3o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



but proceeding from and at the same time in great part responsible 

 for those characteristics which mark the Chinese under every variety 

 of physical condition. The cast-iron nature of this method has in 

 several hundred years wasted enough energy for ten millenniums of 

 true education, and this has made China what she is to-day. But the 

 walls are breaking down — such a state can not longer endure. 



We purpose to sketch the essentials of this method, and later on 

 to notice the renovation it is experiencing under the influence of 

 western thought and life. Although the Chinese classics have often 

 been reviewed, we shall nevertheless treat the subject matter of Chinese 

 education in some detail, so that we may better appreciate the change 

 that is taking place. Free use of the material afforded by Legge, 

 Williams, Martin, Giles, Smith and Lewis will be made, and our only 

 excuse for taking our own wherever we may find it will be that we shall 

 try to borrow with good judgment. 



China's youth are denied that domestic training which is the 

 heritage and boon of western childhood, and so are tremendously handi- 

 capped at the very start. After seven or eight years of vegetation a 

 Chinese child is put under the family or clan preceptor or, clad in 

 festal robes, starts for the village school, which is maintained either 

 on a semi-private basis by several families together, or under the 

 patronage of philanthropic gentry, who are liberal enough, but do not 

 always see that the schools are efficiently conducted. The central 

 government bestows imperial honors on benefactors of schools; but 

 having no root in the revenue of the state, Chinese education affords 

 even the most elementary schooling to only a small fraction of the 

 youth of the land. 



Improper school-rooms, long hours of study, excessive restraint, 

 frequent absences, but no inspiriting vacations, a severity in the teacher 

 that sometimes reaches barbarism, and utter neglect of physical cul- 

 ture and hygiene, all combine in the predominant type of Chinese 

 school to render the students much below par physically. Nor is the 

 ' infanticide ' less intellectual than physical. In all grades the mode 

 of acquisition is the same : imitative and servile. The mental vitality 

 which this ancient people have retained is not by reason of their edu- 

 cation, but in spite of it. A real scholar in China is the survivor of 

 hundreds who have failed. 



There is no pedagogy in the old China, any one who has learned 

 is deemed competent to teach, for there is only one way, viz., as Dr. 

 A. H. Smith has described, to set each pupil a ' stent ' by showing him 

 what sounds to utter and then for each student to bawl out his char- 

 acters at the top of his voice. When the lesson is ' learned,' that is 

 when the scholar can howl it off exactly as the master has pronounced 

 it, he stands with his back to the teacher and repeats (or ' backs ') the 



