From 'civilising the young' to a 'dead-end job': Gender, teaching, and the politics of colonial rule in Hong Kong (1841-1970)

History of Education

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 495-514

  Chan, Anita Kit wa ^a  

^a THE EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

Chinese women; Colonial rule; Feminisation; Gendering; Primary school teacher

Indexed keywords

EID: 84868310256     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0046760X.2011.635603     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. A. Prentice and M.R. Theobald, eds., Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women & Teaching (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 5.
2. A term coined by J. Albisetti, 'The Feminization of Teaching in the Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Perspective', History of Education 22, no. 3 (1993): 253-63.
3. For instance, the following studies have more or less subscribed to this framework when explaining the feminisation of teaching: H. Bradley, Men's Work, Women's Work (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).
4. Albisetti, 'The Feminization of Teaching', 253-63.
5. R. Cortina and S.S. Roman, eds., Women and Teaching: Global Perspectives on the Feminization of a Profession (New York: Palgrave, 2006).
6. See Albisetti, 'The Feminization of Teaching', 257-58.
7. M. Van Essen, 'Strategies of Women Teachers 1860-1920: Feminization in Dutch Elementary and Secondary Schools from a Comparative Perspective', History of Education 28, no. 4 (1999): 413-33.
8. The gendered prescription existed in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, and the Netherlands: see G. Fischman, 'Persistence and Ruptures: The Feminization of Teaching and Teacher Education in Argentina', Gender and Education 19, no. 3 (2007), 355.
9. The employment of uncertificated women was an acceptable practice in France, England, Costa Rica, Spain, and Mexico.
10. See J. Blount, 'Manliness and the Gendered Construction of School Administration in the USA', International Journal of Leadership in Education 2, no. 2 (1999): 55-68.
11. Several gendered ideologies have been mentioned in the literature, ranging from stressing the innate, maternal, loving, caring nature of women and their suitability to teach young children.
12. Joan Scott's seminal essay on gender as an analytical concept has inspired studies to use gender to decode cultural meanings in apparently gender-unrelated categories.
13. J. Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods, and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (Harlow, Hong Kong: Pearson Education, 2010), 283.
14. See Bernard Hung-kay Luk, 'Opportunities for Women in Tertiary Education', in Women and Education in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, ed. Comparative Education Center (SUNY, Buffalo: Graduate School of Education Publication, 1990), Chapter 7.
15. Scott, Gender & the Politics of History, 43.
16. According to Baron, historical studies are not gender-neutral and feminist scholars should develop their own periodisation.
17. Luk, Cong Rong Shu Xia, 29-40.
18. Bernard H.K. Luk, 'Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism', Comparative Education Review 35, no. 4 (1991): 650-68.
19. Anthony Sweeting, 'Hong Kong Education within Historical Processes', in Education and Society in Hong Kong: Toward One Country and Two Systems, ed. G.A. Postiglione (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1991), 43.
20. Comments of the Headmaster of the Central School and the Inspector of Schools, Frederick Stewart.
21. See Hong Kong Education Department, Annual Report (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1922), paragraph 24. The Annual Reports quoted in this article (which were re-titled as Annual Summaries after 1956) were all prepared by the Hong Kong Education Department.
22. See Vivian Wai-man Yiu, 'An Evaluation of Teacher Education Policy in Hong Kong' (MSocSc thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 1983).
23. For instance, the Tung Wah Hospital Group offered free education for boys in 1880 but to girls only in 1931. Kaifong (neighbourhood) schools, which were usually small in scale, offered free vernacular education for Chinese boys, but no provision for girls was recorded until 1894. The Confucius Society only started their first girls' school in 1922.
24. Chiu, 'Girls' Education in Colonial Hong Kong', 53.
25. For a more detailed account of the efforts of missionaries to make educational opportunities available to poor and marginalised women in Hong Kong, see Patricia Chiu, '"A Position of Usefulness": Gendering History of Girls' Education in Colonial Hong Kong (1850s-1890s)', History of Education 37, no. 6 (2008): 789-805.
26. Carl Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 208.
27. The words were from Mrs. Irwin, a school committee member of the Diocesan Native Female Training School (DNFTS).
28. Education Report, 1865, paragraph 43.
29. Annual Report, 1898, paragraph 19.
30. See Ernst J. Eitel, A Report to Frederick Stewart, the Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong, on 5 July 1889, No. 41, CO 129/242, 80-82.
31. Chiu, 'A Gendered Discourse of English Language Education', 2-6.
32. Education Report, 1895, paragraph 15.
33. Education Report, 1895, paragraph 9.
34. CO129/242, paragraph 4.
35. For discussions of this thriving Chinese and Eurasian elite class, see Wai-kwan Chan, The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation in Early Hong Kong (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
36. Education Report, 1890, paragraph 9.
37. CO129/242, paragraph 5.
38. Annual Report, 1888, paragraph 10.
39. When BPS was first set up, a pupil-teacher scheme was also established. Not surprisingly, its headmistress, Mary Ward, recruited an English girl as a pupil teacher to be trained to assist her work. See Chiu, 'Girls' Education in Colonial Hong Kong', 79.
40. Examples include Ying Wa Girls' School, Diocesan Girls' School, St. Stephen Girls' College, St. Paul Girls' College, and Maryknoll Girls' School.
41. See Chai-lok Wang, Xianggang Zhongwen Jiao Yu Fa Zhan Shi (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 1996), 254.
42. See Yu-shek Cheng, Government and Public Affairs: Education (Hong Kong: Summerson Eastern, 1987), 5. In 1937, the figure was up again to 67,988 and the number of vernacular primary schools had risen to 650, as compared to 100 in 1899.
43. For discussions on the contributions of some of these pioneers to girls' education, see Wang, Xianggang Zhongwen Jiao Yu, 193-204.
44. Carroll, A Concise History, 83.
45. Anthony Sweeting 'Training Teachers: Processes, Products, and Purposes', in An Impossible Dream: Hong Kong University from Foundation to Re-establishment, 1910-1950, ed. Chan Lau Kit-ching and Peter Cunich (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69.
46. These two vernacular normal schools were both closed down in 1940, shortly after a new, co-educational teachers' college, Northcote College of Education, had been established in 1939.
47. In 1925, after a labourer was killed in a Japanese cotton mill factory, students and workers launched a demonstration in Shanghai, during which British police shot and arrested some protesters. The shooting soon triggered public anger and widespread protest against the British police force in all major Chinese cities. Massive numbers of workers and students in Hong Kong left for Canton (Guangzhou), where financial aid and accommodation were provided by its coalition government, comprising members of the Chinese Communist Party and some left-wingers of the Kuomintang, which also blocked strikers from returning to Hong Kong. For a detailed analysis of the various causes of the Strike, such as nationalism, anti-imperialism, and economic inequalities and hardship in the colony, see Jung-fang Tsai, The Hong Kong People's History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2001), 121-172.
48. This memorandum, containing three parts and 111 paragraphs, reads like an official investigation of the 1925 Strike and Boycott. It was written by R.H. Kotewall and published along with a report by the Governor, Reginald Stubbs, and appeared in a Colonial Office paper (CO), CO 129/489, in 1926.
49. Robert Kotewall was an appointed member of both the Legislative and Executive Councils during the inter-war period. He was an important ally to the government and played a key role in settling the Strike.
50. CO, 129/489, paragraphs 88 and 90.
51. The thriving Chinese and Eurasian families had a low regard for the Chinese language. They actually petitioned the Governor, John Pope Hennessy (1877-1883), to increase the teaching of English in the Central School at the expense of Chinese learning.
52. Luk, 'Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum', 659.
53. Tsai, Hong Kong People's History, 164-167.
54. Jun Fang and Xianjun Xiong, Xianggang Jiao Yu Tong Shi (Hong Kong: Ling Kee, 2008), 179-223.
55. A possible explanation is that not many girls received schooling in the rural areas of the New Territories and demand for female teachers was not great.
56. CO 129/489, paragraph 86.
57. St Stephen Girls' School and St. Paul Girls' School were established in 1906 and 1925, respectively. As Anglo-Chinese schools, both were attended by girls of upper-class Chinese and their educational emphasis was on nurturing 'modern young ladies' by combining Eastern culture with Western knowledge.
58. Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 60.
59. The entrance requirement of this rural normal school was much lower than those of the other two urban schools, and some students had not even completed their primary schooling.
60. The calculation of the percentages is based on the tables that appear in the following papers: Fang, 'Tai Po Vernacular Normal School', 145.
61. The contents of the two training programmes were very similar, except for the textbooks used in Classics. See Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 58-60.
62. Fang, 'Tai Po Vernacular Normal School', 141-2.
63. Fang, 'Vernacular Normal School for Men', 125-6.
64. Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 59. What matters here is not simply the sports ground but also the emphasis on physical education in VNW. Physical education was actually seen as a key component in the training of modern 'young ladies'-a middle class femininity-in the inter-war period.
65. Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 60.
66. Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 61.
67. The figures quoted come from Fang, 'The Vernacular School for Women', 59.
68. The percentages recorded in the Annual Summaries before the Second World War were usually a combined figure for primary and secondary schools. Separate entries and statistics for primary and secondary schools, and their teachers, began to appear in the official data after the war.
69. See E. Burney, Report on Education in Hong Kong (London: Published on behalf of the Government of Hong Kong by the Crown Agents for the Colonies, 1935), 21.
70. According to Ford, some of the women graduates of the Education Department at The University of Hong Kong did not take up teaching but saw it as a preparation of motherhood and wifehood, see S. Ford, 'Women, gender and HKU' in An Impossible Dream: Hong Kong University from Foundation to Re-establishment, 1910-1950, ed. Chan Lau Kit-ching and Peter Cunich (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), 137.
71. In 1931, 2,366 women were employed in 'professional occupations', the majority being teachers, nurses, and members of religious bodies.
72. See Hong Kong Committee on the Training of Teachers, Report of the Committee on the Training of Teachers (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1938), 163-8, in which some members found the content of training too academic and stressed the importance of English learning for vernacular teachers.
73. A good example is the headmistress of the VNW, Madam Chan Yat Hing, who was promoted from a vernacular teacher to become the headmistress of VNW for 21 years. See Fang, 'The Vernacular Normal School for Women', 58.
74. See Carroll, A Concise History, 127.
75. A. Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed: The Reconstruction of Education in Post-war Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1993), 84.
76. Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed, 95.
77. When this primary education expansion programme officially ended in 1961, the total increase in primary school places was 313,000, and the original target was met a year earlier.
78. Annual Report, 1948/49, 29.
79. Annual Report, 1948/49, 40.
80. Annual Report, 1952/3, 7. In fact, in 1963 less than 8% of primary school leavers were able to secure a place in public secondary schools.
81. In 1957, a one-year course was also set up in Northcote Training College, the first teacher training college to provide a two-year course to certificated teachers. In 1960, a new teachers' college, Sir Robert Black Training College, was also founded to aid the rapid development of primary education.
82. Annual Summary, 1956, 3.
83. Annual Report, 1952, 106. After graduation, student teachers were required to undergo two years of supervised training in approved schools before an official certificate was granted.
84. There were nine core subjects and one elective in the one-year training course. All but the subject English were concerned with pedagogical skills. The information was obtained from a Special Exhibition entitled 'Old Books. New Collections' at the Hong Kong Museum of Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 6 February 2010 to 22 April 2010.
85. R.F. Simpson, Teacher Productivity and Professional Training (Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Council for Educational Research, 1966), 8.
86. Calculations based on Annual Report, 1949 and 1970.
87. Some scholars have also noted the continual use of various strategies to control and contain communist influence in the colony. See Beatrice Leung, 'Political Impacts of Catholic Education in Decolonization: Hong Kong and Macau' (CAPS Working Paper, Hong Kong: Lingnan College, 1998), no. 82 (10/98), 6-10.
88. Luk, Cong Rong Shu Xia, 203.
89. Hong Kong Commission on Education, Report by R.M. Marsh and J.R. Sampson (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1963), 65.
90. Some untrained teachers might have received higher education in mainland China or gained a degree at a post-secondary institute in Hong Kong, but these qualifications were not recognised in the colony.
91. Private schools were the main suppliers of primary school places in the 1950s and 1960s. They were gradually phased out after the introduction of compulsory and free education in 1971.
92. The comparison was made by the Teachers' Association.
93. Sweeting, A Phoenix Transformed, 120-38.
94. See Hong Kong Legislative Council, Hong Kong Legislative Council Official Report of Proceedings (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1960), 146.
95. See Hong Kong Colonial Secretariat, Report on Women's Salary Scales in the Public Service (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1962), paragraph 2.
96. Hong Kong Colonial Secretariat, Report on Women's Salary Scales, paragraph 21.
97. Hong Kong Colonial Secretariat, Report on Women's Salary Scales, paragraph 42.
98. Scott, Gender & the Politics of History, 49.