The Hawera Star. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. MASS EDUCATION IN CHINA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 30 March 1929, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. MASS EDUCATION IN CHINA.

Delivered every evening by 6 o’clock in Hawera. Manaia. Normanby. Okaiawa, Elthazn, Mangatoki, Kapouga. Alton, Hurleyville Paten, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara, Obangai, Meremcre. Fraser Road, and Ararata.

Tho European world is aware that China and the Chinese are in a, state of transition, but it is difficult for outsiders to ,judge just how far the country has progressed along the road of the newer civilisation of the West. We harvo heard the nation spoken of as an" “ancient dragon awakening from a long sleep” and we have seen in print the achievements of the future which have been predicted for it. We have (also been advised, to remember that it is impossible for a. European to obtain a composite view of a 1 nation which counts its people by the hundreds o'., millions. We know it is a fact that there are vast numbers of the Chinese people who concern themselves not at all with the struggle for progress whica manifests itself in noisy and sometimes violent student-movements, and art' ' likewise uninterested in the marches I and counter-marches of the rival armies which have kept the •country in an' intermittent state of civil war over a period of years. The European who is but mildly interested in China cun not close his eyes to the possibilities which !iie ahead of that country shout J i t ever compose its own internal dissensions, ! but so Jong as so many millions of i*s !people are kept in ignorance of the .doings of the world by their illiteracy lit seems to the observer that China is likely to remain something very like it is at present for the next hundred years at least. But if illiteracy were •abolished and those hundreds of millions of people could be organised and (•waved through the medium of the printed word, what then would be the position? The real awakening of China waits upon the spread of education and

' apparently the last seven, years have } seen appreciable strides taken in the I direction of bringing education to the j masses.. 'The latest American mail to jhand brings a report of an interview with Dr. Y. C. James Yen, a young Chinese intellectual and a graduate of Yale University, who knows better than anybody outside China, and as well as anybody in that country, the inner history of the movement to enlighten the masses. Prior to the Great War he held, in common with other Chinese intellectuals, that education was something for the upper classes and it never occurred to him that there was anything to regret in tho illiteracy of the labouring and artisan classes. With other Chinese students at American universities, he volunteered his services to the Allies and was placed in charge of a section of the Chinese labourers then employed in Prance. Those coolies could not communicate with their homeland because they were unable to read or write, and Dr Yen offered to teach some of the men. His first class numbered forty, tout it grew until, at the request of tho authorities, ho had inaugurated an. organisation for the teaching of the 200,000 •labourers in France. " During ' that ' tima he also started a newspaper for the. Chinese labour gangs. As a result of his service among the lower orders of his own countrymen his sympathy for their condition was awakened and. he carried the work into China upon Jus return. Other enthusiasts threw themselves into- the work, though there was a lack of support from the intellectuals of China until his first group of 1450 students had produced nearly 1000 successful graduates as a result of four months’ teaching. Before 1925 there were 150,000 students in one province alone, and today there arc five million in China over the age of twelve years and ranging up to middle age. The Government is educating children between tho ages of six and twelve years, tout the Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement has as its object the teaching of two hundred millions over the twelve years’ limit. China, which gave printing and paper-making to the world-, has been, and is, backward, because of its two languages (as distinct from dialects), the classical and the I spoken. Only the gentry, who had the I means and leisure-, could acquire the former, which required practically a life-time of study. The spoken lamrguage had a small class of literature of its- own and the young Chinese who are devoting themselves to the mass education movement have reduced its characters from 40,000 to 1300 and provided students with text boks which they can master in ai few months. Maybe by the time the five million students at present being led to a wider understanding of world affairs through the printed word have increased their numbers ten or twenty times, China will have rid herself of her present political disturbances and be reader to take her part in the world as one united nation.