Sessional_Paper_1937 — Page 167

Sessional Papers 議政定例兩局文件 All

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some say in the pre-graduate education of the Colony. If the Arts Faculty of the University is to become less self-contained so also must the Government's Education Department.

59. In particular it seems essential that the Chinese School at the University should become less of a watertight compartment than at present. We contemplate the teaching of Chinese in the Colony, and the relation of that teaching to English studies, as a well thoughtout and unified system reaching from the elementary school to University graduation.

60. On the basis of calculation already employed in the other Faculties the cost of the Arts Faculty for the month of January 1937 was over $14,000 and the total number of students in the Faculty in the same month was 114.

61. It is not easy for us to criticize such a thing as a curriculum but we are satisfied that there is need of rigorous pruning in this Faculty as soon as this can, without injustice to the existing staff, be accomplished. We have been constrained to think that as at present constituted the Faculty is following a curriculum not altogether suited for its "clientele". We feel that it has been modelled too closely on the lines of an English University, and that this induces an atmosphere of un- reality. Many of the courses can have no real interest or final meaning for Chinese, and we are extremely doubtful whether the Department of Commerce can justify its existence. The courses given therein (particularly in the subject of Ac- countancy) bear no real relation to the actual practice of commerce in China, where development of joint-stock companies lags behind and where few busines organiza- tions have been developed beyond the size which can be controlled by members of a single family.

62. We are also conscious of a certain lack of co-ordination in the Arts Faculty. At a later stage of this Report we will criticize the existing practice of annually appointed Deans; and it is in this Faculty that the need both for internal discipline and for a consistent policy seems to us to be chiefly felt.

63. Even more than in the Engineering Faculty, we feel that there are far too many full Professors in this Faculty.

64. The Arts Faculty Department of Education as at present run seems to us to be a very expensive method of turning out a few qualified teachers, and a scrutiny of the time-tables concerned only confirms that view. We refrain from further comment except to say (a) that here even more than with the rest of the Faculty the need of close liaison with the Government Education Department is necessary --if only because the Government provides the cost of the training of many of the students concerned; (b) that this Department seems to us to be much too self- contained and too independent of the rest of the Faculty; and (c) that a Professor of Education is wholly unnecessary once the subject-groups are settled and that an efficient Master of Method available for practical training is all that is required.

65. The Chinese School seems to us to have promise of a vigorous future under its able Professor. Considering its potential utility, its cost is not extravagant. It deserves every support and encouragement, and its expansion would provide a fair ground for endowments from well-wishing Chinese benefactors. The same is true of the Chinese Library which we understand needs considerable enlarge- ment.

If the approach were properly made we feel sure that the sympathy of the Chinese, who alone are concerned, could be enlisted for this purpose.

66. Throughout our inquiry we have kept in mind the primary object of the University to establish contact with China and to provide something of value to China. Most Universities worthy of the name will be found to have established in process of the time some special reputation for a particular course of training or even for a particular habit of mind. And we have been led to consider what particular contribution to knowledge could best be made by a University in such a unique geographical and political situation as Hong Kong.

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