THE MARVEL OF JAPANESE EDUCATION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume L, Issue 9000, 24 January 1906, Page 3

THE MARVEL OF JAPANESE EDUCATION.

In the National Review Mr E. P. €ulverwell supplies a most interesting paper on "Japanese Education and Character." He says that the Japanese child in an elementary school Breakfasts at six, and stays at school from seven till twelve. These five hours are broken by gymnastics and play. Sunday is a whole holiday, Saturday is a half -holiday, a fortnight in midwinter, a week in April and the month of August. The children in their play do everything but quarrel. An English teacher, after two years' experience Teporte that he never 6aw Japanese 6choolboye quarrel. There is at least one school journey in> 6be year, when everything that can. be taught is taught. There is no corporal punishment. No Japanese teacher ever loses his temper without being disgraced. The pupils' mental attitude is earnestness. The English schoolboy's fashion of despising school tasks is unknown. Children, of all classes, rich and poor, go together to the same school. All classes in Japan are characterised by extraordinary cotfrtesy of action and speech. There are a few Honorary prizes, for "flic precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are far nwra faithfully observed in Japan than in those nations of Christendom which profess to recognise their Divine authority" ; for duty, not self-advancement, is the motive appealed to. But loan scholarships are given, the student promising to repay them afterwards for the benefit of another student. Gymnastics are carefully taught, parrot memory is discouraged.

Morale axe taught two hours a week in the elementa<ry schools, one hour a week in the .secondary schools. Moral maxims are illustrated by deeds of history or actions of private men. These stories are^ .not tales of triumphant strength and conquest, but of self-effacement. * The nearest approach to them in Christian teaching would be the stories of the martyr's hope of reward in heaven would rob the act of virtue. This force of self-con-trol and self-effacement ie rooted in public opinion, habit and patriotism. Of religious entfiusiasm there 6eems to be none. A class of children in 1892, asked what was t-Emr dearest wish, -wrote, "To be allowed to die for our beloved Emperor." The Emperor is an. abstraction put in the place for God reserved in our minds. The writer adds a note to say that since Western education has passed out of the hands of the missionaries Christianity Tia6 been pracßcaJly at a standstill in Japan.