The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889) / the young teacher who set foot in Hong Kong on February
15th 1862, was not in the mould of the typical colonial bureaucrat. The son of
farmers from a small village in the north-east of Scotland, he had nonetheless
made it to King’s College at the University of Aberdeen thanks to his parents’
sacrifices and his own efforts. So, as G. Bickley reminds us, he was in a better
position than anyone to appreciate the value of education, and that is no doubt
why he took his mission so much to heart. His actions were motivated by two passions.
First of all, brought up in a very religious environment and destined—before
his departure—to be ordained himself, Stewart considered the spread of a
“Western-style education” as inextricably linked to the spread of Christianity.
Next, he was very much attracted to the challenge of knowing a new culture and
acquiring a new language.
Shortly after his arrival in the colony, Stewart discovers
that Hong Kong is still, in many respects, the “barren rock” described
by Lord Palmerston some 20 years earlier. Above all, the education system given
to the inhabitants leaves a great deal to be desired, both in terms of the quality
of the teaching and the limited number of people it reaches. At the time of Stewart’s
arrival, Western-style education was restricted to two or three religious schools
whose primary function was the training of missionaries destined to go and work
in China. The others were for the most part small village schools partially subsidised
by the government and offering a strictly Chinese education, identical to that
applying in the rest of China. The government’s decision to set up a Central
School by bringing together several public schools was born from the need to provide
some pupils with an education in English in order to train interpreters capable
of bridging the gap between Western and Chinese workers in the civil service and
in trade.
