Introduction and spread of English-language education in Hong Kong (1842-1913): a study of language policies and practices in British colonial education

Abstract

This study examines the nature, purposes and consequences of language policies and practices in Hong Kong education between 1842 and 1913. In particular, it analyses the changing attitudes of the colonial and metropolitan authorities towards the promotion of English-language education (vis-a-vis Chinese education) in the colony's school system. Chapter One introduces the central issues and themes of the study. These emerge from an analysis of the scholarly limitations of the surprisingly small body of research that has been conducted into colonial language policy in Hong Kong and in the Empire generally. Chapter Two offers an interpretive historical overview of language in British colonial education, focusing on the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy in India, and thus provides the necessary backcloth against which to view developments in Hong Kong. Chapters Three to Six reconstruct and interpret the history of language in Hong Kong education before the First World War using a range of primary sources, such as governinent education reports, Colonial Office records, journals and newspapers. Chapter Three examines the introduction of English teaching in early colonial Hong Kong. Chapter Four analyses language policies and practices during the 1860s and 1870s, when Frederick Stewart combined the posts of Head of the Central School, the colony's flagship Anglo-Chinese school, and Inspector of the government vernacular schools. Chapter Five investigates the disputes, deliberations and decisions over language policy that arose from Governor Hennessy's campaign to promote the study and use of English. Chapter Six examines the spread of English-language education between 1883 and 1913. In particular, it analyses how and why the colonial authorities sought to promote English teaching in the public sector, the problems which flowed from the adoption of a pro-English policy, and the measures which the Committee on Education (1902) put forward to address these problems. The Committee's proposals reaffirmed the principles set out in Wood's seminal 1854 Despatch on language in Indian education, namely that the central aim of British policy should be the diffusion of Western knowledge by means of both the vernacular and English languages (the former at primary level and a mixture of the two at higher levels). Chapter Seven summanses and assesses the study's main findings. These provide a corrective to Phillipson's (1992) claim that the British imposed English on their colonial subjects, and in the process rode roughshod over the indigenous languages, and Pennycook's (2002a, b) view that the British often sought to accomplish their imperial objectives by promoting a conservative form of vernacular education. The evidence suggests that Hong Kong's education system provided opportunities for native -students to attend purely Chinese schools, purely English schools or mixed-medium schools. Although the British apparently attached more importance to English teaching, especially during the 1890s, they were generally at pains to emphasise that English should not be studied at the expense of Chinese. The findings indicate that language policy (be it Chinese or English in orientation) was always tied in some way to Britain's political and economic interests in the region, but was also motivated by pedagogical considerations, a point that critics tend to ignore or downplay. Finally, the findings suggest that colonial policies and practices in Hong Kong, particularly those directed towards the promotion of Western knowledge and the English language, were widely perceived to have failed to achieve their objectives during the period under review.