Changing China Part 11

The scheme was very complete. It began at the bottom and continued through every grade of education to the top. First there were to be infant schools; these were to receive children from three to {272} seven years old, and their object was to give the first idea of right and to keep the children from the dangers of the street. These schools were to be succeeded by primary schools of two departments, and children were to enter the schools as they left the infant school when they were seven years old, and to continue in them till they were twelve. The subjects to be taught were morals, Chinese language, arithmetic, history, geography, physical science and gymnastics. At present there was to be no compulsory attendance, but that was looked forward to as the future ideal. The schools were to be free, and the money was to be produced either by taxes or by a raid on some endowments, notably endowments of religion or of the theatre--for theatres in China are endowed. Funds were also to be found by subscription, and t.i.tles and ranks were promised to those who shall open schools; unlike our own country, where, alas, the spending time on education for the poor is only rewarded by abuse. These primary schools would lead into higher schools, and these schools would be the last on the ladder of education, in which only Chinese subjects were to be taught. Above them were to be what they call middle schools, and the subjects to be taught are roughly those which are taught in our High Schools: the Chinese Cla.s.sics, Chinese language and literature, foreign languages (one at least to be obligatory), history, geography, physics, chemistry, science of government, political economy, drawing, gymnastics; and after the example of Western schools, singing {273} would be also taught. These schools lead on to the superior schools in which higher branches of the same subjects are taught. These schools were to be divided into three sections. The first section consists of law, literature, and commerce; the second section of sciences, civil engineering, and agriculture; the third section of medicine. It is noteworthy that English is necessary for those who are learning the first two sections, while German is compulsory for those who are learning the third section--in either case a third language may be added; and these superior schools were to lead on to a University, in which there were to be eight faculties. The first faculty is essentially a Chinese one, and I suppose would be best expressed to our thought by "belles-lettres," but it includes such things as rites and poetry; the second faculty is that of law; the third, history and geography; the fourth, medicine and pharmacy; the fifth, science; the sixth, agriculture; the seventh, civil engineering; the eighth, commerce.

The University course was to take three years, and there was to be a University installed in each province. The educational system was to be perfected by two other inst.i.tutions--a post-graduate college where research was to be undertaken, and a normal college which was to be divided into an inferior and a superior one for the purpose, the one of preparing schoolmasters for the village schools, the other for higher education. A far less ambitious scheme for the education of girls has been added to this by {274} an edict of 1907. If my readers have waded through this scheme I am afraid that they will have come to the conclusion that China has nothing to learn from Western powers, but rather she ought to be able to teach them how to perfect their own incomplete system of education; but alas, this scheme is only on paper.

In the province where H.E. Yuan-s.h.i.+h-Kai ruled the schools approach in some degree to the level of Western efficiency. In every other province that I visited or heard about, the results of this edict were markedly disappointing; the only exception being where the Universities had been organised, not in the form or terms of the edict, but by Western teachers acting on more or less independent lines. For instance, there is a splendid University which has been founded by Dr.

Timothy Richard in Shansi.

That University has a curious history. After the Boxer ma.s.sacres compensation was demanded by the Powers both for the buildings that were destroyed and for the missionaries that were killed. A certain number of the missionary bodies refused absolutely to take any compensation. Animated by the spirit of the early Christian Church, they would not allow that the blood that had been shed for the sacred cause could be paid for in money. At this juncture there threatened to be rather an impa.s.se. The Western Government were insisting on compensation, and it was doubtful and uncertain how that compensation should be paid. The Chinese Government sent for the Protestant missionary in whom they had the {275} greatest confidence, Dr. Timothy Richard, and he made a suggestion which was at once acceptable to both the Chinese and to the missionary body, that the money should be devoted to the founding of a great University; for ignorance is the most common cause of fanaticism, and the terrible ma.s.sacres enacted in China would never have taken place had China understood, as Chang-Chih-Tung did understand, that Western science and enlightenment were for the benefit of China; so this University was founded. It was founded under peculiar terms. It is under the government of China, and yet not completely so. Dr. Timothy Richard is for a certain number of years one of its governors, and he has for ten years at least the control of the Western side of the education. He is supported by an able staff, and the Rev. W. E. Soothill is the existing President. At the end of the ten years which are just running out, the status of the University is to be altered, and is, as far as I understand, to return to the ordinary status of a Government University. I need hardly say that this University has been highly satisfactory in its teaching, and lately it has sent many of its students to England to complete their education. It suffers, however, from the absence of a proper preparatory course. One of the difficulties that lie right in the way of Chang-Chih-Tung's compromise is the difficulty of finding time for a Western preparatory course, and that is only equalled by the difficulty of finding teachers. Without time and teachers the students {276} arrive at the University period of their lives with only a very elementary knowledge of Western subjects. This college can hardly be cited as a college of high governmental efficiency, but should rather be regarded as an example of the good that a man like Dr. Timothy Richard can do if he is only allowed scope.

Another Western University under Chinese Government control is the one at Tientsin, the Pei-Yang University. That University has the advantage of being well supported by efficient Government schools at Pao-ting-fu. One interesting detail about the Pao-ting-fu school--a fact indeed which in two or three ways should give us food for thought--is that it is controlled by a Christian who is allowed by the Government, against their own regulations, to carry on an active propaganda. He was the man who, when the missionaries were murdered at Shansi, at the risk of his life brought down a message from them written in blood on a piece of stuff. Perhaps it is not extraordinary to find that such a man is producing excellent work. The Pei-Yang University, however, falls far short of our ideals of what a University standard should be. Still, as far as it goes, it is very efficient.

It is taught by a very effective body of professors. It has 150 students, and teaches law, mining, and engineering. The staff is American with very few exceptions. One of those exceptions is Mr.

w.a.n.g, a Chinese gentleman who received his education in London. Very little philosophy is taught, {277} only three hours a week are given for Chinese learning, and the students are expected to acquire a sufficient knowledge of Chinese subjects before they come to the University. The American professors, who proved to be a delightful set of men, allowed that there was no real scientific training given in this school. They gave the same account of their pupils which you will hear in every Chinese school. They excelled in algebra, drawing, and in the most stupendous power of committing formulae to memory. One of the difficulties of teaching a Chinese cla.s.s is that they have so little difficulty in learning by rote that they much prefer learning the text-books by heart to trying to understand them. The Law School in the Pei-Yang University is taught by a man who has no knowledge of Chinese law. This is one of the small mistakes made by American educators in China, which I think must be somewhat misleading for China in the future. To learn nothing but Western law, and to imagine that that Western law can be applied directly to the Chinese people, is to make the same mistake that Macaulay so eloquently condemned in the old East India Company. Such a system of teaching can only make unreasonable revolutionaries.

These two examples of teaching inst.i.tutions carried on under the Chinese Government by Western teachers are wholly exceptional, and though excellent in their way are unimportant, and having regard to the vast ma.s.s of the population of China are inconsiderable. What are five or six {278} hundred students to a population of four hundred millions.

I must reserve the account of what I saw of the schools under Chinese management, including the Peking University, to another chapter.

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CHAPTER XXIII

THE SAME IN PRACTICE

Any one who has read the preceding account of the intentions of the Chinese Government might be pardoned if he supposed that after four or five years those intentions had borne fruit in an efficient system of public education. But one who has resided any time in China would only smile at the suggestion that there should be an intimate relation between what the Chinese Government professes to do and what the Chinese Government does. A Manchu Professor whose European education had enabled him to appreciate rightly the weaknesses of the Chinese race, said with great candour, "In China we begin things, but we never finish them." I had the privilege of seeing over some twenty Government schools in China, and the truth of these words was very obvious.

My hospitable host at Nanking, His Excellency Tuan-Fang, hearing that I took an interest in education, declared that he would be very glad that I should see his schools. I expressed a regret that my ignorance of the language would impede me in thoroughly understanding what was being taught. He most hospitably said that I could myself examine {280} the pupils who were studying Western subjects, and who therefore spoke English or French, and that my wife should examine the girls' schools; that we should be accompanied by two interpreters as well as by the Director of Education, and that he would examine the schools in any branch of knowledge that I chose. So we sallied forth, a very imposing body, and I was asked to select what schools I should like to visit.

Of course I selected the higher grade schools in which Western subjects were taught. The first school on which we descended was the Agricultural College. The teachers of Western subjects were two j.a.panese and one Chinaman. They were being taught in Chinese, but I had no difficulty in finding out in the first room we entered what they were learning, because the ill.u.s.trations were well known to me, for they formed part of a book of elementary botany which I had at one time studied. I suggested to Mr. Tseng, the interpreter, that the right course would be to ask the j.a.panese master to select his best pupils and that then he should examine them while I should suggest the questions. It soon became clear that all the j.a.panese teacher was doing was to teach them to copy the ill.u.s.trations in the book and nothing else. For the first time we noticed what we afterwards discovered to be the invariable rule, that the j.a.panese are most perfect draughtsmen, and that every cla.s.s taught by the j.a.panese always learnt to draw perfectly, though they learnt little else. The Chinese were rather pleased that the j.a.panese teacher cut such a sorry figure.

We then {281} went to the next room. Again there was a j.a.panese teacher professing to explain the model of a steam-engine; again the pupils were obviously ignorant; again we bowed and they bowed and we left the room.

The next room had quite a different atmosphere. Obviously efficient work was going on. The men were learning elementary chemistry. The teacher was a Chinaman who had been trained in London and spoke English perfectly. He was as straightforward as he was efficient. He frankly said that the progress that his pupils had made was very limited because of the short time that they had been at work. We congratulated him on the efficient way he was managing his cla.s.s, and were interested to hear afterwards that he was a Christian. More than once we came across Christian Chinese, and did not know till later that they were Christians, but were struck by their efficiency, which sprang doubtless from a high ideal of work.

We left the Agricultural College and then proceeded to a High School, which is the name that is given to a first-grade school that precedes the University, and which at present stands in its place. We had in this school much the same experience. A j.a.panese teacher was teaching biology and was dissecting a river mussel. This was done in such a position that only two men could see what was going on. I wondered at this. Then we found out that he could not speak a word of Chinese. He dissected the {282} mussel and professed to give a lecture on its anatomy to a pupil who understood j.a.panese, and then the pupil delivered the lecture to the rest of the cla.s.s. My Chinese interpreters were of opinion that very little could filter through the cla.s.s in this way, but the Director of Education smiled sweetly. He obviously felt that in some mysterious way Western education was percolating to the pupils under his charge. As we returned along the corridor I glanced in. The biological lecture was over; I expect it was the only one of the session, and the pupils went away with admirable pictures of the river mussel. If the j.a.panese teachers only set up for teachers of drawing, I am certain they would have no equals in the world. A little further on in the same building there was a professed teacher of drawing. The cla.s.s was not a selected cla.s.s, they were drawing from a cast of a well-known Greek statue, and the work was simply admirable. I am confident that, except in an art school, you would not find better work in Europe. In the next room there was a science teacher. To impress the Director of Education, he rashly set a machine for demonstrating the vibration of sound at work. The machine would not demonstrate anything, much to the joy of my Chinese friends, solely for the reason that he had not wound it up.

I should tire my readers if I were to go on describing room after room.

I cannot of course be certain how far these j.a.panese teachers had taught science, but at any rate their pupils had not {283} acquired any knowledge, and I think we may easily be too hard on the j.a.panese. One must remember that they have to supply teachers for all their own schools. Is it likely that they will be either able or willing to send into other countries efficient teachers of Western education? It is not as if Western knowledge had been for long taught in j.a.pan. Their schools are now many and they were few. I suppose no man, no great number of men at any rate, over thirty-five or forty, are equipped with an efficient Western education in j.a.pan. One wonders why they allow their national reputation to be injured by supposing it to be possible for them to supply these teachers of Western knowledge. Political motive suggests itself as a reason why a country so proud and so ambitious as j.a.pan should allow a course that must eventually injure her reputation as an enlightened power.

The next school we went over was very interesting. It was what is called a Law School. The men who are learning in this school will be the future officials of China; only, following the Chinese custom, they will rarely or never hold office in the province in which they were born and educated. They were men of some standing, and it looked strange to see all these senior men, over sixty in number, sitting like children at the school desks. They were dressed, in uniform, and were under a sort of military discipline. The senior pupil gave the word of command, and at once the cla.s.s sprang to attention and saluted {284} us, while we bowed first to the teacher, then to the cla.s.s, after which the examination began. They were chiefly taught by Chinese, and, as one might expect, were well taught in the Chinese Cla.s.sics. We were informed that the j.a.panese teacher was teaching them Western law; but in answer to an inquiry he explained that he had not yet taught them any law, but that he was teaching them the j.a.panese language, since it was through the j.a.panese language alone a knowledge of Western law could be attained. The reason seemed very inconclusive especially when one remembers that the j.a.panese know and write Chinese characters, so that it is easy to get any work that is printed in j.a.pan printed in the character which every Chinaman can read. I have before explained the peculiar merit of the Chinese character is that people who speak different dialects and even languages can read it equally well. I pointed all this out to my Chinese friends. I think their suspicions too were aroused. Certainly this experience lends colour to the suggestion that j.a.pan hopes that the Manchu dynasty will be succeeded, not by a Chinese dynasty, but by a dynasty from a race whose courage, energy, and intellect has already humiliated Russia and China, and may not inconceivably dominate China, should, for instance, Germany and England go to war.

We then went to see some cla.s.ses taught by Americans. Two things struck me in those cla.s.ses. First, for some reason I cannot understand, unless {285} there was jealousy at work, the cla.s.s was small compared with the enormous cla.s.ses which I had seen elsewhere--thirty, twenty, or even fifteen were the numbers that white men were teaching. The other thing which struck me was that the selection of subjects might be improved. For instance, one of the teachers was teaching Anson's Law of Contract; one could scarcely see how a knowledge of the English law of contract could be very beneficial to a resident in China; and on looking over the book that another cla.s.s was using, I found that they were being instructed how to buy an advowson in England. I cannot of course say that the cla.s.s was actually taught this interesting information, but it was certainly in their text-book. Another text-book was a summary of the history of the world; it was issued by an American firm. On looking up the chapter which referred to China I found the most extreme expression that an American democratic feeling could prompt used with regard to the Emperor of China. I pointed this out to the Chinamen. Apparently no one had taken the trouble to glance through the books that were being used. Such action is regrettable, because it inevitably brings Western education into disrepute, and suggests it to be something essentially revolutionary.

Another curious experience was to find a Cantonese Chinaman teaching a science cla.s.s in English because he did not know Mandarin. It will be one of the limitations to the usefulness of the Hong-Kong {286} University that the bulk of the students who attend it will be Cantonese-speaking Chinamen, and they will therefore be inefficient as teachers to the great ma.s.s of the Chinese empire. A University which hopes to produce teachers which shall teach the whole of China must be a University situated in Mandarin-speaking China.

It was waxing late after we had seen these schools. We had consumed a great amount of the day in partaking of a most excellent Chinese luncheon, where the only mistake I had made--at least the only one of which I was conscious--was in not being instructed in the nature of the entertainment. I had yielded to the solicitations of my host and had partaken largely of the first two or three courses. Later on in the luncheon I was divided between the desire to be polite and a fear that the capacity of the human body might be exceeded. Our host was the Director of Education, and my interpreter whispered to me that he had a great knowledge of cooking and that "he loved a dry joke." His skill as a Director of Education, especially of Western subjects, might be doubted; but as a kindly host and an amusing companion he would have few equals in our country. This aspect of the Chinese official too often escapes the Western critic; whether efficient or inefficient, they are always agreeable men. After luncheon he begged to be excused, as he had a visit of ceremony to pay; it was the birthday of a dear friend's mother. {287} His official robes were brought out, and clothed in them he took his seat in a sedan chair and left us.

We were taken on, rather unwillingly I fancied, to see the Commercial School. The hour of the cla.s.ses was over, but still the school was really instructive. What was so remarkable about it was the extreme simplicity of the place where the boys lodged. The school is not maintained by Government, but by the rich Silk Guild of Nanking. Many members of this Silk Guild, I was a.s.sured, would only be able to read and write enough to carry on their business. They are a rich and powerful body, and this school is intended for their sons. The dormitory was a slate-covered building without any ceiling, and the beds were arranged like berths on board s.h.i.+p, one on the top of the other, with narrow pa.s.sages between them. In this way, of course, a room was made to hold a perfectly surprising number of individuals. I could not help remembering the Church Army Lodging-house at home. If we arranged the beds as they were arranged in that room, though we should double or treble the number of travellers we could house, we should incur the wrath of the sanitary authority.

Very different was the Naval School. Here reigned efficiency, for the Naval School is under the partial control of two officers lent by His Majesty's Navy. The limit of their control was the limit of their efficiency. For instance, the Chinese Government sometimes refused to let their naval officers be shown an actual s.h.i.+p; their idea was much the same {288} as that of the lady who forbid her son to bathe until he had learnt to swim. The difficulty was very great for anything like practical instruction. Continual representations induced the Chinese Government to allow the boys to have a trip on the river in an old s.h.i.+p. The moment this was accomplished there was great self-congratulation on the part of the Chinese official; from resisting this reasonable suggestion they changed to self-laudation at the wisdom of accepting the plan. The efficiency of the teaching was not only hindered by the want of practical knowledge, which is of course fatal to naval efficiency, but these officers had also to complain of what so many other Europeans have to complain--first, that the people whom they were sent to teach did not know enough English, so that much of their time was spent in teaching elementary English; secondly, that their cla.s.ses were not large enough. Far away the most effective way of using a Western teacher would be to use them as we saw them used in one school. The Western teacher was supported by two or three Chinese a.s.sistants; he gave his lecture in English, and the pupils took notes; then the a.s.sistants went round the desks, looked at the notes, and explained in Chinese all those points that the pupils had not fully taken in. This plan has another advantage, that it trains these Chinese teachers to continue the work of a Western teacher, and in some ways it is a more efficient system than the normal schools. The Western teacher of course exercises a general {289} supervision over his cla.s.s and maintains order and discipline.

While I had been busy with the boys' schools, my wife had been busy with the girls' schools. She was taken over the Viceroy's School, the one already described where the little girls showed such surprising knowledge of the Chinese Cla.s.sics. Her experience was less happy than mine. The children were being drilled by a j.a.panese instructress who could hardly play at all; she used a small gem harmonium, and the drilling was little better than a feeble country dance. The same instructress was responsible for a singing lesson; she played with one hand on a harmonium, and allowed the children to bawl as they pleased without either time or tune. All the pupils at this school were day scholars.

The interpreter who conducted Mrs. King, the Consul's wife, and my wife over this and the following schools had removed his own daughter to a mission school, thinking she would receive better teaching. As regards the musical part of the instruction there can be no question but that he was right. The next school she saw was also for the children of the gentry, who supported it by subscriptions. There were 140 girls, fifty of whom were boarders whose parents paid for their board. These fifty young ladies all slept in one room, and their toilet arrangements impressed my wife as anything but luxurious; the effect was more like a steerage cabin on a big liner than an ordinary school dormitory. The cla.s.s-rooms {290} were all on the ground floor, leading from courtyard to courtyard in Chinese house fas.h.i.+on. The instruction seemed to be mainly Chinese, with attention paid to geography, drawing, and fancy work, English being taught by a young Chinese teacher in a rather elementary way. The mistresses appeared in dignified skirts, no doubt as a symbol of authority.

The last school she was shown was larger and less exclusive. It was well organised, the cla.s.ses being arranged with sense and discrimination. There were 200 pupils of all ages and ranks, the school being a public one. They were mostly dressed in black. Ten lady teachers presided over this school, including a normal cla.s.s with a male superintendent; the whole in Chinese buildings. The teaching comprised Confucian ethics, the Chinese characters, arithmetic, geography, drawing from flat copies, and English given by a young Chinese girl who had been educated in a Shanghai mission school.

The instruction seemed to be good on the whole. About one-fourth of the scholars boarded at the school. Attached to it was a kindergarten managed rather sleepily by two j.a.panese. Again the children's singing was hardly worthy of the name. My wife was impressed by the inferiority of the Government girls' schools to the mission girls'

schools in almost every particular. Doubtless they will soon improve, but at present the Government does not seem able to obtain efficient teachers, and is much too inclined to spend vast sums on practically useless {291} apparatus--useless because the instructors do not understand how to use it.

Our experiences at Nanking were extremely interesting, but they were not exceptional. We saw over Government schools at Wuchang, again at Changsha, and also we saw something of the Peking University. At Changsha matters were not nearly so far advanced as they were at Nanking. There were the same j.a.panese teachers, one of whom taught English, but I could not get a single copy-book produced to show how far they had advanced in the knowledge of this language. There were the same American teachers; good men, but unable to do much owing to their want of knowledge of Chinese, and owing, as I said before, to a certain jealousy which prevented them having a sufficient number of pupils. The very excellent school which is carried on at Shanghai, under Western management, forms a good contrast to the others. This school does not profess to teach very advanced subjects, but it teaches ordinary English subjects most efficiently. The system is this: the boys are first taught in Chinese, while they are acquiring the rudiments of Western knowledge and of the English language; they are then transferred to a cla.s.s which is taught in English by Chinese; here they acquire from their own countrymen a very thorough knowledge of English and a tolerable knowledge of Western subjects. In both these divisions of the school all explanations are given in Chinese. After they have acquired a good knowledge of English they are then {292} advanced to the cla.s.s which is taught by an Englishman, who has some knowledge of Chinese; here they perfect their knowledge of English, and the teacher can if necessary explain a difficulty by the help of a Chinese word. Lastly, they are taught absolutely in English by an Englishman who need not know any Chinese, as it is never used.

At Wuchang the schools were similar to those of Nanking. The only school which was exceptionally interesting was the School of Languages.

This was managed by a Manchu, who was prompt, exact, and efficient--in fact, the very greatest contrast to the usual Chinese official. He spoke French perfectly, as he had been brought up in Paris and spent some time in the West. In a few words he showed that he understood the problem of education in China. He told me that his nation would never succeed in teaching their nationals Western subjects until they selected teachers who had some experience in the knowledge and in the art of teaching, and that the habit of regarding all Westerners as capable of teaching all Western subjects must produce disaster. He boldly professed himself a Roman Catholic, and was one of several examples that came under my notice of the wonderful influence that Christianity has on the formation of a vigorous character. The boys had been very well taught in English and French, and I gathered in German and Russian as well. Certainly if China gets such men to lead her, she need have little fear of the power of the West.

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CHAPTER XXIV

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF EDUCATION

The difficulties in the way of education differ in Government schools and in Mission schools. If the Chinese Government could unite the Government schools to the Mission schools, they would overcome all these difficulties, and they would have a most perfect system of Western education. Of all the difficulties lying in the way of Government schools, first and foremost is the fundamental weakness of China, that weakness which is endangering her national existence, a weakness which I fear she will never completely surmount until she accepts a higher ideal. For her weakness is the universal greed for gain. Resident after resident reported the same cause of weakness, that a Chinaman cannot resist taking his "squeeze"--that is, his commission. It is not of course so dishonest as it would be on our side of the globe, because a Chinaman is more or less avowedly paid by these commissions, and therefore in many ways they are rather equivalent to the fees paid by an Englishman to a Government office than to illicit commissions, the acceptance of which in this country is punishable by law. If it is not as immoral, it is almost as deleterious to efficiency, because it tends {294} to make officials unreasonable in their action. To ask the reason why things are done in China, is always to receive the answer that somebody got a "squeeze"

thereby.

And so it is with education. As we wandered through room after room filled with apparatus sufficient to teach thousands of students, and of such a complicated nature as absolutely to confuse those students when taught, one longed that a t.i.the of this expenditure could have been used for that modic.u.m of apparatus which is necessary to make not a few mission schools thoroughly efficient. Much of the apparatus has never got outside its packing cases, and perhaps a great deal had better permanently remain there, for nothing is so subversive to the proper teaching of men whose great defect is that they have never handled things with their hands, as to give them complicated apparatus to demonstrate the most recondite laws of science. A great scientific teacher, when consulted about the apparatus necessary for elementary science, advised plenty of bonnet wire, gla.s.s tubes, and one or two other little things of that sort. When one asks why the Chinese have been so lavish in their expenditure on apparatus which they cannot and will not use, the reply is the same old answer--somebody got a commission. Bui I think beyond that there is a real belief that education is a matter of expensive apparatus--a belief which is not altogether unknown on this side of the globe.

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This brings me to the second great difficulty in the path of Government education. They will believe that an efficient education results rather from having an expensive building than from a competent teacher.

I have before had occasion to refer to the extreme simplicity of the life of the Chinese. Many of the schools were housed, and very comfortably housed, in Chinese houses. The Chinese house always looks out on a courtyard, and courtyard is joined to courtyard by pa.s.sages.

The rooms are only divided from the courtyard by carved wooden screens whose interstices are sometimes filled with paper and sometimes not.

They are eminently sanitary--in fact, to a large extent they fulfil the requirements of the "open-air cure." In one case in the courtyard were a lot of basins and ewers, and the boys were compelled to have a wash, which if extensive must, in the winter, have been extremely unpleasant.

For all this I expressed my sincere admiration to my friend the Director of Education, but he received my compliment much in the same spirit with which a mother accepts your a.s.sertion that her child is far prettier in her every-day dress with tousled hair than she is in her Sunday clothes, as with hideous tidiness and pharisaic pomp she wends her way to church. My compliment was taken almost as an insult. I was then shown the ideal of China, a huge and hideous building, modelled on the architecture which white men deem necessary to enable them to support the tropical heat, to the fatal effects of which they are {296} so sensitive; ma.s.sive walls to carry the heavy roof; huge arched verandahs where white people may get the breath of air they so need.

Of what use are all these to a race who cannot understand what you mean when you speak of the heat being unhealthy, who, however sensitive to cold and wet, flourish in the warmth to which they have been accustomed all their lives? The Chinese do not admire this architecture for its aesthetic effect; they care little about its heat-resisting qualities.

They like it because it is Western; because Western people are educated in such buildings; because, I suppose, they expect Western learning to work in some way through those ma.s.sive stone walls to the minds of the pupils; and because they fancy Western ideas would be more easily understood in these hideous surroundings.

Thirdly, there is no serious effort made to get good teachers. At one time, I understand, they had in their service a very remarkable body of men--men like Professor Martin of Peking--whose knowledge was only equalled by the sincerity of their purpose. Lately they have been getting rid of these men as fast as they could, the cry of "China for the Chinese" being perhaps responsible for this movement; and they have endeavoured to replace them by Chinese subjects with but little success. They have therefore fallen back again on foreigners, largely on j.a.panese. These men are some of them very able and qualified teachers; some, on the other hand, have had little or no experience of teaching, and their inefficiency tends {297} to bring all foreign teachers into disrepute. Not only must the teacher have a special knowledge of the art of teaching, but a teacher of a race like the Chinese, with different traditions to our own, must well understand those traditions. We can best realise the enormous difficulty a Chinese student has of learning from a Western teacher by remembering how impossible it is for any of us to understand something that is put from a Chinese point of view.

If the Chinese Government want efficient foreign teachers, they must not pick up anybody, but they must hold out inducements to young men to come as teachers, and must give them security of tenure. If, for instance, the Chinese Government had in their service such an efficient body of men as could be found in the mission schools, they would have no difficulty. Another difficulty which stands in the way of the Chinese schools is their want of discipline. One of the most remarkable developments in China is the school strike. They have undoubtedly extraordinary powers of united action, but the school strike originates as much in the weakness of the teachers as it does in the remarkable power the Chinese race has of united action; you hear of it all over China, and it is sometimes ludicrous, sometimes serious.

One school struck because the foreign teachers required the pupils to pa.s.s an examination of efficiency before they would give them a testimonial. This was deemed most incorrect by the {298} scholars, who held a doctrine which would be very attractive to our own undergraduates, that residence alone was a sufficient qualification for a degree. Many of the strikes take place for most occult reasons.

And this brings me to mission schools, for strikes take place equally with them as in Government schools. They occur in boys' and in girls'

schools, and for the most un-understandable reasons. In one school the strike began because a Chinese teacher caught hold of a boy's queue and dragged him by it. The boy's "face" was injured, and his companions made common cause. Another strike took place in a girls' school because a girl was punished. Of course these strikes do not occur where there is an efficient and vigorous teacher. It was attempted, for instance, with Archdeacon Moule, but it only ended in the leaders being caned. Still, one mission had its school practically ruined by one of these strikes; it was the result of an intrigue by an unbelieving teacher who had been employed by mistake. These strikes are not a very great difficulty to the mission when it is in charge of efficient and experienced men; a little justice and firmness apparently soon disposes of any unreasonable resistance to authority, and tact and knowledge prevent any friction which may result from regulations that may be offensive to Chinese ideas.

A far greater difficulty in the mission schools is the question of finance. The Chinese for the most part pay their scholars; the result is that the mission school {299} has to compete not only against a free school, but against a school in which pupils are paid to come, and it appears as if it would be almost an impossibility for mission schools to support themselves against such compet.i.tion. As a matter of fact it is usually found that so great a value do the Chinese put on the efficient education that they receive in the mission school that they are willing to pay a reasonable fee rather than be paid for the useless education given by the Government school. Still it makes finance a certain difficulty. Many of the schools are largely self-supporting; others rely on fees to find board and lodgings for the pupils and the salaries of the native teachers. So that every school more or less carries a great financial burden.

The great difficulty of mission schools at the present time springs partially from Government action. The ideal of every Chinaman is at present to be in the service of the Government; we must emphasise that word "at present," because undoubtedly, owing to the railway development of China, a wealthy commercial cla.s.s must arise all over her land, as it has already risen in the great port towns. This cla.s.s will be independent of Government and will be the cla.s.s that needs Western education more than any other cla.s.s, for they will be in intimate contact with the West. But at present those who seek a higher education hope for the most part for Government employment. One of the rules of Government employment is that the officials shall on {300} certain days repair to the various temples to represent the Emperor, and it is naturally held that such action is impossible for a Christian. Besides this, the Government makes it extremely hard if not impossible for a Christian to go to its University at Peking. All teachers and pupils in a Government school are required on the Emperor's birthday to bow down or kow-tow to the tablet of Confucius.

Missionaries hold that such action is not consistent with the Christian faith, and therefore the mission school is very loath to send its Christian pupils on to the Government University.