University of Nanking - Linguist Yearbook (Nanking, China)

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34 THE LINGUIST Fortunately, by lmperial Decree, this old education was abolished in September, 1905, and plans for universal governmental education were instituted. Primary education was to be made compulsoryg all the provincial governments . were to establish primary, high tmiddlej, and normal schoolsg and the national government was to es- tablish universities, technical colleges and higher normal schools. A good beginning has been made, but much of the tax money that should go to education goes to pay the army and government otiicials and sinecures in the school administration, so that there is little left for teaching. And the subjects of the new education are decidedly Occidental in nature and number. But so far, compulsory education exists in the edict only. Regarding government schools, since the report for the year ending july 31, 1916, no statistics have been issued by the minister of education. The iigures for that year are as follows: I Kind of School No. of Schools No. of Students Primary Schools- 1126, 71412 127,714 4,186,962 industrial 8 similar Schools of Primary Grade- l.7ll 531,10-l Middle Schools 444 69,770 Normal Schools, Secondary grade ,211 27,975 Industrial Sz other Schools of Secondary Grade- 455 28,710 Higher Normal Schools- 10 2,357 Colleges, Professional Schools 19-Us 76 25,373 Total. . . . . 130,621 4,294,251 Of course there has been much progress since 1916, but as the figures of that year are somewhat only on paper they may be taken as tairly accurate of conditions to-day. For the number of schools and students listed, there were 198,976 teachers and 130,799 adminis- trative officers: for every three teachers, two administrative oilicers! CU Educational Directory and Year Book of China -19.21, p. 76. C21 China Year Book -1921-2, p. 556, gives these Hgures. i I A vast Examination Hall accommodating 20,000 students.

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THE TEN PERCENT A33 THE TEN PERCENT y Every one who comes to China, whether Christian' worker or mere traveler, visits the old Examination Halls which are in every capital city. In many places they are in complete ruing in others the material has been used to build schools for Western educationg and in still others, as in Nanking, sectionsofe them have been preserved as monuments to Chinese scholarship. Each booth is about three feet square' by six high: They are built in long rows, cover acres and acres, and mnnber in each place into the thousands. Three-day examinations were held in these booths annually. The candidates for honors 'were shut up in them for three days, during which they wrote essaysrunder eightheadsg if they were successful they passed-were recommended for special examination at Pekingg if they were physically weak and could not stand the strain they passed out, and were carried out of their cubby-holes the next morn- ing. The subjects of the examination were the Chinese Classics, literature and history, nothing ofa practical nature. Education was not considered as an end in itself, but merely a means to political office. It was not unusual, then, to find men of eighty and ninety taking the examinations. I learn from a Chinese teacher that besides the Chinese language, literature,and classics, a little geography and astrology were taught in the schools. When a Chinese boy recited to his teacher he stood with his back to the tutor, holding out his hand, palm up, behind him. For every error in reciting the lesson he should have memorized, he received from one to ten stinging blows from the teacher's ferule, the number depending upon the disposition of the teacher. ' This 'ruly' element of education is probably still retained in many private and government schools. 1 The scholarship of the old education is comparable to that of the Medieval Scholastsf There was nothing forward-looking in it, everything was referred back to authority, the more ancient the authority or the source, the more certain and truthful the matter. China has never 'reasoned induetively, if she has reasoned at all. This presents a striking contrast to Occidental education, which is now based on the scientific spirit and not on books and ancient lore. The purposes of our 'education is to give us as complete and varied a store of knowledge as possible and to train us to use that knowledge that we may live in understanding of our fellows and to fit us to be of most service to them. Our education brings us closer to life and to life's problems and is forward-looking. Under the old Chinese system, the more a man studied, the--farther removed he was from the problems of life. True, he studied ethics, but this only in the abstract and as a sort of ideal ethics, much as we should study Plato's Republic to-day. His learning was not applied to life, even though the ultimate goal of all his laborious memorizing wasaposition in authority over multitudes. Education was individual, unorganized, haphazard, in private schools of a few students each, or by tutor. I

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'THE TEN PERCENT 35 The pay of the teachers is very uncertain, even in the universitiesg several times it has been necessary for the teachers to strike in order to get their pay. The government schools employ, with a few exceptions in special courses in the universities, only native teachers. Those who contemplate teaching in China, would do well to consider the various mission schools. The latter offer opportunities for teaching of all kinds, from the kindergarten to the university. Though the government has begun to educate, the missions still have an immense and permanent educational work to do. There is an enthusiastic and progressive and ambitious spirit in all their workg they are attempting work often beyond their physical capacity. The Chinese, in many instances, find the mission schools much better than those established by the governmentg and this will be so until the government devotes more money to education. English is an essential subject, required of all students in the mission schools, from the higher primary grades to college. VVith few excep- tions the teachers of English are foreigners, whereas in the government schools the teachers of English are Chinese. But English is not the only subject taught by foreigners. Any one burning with the sacred hre will find a candle to light, no matter what the subject he teaches. To present an adequate idea of all the education in China, a few figures of mission schools will be necessaryg accurate Iigurcs are hard to get, for all the year books vary. The China Year Book for 1921, 2, p. 816, gives the following for China, including Manchuria and Mongolia: Primary Schools, 6617, students, 184,481g Middle Schools, 2913 students, 15,2l3. This authority lists some 56 colleges and universities with a membership of 12,494, but this tigure will also include students of Primary and Middle School grade, since a great many colleges and universities have students of all grades' In comparison witn the ligures of the government schools, what the mission schools lack in quantity they make up in quality and stability. Besides the government and mission schools there are many private elementary schools maintained by only one teacher or per- haps two. Many of my students were put into such schools before they went to the mission schoolg or else their fathers had private tutors for them, tutors that had only a few pupils. No fair notion of the extent of education in China and of her educational needs can be had until we remember that her population 15 conservatively estimated at 400,000,000. The number of students, 4.5oo,ooo, is but a small percentage of the whole, only one and one- fourth percent! Contrast this with the United States where the children between seven and thirteen years of age who go to school are fourteen per cent of the population. In the United States about six per cent are illiterate. I have been unable to get any figures on illiteracy in China, but I think a fair estimate is ninety percent. E. A. Ross states t The Changing Chinese, p.342j that not one woman in a thousand and not one man in ten can read. So much for the C13 See also Educational Directory 8: Year Book of China, 1921, p. 16. C V