Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 241

The train- ing of workers for the building industry.

The Salesian Institute.

230

ing and shipbuilding Industry would be to confuse issues and to attempt in schools. a practical training which is much more effectively handled in works. In deciding as it did in 1925 that the establishment of trade schools was premature, the Singapore Committee added, as one of its reasons, that artizans were being trained by the Harbour Board and by local firms.

109. The Manager of the Taikoo Dockyard would divide apprentices into two groups. Those who have not gone beyond the lower primary stage of vernacular education and are ignorant of English he would constitute into a class of "purely trade apprentices" and he would set them to work at once on the special trades to which they have been severally and respectively apprenticed. He would admit a certain number of these apprentices to the evening classes for the teaching of Eng- lish, the selection being in the hands of the Manager or his nominee. To those who made good in the English classes he would make facilities for learning simple technical subjects available. Apprentices falling under this general category he would call Group A apprentices. From the better educated apprentices who would be for the most part ex-pupils of the Junior Technical School, the Manager would select, when they first came, a certain number--from about 12 to 20 annually. The criterion of selection would be a certain capacity of oral and written expression in Chinese and English. These selected apprentices the Manager would call Group B apprentices. He suggests further that Group B apprentices should have the same conditions of employment as Group A apprentices but that, on a given number of afternoons, or probably at certain stages for whole days, they would be excused attendance in the workshops for the purpose of attending classes in more advanced English and engineering subjects. Such training would be continued during the whole five year period of apprenticeship at the discretion of the Manager. It has been suggested that it would be only during the last two years of apprenticeship that day classes might he found preferable to evening classes and that it would be during these two years that there might emerge a specially brilliant pupil (brilliant not only in class but in the workshops) and that for such a student a special scholarship which would enable him to go on to the University might be provided. The Manager stresses the necessity of good general education in the pre-apprenticeship stage.

110. The Building Industry of Hong Kong is, however, largely unorganized and the training of the ordinary workers in this trade such as bricklayers, plasterers, pain- ters, stone-masons, blacksmiths and plumbers, is given by a "look-see' method which is certainly not effective. Mr. MacKichan has emphasised the point that the training which the building trade workers require is a training in craftsmanship and we have insisted that in so far as the proposed Technical School is designed to meet the needs of the workers in the building industry, it will be for the purpose of training supervisors and foremen. We have little doubt that when the Technical School is working the Principal may find himself in the position to arrange something in the way of evening class instruction for those who are actually engaged in building work. The experience of Mr. Holmes who is now working on the new Hong Kong Jockey Club Stables is interesting. Finding himself as clerk of works in charge of this building faced with the problem of a large number of illiterate workmen who had merely learnt their work by watching others, he has found it possible to pick out the more intelligent, to teach them and to get them to teach others. But this does not really touch the problem of the building trade worker in Hong Kong. A Trade School for the training of these workers would seem to be indicated, but we are doubtful whether the time has come to establish such a school. It would be expensive and it might fail to attract. We have been told that most of the workers come, in the first instance, as boys from their villages and are at once taken on as apprentices.

111. We have already referred to the St. Louis Industrial School at West Point. We understand that the training of workers for the Building Industry is a feature of the Salesian Institute's establishment at Turin. It has occurred to us that if the authorities of this School were approached by Government and offered finan- cial assistance, they might cooperate most effectively with the Education Department in the training not only of workers for the building industry but also of artizans for other trades, such as general carpentry and furniture manufacture. We have already referred to the excellent work which this school is doing in training tailors, shoe-