CHINESE EDUCATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13631, 28 June 1906, Page 8

CHINESE EDUCATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib—Your notes on Chinese education are interest ing, but all too brief. Yon should, I think, havo dealt, with tlio triennial examinations, with the nature and of essays to bo written, with the isolation of candidates, and with stops t-aken to ensuvo tho effectiveness of such isolation, with the time occupied bv examinations, and, finallv. with tlio per eentage of deaths, suicides, and cases of insanity during this period. The calling of fanner lias ahva.vs boon an honoured one in China. Tho Kniperor once in each year goes to some appointed place with a largo following and, himself, ploughs a furrow and sows seeds, 'l'ho like thing is done b.v someone high in authority in the capital of each province. The inherent conservatism of the Chinesa forbids the farmer employing any but tlm most obsolete instruments of cultivation. Even so, no one who has seen (he results has failed to praise them, and the patient and _ persistent labour by which they aro attained. If we can adord In laugh at a system of memorising of useless informaa system which places vice-regal positions in tho reach of the poorest peasant's son, and one, after all, very much akin to our Indian civil service, wo may surely lay to heart and benefit by the annual object lesson from tiio Eniperor's lunula. _ As yon, Sir, havo alluded to the subject of education, I should liko spacc for one or two quotations from ;in excellent article by Professor JlabatVv, written sonm 13 years ago:— " Let us have teaching not examining, men not machinery, for our educators "

"Schools for shorthand writing and for practical telegraphing are vcrv useful primary technical schools for a city population. But here, again, wo huvo a danger that our poorer country children will be taught that, these occupations are mora noble, as well as more lucrative, than the duties of intelligent agriculture. It is a practical fallacy that becati-e pastoral and agricultural work can be done by ignorant people that neither of them deserves an intelligent, study. .

"We hear intelligent men who have grown grey in the business of education putting forth gravely tho following kind of mischievous fallacy. . . . : ls it not

disgraceful a young man should leave a place of liberal education without knowing how a. locomotivc work's, or without lieiny able to read a Iwok in French or German, or without understanding the composition of the rocks in a mountain chain, or without knowing the origins of his native language or literature, or what not':'" Each one of these quotations suggests an affirmative answer, and makes the vulgar public wonder how the benighted Medievalism of the schools has been tolerated. When they all como together, even the ordinary fool can see (ho programme is as chimerical as Mr Gladstone's programme of 1893. and that, like the child who tries to secure more than the hands will hold, we are likely to drop the best things, and earn not wealth, but dissatisfaction. Hence come sucli follies at our schools as the apportioning of, perhaps, two hours in the week to teach a great and complicated subject such as French or chemistry! The schoolmasters are rather coerced than criminal.—l am, etc. 11. B-

Kiatoa, June 24,