The Development of Education in Hong Kong 1841-1897

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The Development of Education in Hong Kong, 1841-1897: As Revealed by the Early Education Reports Of the Hong Kong Government 1848-1896 publishes for the first time as a complete sequence the full main text of fifty Hong Kong Government Reports on Education, submitted mostly annually by successive Hong Kong Governors to the Colonial Office in London as part of the official record. The Reports begin when the Government first granted public funds for Hong Kong schools, and the last in this sequence is dated April 1897, fourteen months before Britain's lease of the New Territories from Imperial China expanded and changed the responsibilities of the Education Department considerably and also laid the foundation for the return of the whole of Hong Kong to modern China at midnight, 30 June 1997. Packed with unique material about schools, scholars, teachers, parents, educational policies and politics, the Reports (discussed and contextualised by ample notes) provide data, dialogue, vivid anecdotes, drama, emotion and ideals. Recognisably the basis of present experience, with the same hot topics concerning language standards and the medium of instruction, these reports could beneficially inform both thinking about the past and decisions about the future. Some of the writing is highly personal, and the book appropriately includes brief select biographies of four of the writers, notable members of the Hong Kong community: George Smith, first Anglican missionary Bishop of Victoria (Hong Kong); James Legge, missionary, translator, and first Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Frederick Stewart ─ "Founder of Hong Kong Government Education" ─ first principal of the first Hong Kong Government Anglo-Chinese school (now Queen's College), first Head of the Government Education Department, and first Government Native English-Speaking Teacher in Hong Kong; and E. J. Eitel, German missionary, writer, lexicographer, journal editor and historian of Hong Kong.