§ MR. J. M. ROBERTSONI beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Government primary schools of Egypt object lessons and geography are taught in English only; that in the Government secondary schools history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and science are taught in English or in French only; and that in the technical schools and professional colleges (with the exception of the school of law, where French is still partly used), all instruction is imparted in English only, and frequently by teachers who are quite unfamiliar with the vernacular; and whether, seeing that the employment of a foreign tongue as a medium of tuition increases the difficulty of acquiring accurate knowledge of any subject, and is regarded both by the, parents of pupils and the pupils themselves as an unnecessary hardship, he will advise the Egyptian Government to employ the vernacular henceforth as the sole medium of tuition.
§ SIR EDWARD GREYThe language question constitutes a very difficult problem for the Egyptian Educational Department, chiefly owing to the dearth of teachers competent to give the necessary instruction in Arabic and the absence of scientific text books in that language. In the circumstances, the Egyptian Government are frequently placed in the dilemma of either giving instruction in a European language, or being content with an inferior standard of teaching. And, in general, they have preferred the 1037 former alternative. They are, however, fully alive to the objections referred to by the hon. Member, and are doing their best to remedy them by training competent native teachers.