HIGH SCHOOLS IN JAPAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2686, 6 September 1905, Page 89

HIGH SCHOOLS IN JAPAN.

Our Dunedin High Schools are now having their term holidays—by-the-bye, why cannot all the Dunedin schools have the same term holidays?—and a friend who has been writing Diosy's book on the Far East, probably associating our High Schooh with those in Japan in the work that is done, or ought to be, in secondary school?, sends roe the extract appended: — " There is no better organised, no better equipped, institution of its kind in the world than the Commercial High School in Tokio, where a complete course of instruction, theoretical, as weU as admirably practical, is given. In one large hall of this school, thot has counterparts in tho chief commercial cities of Japan, a number of bays, or recesses, are labelled with ths names of the principal mercantile centres of the world, and in each of these a number of students, who have been well grounded in theoretical knowledge, taking th© parts respectively of bankers, importers, exporters, brokers, insurance agents, and shipping agents, carry on an active, simulated, mteruational trade in strict accordance with the business usages of the places at which they are supposed to be dealing. The various steps of every conceivable commercial transaction are- accurately gone through, form the comparison of samples, obtained from the School Museum, to the giving and receipt of orders, the making out of invoices and bilk of lading, of policies of insurance and freight notes, and to the drawing, and sometimes the ' protesting,' of bills of exchange, even to disputes as to quality and packing, giving rise to instructive correspondence in several languages, vith ths necessary dictation, shorthand, and type-writing-, and ' code' telegrams. When will London, bhe commercial metropolis of the world, have a commercial school like that of Tbkio, or, indeed, a commercial school of any kind worthy of the name?" Speaking of the qualifications of foreigners who wish to enter into the commercial, industrial, and financial possibilities awaiting Ocoidcntal enterprise in China and Korea, the same friend quotes: — " Here Britons and Americans are at once confronted with the unpleasant fact that Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Dutchmen, Italians, and even Austrians and Hungarians are far better eqaipped for the purpose of fruitful investigation and the ultimate commercial struggle, not only by their superior technical training, by the habits of methodical work and discipline acquired in their time of military or naval service, and by their natural capacity for adapting themselves to local conditions and native customs, but by tho excellent facilities for acquiring the languages of the Far East provided by their respective Governments. In the English-sx>eaking countries, whoso Far Eastern interests outweigh by far those of all other nations, it is much easier to acquire a knowledge of Syriac or of Chaldoe. thin of Chinese. Japanese, or Korean. Almost every British or American school child can locate the Brook Kedron; not one in a hundred thousand knov. s that the Sumida-gawa flows through Tokio."