MANAWATU EVENING STANDARD POHANGINA GAZETTE. Circulation, 3,100 Copies Daily. MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1905. A LESSON IN EDUCATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8053, 3 April 1905, Page 4

MANAWATU EVENING STANDARD POHANGINA GAZETTE. Circulation, 3,100 Copies Daily. MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1905. A LESSON IN EDUCATION.

Baron Suyematsu contributes to the "Nineteenth Century" a valuable account of the- " system of universal education " which has been adopted with such excellent results in Japan, where 5,720,926 children are receiving instruction in the elementary schools, constituting 88.05 per cent, of the school age population, " religion, as such, forming no part of their scholastic training," and education being obligatory. The school age begins at six, and the course in the common elementary schools is four years, and the same in the higher, hut only two years where the children are intended to enter the middle schools. Moral teaching is the foundation principle of intellectual culture. There is no overloading of a child's memory; no attempt to cast all minds in the same mould, and to turn out pupils as if they were so many buttons ; but every effort is made to instil virtue into their natures, to cause them to acquire habits of restraint, to encourage filial piety, brotherly kindness, frugality, courage, truthfulness, courtesy of language and demeanour, and mutual consideration and respectEven the teaching of science, wo ate told> is rendered auxiliary to the nurture and development of a love of nature, which, a s we know, amounts almost to a cult among the Japanese. The ethics which are taught do not differ materially from those of the Four Gospels, and whether in the schools or in the barracks biographies of great and good men are read and commented on for the purpose of aiding in the formation of the youthful character. "It may appear somewhat difficult," observes the Barori, "to comprehend how boys and giris could be thoroughly imbued with moral sentiments without connecting these in some way -with religion; but when they are taught with thoroughness, basing their systematic exposition on the duties of human beings towards one, another and the State, and on the noble tradition of their own com-

munity and the characteristic virtues of their forefathers, and* when appeals are made, above all, to the conscience of individuals, one's thoughts appear to become imbued with the lessons conveyed, and moral notion •* thus taught seem to become, per se, a kind of undefined, bufi none the less potent and serviceable,

religion."