Year by year, for reasons that have often been enumerated, social conditions in Shanghai are approaching closer and closer to those prevalent in European and American cities. This convergence obviously creates wants which, in order to make the conditions tolerable, must be supplied in a manner similar to that which long experience has consecrated in our native countries, Among such wants, the most pressing at the moment is a means for the suitable education of foreign children. Solong asa European family in Shanghai was more or less of an extraordinary phenomenon, the notion of establishing a school seldom or never entered into people's heads. At certain age children were sent home, or, if they were not, there were so few of them that the evil of allowing them to grow up uneducated and undisciplined, or only imperfectly educated and disciphued, was not so notorious as to attract general attention. Thisis now changed. Foreign children form numerically a most important section of the community. At the same time, circumstances often render it difficult or altogether impracticable for parents to maintain eatabliahmenta simultaneously in Obins and England, though it is impossible while one's children are at school at Home to avoid doing this or something equivalent to it. In most better-class schools the children are expected to return to their relativea during the vaca. tions, which swallow up rearly a quarter of the year, and as everybody has not friends or a family to whom to consign his children when they are periodically tarned out of school, the mother is in many instances obliged to live apart from her husband during the children's school life, But even when otherwise possible, the separation of a father from his family, or of both parents from their children, is a great trial and a hardly mitigated evil. Children grow up strangers to one of their parents or to both, and miss the family influences without which the best education is im. perfect. Moreover, instances of neglect in Home schools crop up with sufficient frequency to render parents very anxions about the moral, physical and mental well-being of their children, when separated from them by half the world. Meanwhile Iads and Jasses are here springing into adolescence with a rapid. ity which, under the circumstances, is almost alarming, or at all events with a rapidity which makes it impossible to postpone any longer a serious con. sideration of the difficulty as stated.
Attempts have been made by various private individuals and more or less public corporations to meet the want, Private enterprise has, for reasons that are not far to seek, invariably failed, We will not attempt to give an exe haustive list of these reasons, but among them were absence of special training on the part of the teachers, involving want of the necessary confidence on the part of parents, and absence of sufficient capital to obtain suitable buildings for school purposes, involving the crowding of children into ground-floor rooms, in some cases dark, damp or unventilated, Among semi-public attempts are to be included the Hongkew or Eurasian school, which for obvious reasons may be left out of consideration, the Jesuit school for boys, and the St. Joseph Institution for girls. The last-named is, we believe, worthy of all praise; the children are well looked after and carefally taught, and the class rooms are cool, well ventilated and not over. crowded. There is also a judicious classification of the children, which practically secures the association of girls of like social standing and similar nationality. We are prepared to find ourselves abused for noting this as a good point in school management, and we shall not attempt to defend our position, Snifice it to say that, upon this matter we have a decided opinion which, whether correct or not, is shared by s good many. We may, however, leave foreign girls out of consideration for the present, They can, generally speaking, be fairly educated at home, and in any case there is already sufficient provision for them. With regard to hoys, things stand very differently,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.