EDUCATING CHINESE MASSES

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 76, 1 April 1929, Page 7

EDUCATING CHINESE MASSES

NOVEL METHODS EMPLOYED. NO ILLITERATES IX TEN YEARS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, February 20. A picture of 5.000.000 Chinese illiterates mastering the three "R's" within the next few years was drawn by Y. C. •lames Yen. founder and director of the i Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement, who has iu c t been paying a short visit to the Pacific Coast before his departure in March for China. Mr. Yen. who possesses both a classiI cal Chinese and Western education, having graduated from Yale University ten years ago and from which he recently received an honorary degree in recognition of his brilliant work in educating the Chinese masses, addressed a ntimj her of public meetings in San Francisco. a:id afforded Western America some idea of the novel means employed of educating the masses of the celostial republic. Mr. Yen is one of a group of younger Chinese scholars, who. dissociating themselves from the political revolution, liave been instrumental in helping the social movement that may justly be regarded as the beginning of the Chinese renaissance. This movement aims to transform the 4000-year-old classical culture of China, which was the exclusive possession of a few. and bring it within the reach of the many by the comparatively simple expedient of teaching the masses to read and write the Pai-hua. or j>opular written language of China.

Pai-hua means simply the "people's language," spoken in conversation bv both scholars and the man in the street. a« distinguished from the classical or literary language. written but not spoken, which for more than 40 centuries has been the only recognised literary medium in China. Pai-hua bears the same relation to i-I:i--ical Chinese that the "vulgar" dial: it- lioro to Greek and Latin in the p: (-renaissance [>eriod in Europe. Its literary is frowned upon by Chinese classical scholars of the old school, but Pai-hua nersists as a spoken language and much of the newer Chinese literature is written in this medium. Its growth is aided bv the fact that the classical language i- not spoken at all. and the difficulty of learning its 40.000-odd characters puts it beyond the reach of the great majority of the Chinese people.

Already there are 100.000 voluntarv teachers enlisted in the cause. Thev teach two hours a day without pay. and the work has spread from Peking, where it was started in 192". to all parts of China. Within the past fou- months, said Mr. Yen. the Nationalist Government has ordered 1.000.000 conies of the "People"? Thousand Character Reader" for uso in tho schools, "lllitcracv and democracy cannot stand side by side.** said Mr. Yen. ''The system adopted br the mass education movement is canable of wiping out illiteracy in China, possibly within the next ten years, if the present rate of progress continues."