Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 227

216

The Hong Kong Dockyard

ious mechanic out of a boy who only joined the ranks of industrial workers, because he has failed to become a clerk.

=

67. We have already referred to the apprentice systems now working with the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Company and the Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Com- Apprentices. pany. On the 1st June, 1931, there were 434 apprentices on the payrolls of the two firms. These apprentices were distributed as follows:-Taikoo Dockyard: Brass- finishers 20, Coppersmiths 12, Plumbers 18, Fitters 58, Turners 24, Electricians 9, Patternmakers 3, Joiners 22, Carpenters 12 Total 178. The Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock: Brassfinishers 6, Turners 51, Fitters 147, Electricians 24, Coppersmiths 26, Patternmakers 2-Total 256. We have explained that many of these apprentices enter upon their indentures practically illiterate and though we recognize their enthusiasm for education and improvement, we realize how little an evening class can do for a boy of 16 or more who after his day's work brings to such a class a mind almost entirely uneducated and hands and eyes almost wholly untrained. The Manager of the Taikoo Docks reports that owing to their lack of elementary education and ignorance of English some of his apprentices who are attending the Technical Class held at the Taikoo Docks are wanting in enthusiasm in tackling technical subjects, whereas they are all keen to learn English. We think that something should be done for all appren- tices; but though the raising of the general intelligence of all engineering workers is part of our aim, it is not the whole of it. We want to produce leading hands, junior foremen who can develop into foremen and draftsmen and we want in this way to create a class from which there may occasionally emerge a specially brilliant youth who can be sent on to the University.

Groups A and B.

68. It appears from the statement made to us by the Manager of the Taikoo Docks that the boys whom his firm takes on annually as apprentices have mostly been to a lower primary school-many of them have doubtless attended the Quarry Bay Lower Primary School-and have filled the interval between their leaving school and their joining the works as apprentices, by doing odd jobs for their parents or in some form of casual labour. These boys are frequently illiterate or practically so when they become apprentices. Many of them do not know the most common Chinese characters. Of English they are nearly always quite ignorant nor have their calculating capacity or their ability to draw (this ability is probably latent in many of them) been developed. But there are also found among the annual recruits who start on the Taikoo apprentice system a few boys who are mostly sons of the firm's best Chinese employees. These boys have probably had some school education above the lower primary stage and many of them have acquired some knowledge of English.

69. We have been told that one apprentice came recently to the Taikoo Docks from King's College and the Managing Director of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co., has, we understand, received occasionally into his apprentice system boys from Queen's College and King's College. But the demand for admission into the Govern- ment Anglo-Chinese Schools far exceeds the vacancies available. There seems to be no doubt but that those boys destined to be apprentices in engineering works, whose parents can afford to keep them in school beyond the lower primary stage generally drift into private proprietary schools-schools whose lure is that they teach English but which rarely employ teachers capable of teaching that language effectively. The best boys when they become apprentices, have probably acquired a smattering of English and Chinese and a little arithmetic but have no solid grounding. In fact, though in the annual batch of the apprentices it is generally not difficult to pick out a few who show signs of having had some education and who can therefore be regard- ed as capable of further instruction, even so not only are those few far below the standard of general intelligence and education which would be demanded of apprentices in England, but they are also lacking in the rudiments of those subjects, such as elementary mathematics, drawing and the first principles of mechanics which are essential to the intelligent practice of their craft. His defect is a serious handicap to their advancement more especially as they have never had their hands and eyes trained by manual instruction. We are convinced that the first and most vital step in the process of producing locally a more responsible and effective type of engineering mechanic is to secure for him a more appropriate and more generally effective system of pre-apprenticeship or school education