626 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



classes, so much admired in our Western 

 school systems, and to those arts of 'read- 

 ing in concert ' which are believed to have 

 such virtue in our democratic culture. 



" It would in fact be difficult to imagine 

 a better outward symbol of the mental status 

 produced by these processes of an excessive 

 organization, so widely admired in the pub- 

 lic schools of America. They tend to de- 

 stroy all possibility of original force. Bead- 

 ing, for instance, is becoming reduced to 

 as purely mechanical a conformity to pre- 

 scribed tone, time, and emphasis, as the 

 Chinese custom of repeating words after the 

 teacher has produced without any organi- 

 zation whatever. Chinese boys, rocking 

 out their parrot tones, eagerly copying the 

 master, or ' backing the books,' do but 

 openly confess, in their noisy routine of 

 imitation, the mental slavery which our pre- 

 vailing system disguises under the varnish 

 of a ' drill.' ' Reading in concert ' has 

 played its part in the Chinese system also, 

 with effects upon voice and manner which 

 we need not cross the hemisphere to find in 

 full operation. 



" Concerning ' imitation ' as a principle 

 of culture, let us add that, false as it is, its 

 moral quality at least is higher when it fol- 

 lows, as in China, a type that does not 

 change with human caprice, than when it is 

 subject to arbitrary crudities and idiosyn- 

 crasies imposed on the pupils by individual 

 teachers. In both cases, however, the real 

 ultimate reference is to an all-powerful au- 

 thority in that public sentiment and com- 

 mon belief of which these educational sys- 

 tems are meant to be the expression. And 

 when this public control has become all- 

 pervading, as it steadily tends to be, whether 

 as Chinese tradition of ages, or American 

 fashion of the hour, its effect through bnl- 

 fafion, in leveling and trimming young minds 

 into a dull, self-satisfied uniformity, is in- 

 disputable. In the course of ages it has 

 cast all Chinamen in one mould, and made 

 their intellectual productions as monotonous 

 as their physical type. The warning is for 

 us, even at the opposite pole of social and 

 political character." 



Of moral education the author says : 

 " More prominent than rote-work in the 

 programme of the school system is respect 

 for moral laws as eternal and divine. Mod- 



esty and humility; reverence for the old; 

 the evil of war and the wickedness of cruel- 

 ty and conquest ; the love of truth, purity, 

 and self-restraint ; delicacy of feeling, de- 

 votion to duties, fidelity to functions are 

 the burden of this popular teaching, the 

 very substance of text and precept. I be- 

 lieve, not only that the whole series of read- 

 ing-books used in the schools of China does 

 not contain a single impure precept, but 

 that there is scarcely one noble conception 

 of duty and humanity that cannot be found 

 represented in the daily recitations of these 

 children of a grand ethical literature, who 

 are taught to prize it, not with slavish super- 

 stition, but for the naturalness of its ideal. 

 Nor does this textual teaching fail of a 

 practical basis in the home. It would be 

 difficult to find any treatise on home educa- 

 tion more admirable than the ' Instructions 

 of the Sacred Edict,' whose utilitarian wis- 

 dom is here overflowed by teuderest senti- 

 ment." 



In regard to Chinese education in man- 

 ners, Mr. Johnson remarks : " As the moral 

 relations are expressed in a concrete ideal, 

 in which no change is supposed possible, so 

 they are embodied in rites and ceremonies 

 which share their sacredness. As the child 

 learns ideas in the form of actual written 

 characters, so he conceives duties in the 

 form of strictly-regulated actions. Hence 

 the prime importance of the ' proprieties ' 

 in education. They are not aft'ectations, 

 but recognized as the natural order of con- 

 duct, the virtue of behavior. . . . The au- 

 thority of fixed rules of behavior, while 

 scarcely more absolute than that of fashion 

 in Western society, is not, like fashion, de- 

 tached from the highest law of ethics and 

 faith, but is strictly identical with it. To 

 the Chinese, their ceremonial is simply man 

 in his manifold relations. Its minute rules, 

 which appear to exhaust the possibilities of 

 prescription, are believed to express man's 

 normal relations to the universe. They 

 seem, in fact, to have historically grown out 

 of the national consciousness of these rela- 

 tions, instead of being imposed by arbitra- 

 ry authority or transient will. What they 

 correspond with in Western life is not our 

 etiquette, red tape, or religious formalism, 

 but such conformities as are admitted by 

 all of us to be natural, proper to all right 



