Show educational department EDUCATION IN CHINA wingrove 0 cook says that in in china it is almost impossible to find any thing in common with us in any department in a land where the laborer has no sabbath and tho the magistrate no sense of honor where the needle points to the south and the sign of being puzzled is to scratch we tile antipodes of the head where the place of honor is on the left hand and the seat ot of intellect is in the stomach where to uke lake off ones hat is an insolent gesture and to wear white garments is to dress in mourning under such conditions it would bo be almost useless to seek for any point of similarity in education to our own there is no furniture in the school room except for the teacher who has a desk he sits behind this desk with a magic magie wand of rattan much nearer at hand than the horizon his eab eagle c 1 0 eye is everywhere and his well trained ear could detect a waterbury out in the coal shed his theory is to terrorize not to teach his methods are of anarchy not of order and his results warp instead of widen the mind ho he is continually scolding y and uses starving stara ng and imprisonment to stir up his pupils to their necessary distasteful tasks his theory is to cram the mind and not to develop it and as most of the time is spent in the study of the classics the mind is not symmetrically trained education is more widely spread among the male population in china than any other country in being the only high road to honor it is eagerly sought after by all who are desirous oi of following an official career while a universal respect tor for letters which has become a national tradition encourage all of every degree to gain at least a smattering 0 of learning except the women to be good cooks and good needle workers is thought to be the highest attainments for girls everywhere for the highest education nothing but the nine classes are taught and from childhood up only these books are put in the hand of the pupils and they are taught to regard 0 them as supreme models of excellence cel lence and any deviation either from the opinion they contain or from the style in which they are written is looked upon as heretical the result is that they have grown up in china generation after generation who have learned to elevate mere memory above genius and whose mental powers have been dwarfed by servile imitation and by paltry liberalism of the schools pupils honor their parents and teachers and respect those in authority they are destitute of moral convictions and they are hypocritical and dishonest to the utmost their education does not aim at the development of the human bacul ties it is simply a cramming of the memory it is ancestral education how thanks thankful ul we ought to be that we live in a golden age superstition barbarism and ignorance have been dethroned dethroner intelligence humanity land and justice ice a as s a great triumvirate rule the world reason like a tidal wave sweeps before it the rubbish of past ages human thought is no longer throttled put upon the rack or burned at the stake but today stands as a watchful sentinel over the destinies of an enlightened world and speaks in trumpet tones of the future greatness and grandeur of the nations principalities and powers of the earth H B arnold |