Young Japan at School.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XVII, 24 October 1903, Page 60

Young Japan at School.

The Japanese schoolboy has a much better time of it than his Chinese cousin. In the first place, his language is not so difficult to learn, and he has not to spend the best years of his life in book studies like the young Chinese. • He is taught in a more practical way. and may learn engineering, electrical science and other crafts, for it goes without saying that the Japs are in every •way a far more up-to-date race than the Chinese. * ; The young Jap has a very easy time with his arithmetic. He does not have long tables of weights and measures to learn. He does everything by tens, and he counts upon his fingers. He is further aided by having a little apparatus called a Soroban, a sort of framework with beads or buttons strung upon it on wires, by the aid of which he does his sums. Like the Chinese boy, he has to use a, brush instead of a pen when writing, but this is almost the only point of resemblance between the two. The young Jap is a brighter scholar, and gets through his work more quickly and intelligently than young Hang Chow, who is still poring over his books when the Japanese is following an active business or profession.