by starting from the top it is ineffective, so far as practical training is concerned, and that the system requires to be reorganized. The line of reorganization suggested is the estab- lishment and maintenance by Government of a technical school near one of the big docks where technical engineering education could be given to selected apprentices after work hours. These evening classes were definitely to lead the most promising apprentices into the Engineering Faculty, while to those who did not come up to that standard there would be good and useful careers available. The firm expressed the