the Eutitor of the Norra-Curxa Dany News.
Sim,—I am a new comer among you. Of the little that I know of Shanghai some by my own observation, but more is on authority of those of louver residence. Among the things I have learnt by the latter method is that yours is the " Model Settlement." Judge my surprise, then, on encountering the fact revealed in your article of Monday and 'Alpha's' letter of the followi morning. A model settlement with defective educational advantages seems very like a contradiction informs, It behoves estranger like myself to speak with diffidence on things special to Shanghai, or even to observe the richer and gulden silence than to utter the most silvern speech; but probably it will be conceded that Exucation is a subject of such world-wide interest, and with 30 many characteristics unchanged by the changing skies, that any one who has been a few years in the world, even though only a few weeks in your Settlement, may venture to express att opinion.
Tt matters not where men live—or, for the poses of this subject, we may narrow perhaps to the phrase, where English-ug men live—education ix an urgent ty, and education of the best. The truism is becoming more and more trite that life is growing faster and the struggle for life more keen; but if so, paren must find a source of anxiety in the fitting of their children to survive in it. If, im the coming generation, our children are not to go to the wall, they must be started with a sound education, But the question arises, what is this sound education? I suppose that many of those who feel most deeply on this subject feel that any education to be worthy of the must be education of a complete nature, not merely a cramming of subjects that may be tested by examinations and rewarded by certificates, nor even the wider education of thoronsh intellectual culture merely; but the complete culture that embraces all, the physical as well aa -the intellectual, and supremely the moral nature. [know that some parents are both ignorant and careless, but of those likely to be moved by the considerations that presumably dictated your article we may assume that they" are neither the one nor the other, and that they feel the responsibility of their parenthood that, with much confidence in teachers, guardians and friends, they would be better satisfied if the training of their children were being carried on under their own eyes and with their own constant ce-operation; i.e., parents living in Shanghai would wish, as far as prseticable, that their children should be educated in Shanghai.
You, Sir, advocate a Secular Educational Establishment. Ispeak of an education that attaches supreme moment to the culture of the moral nature, But we are at one, since for this every ranson I, too, advocate a Secular Sch Believing ' that the moral and yy of a child far outweighs in importance the merely secular, I hold it too sacred a trust to be committed carelessly to those whose special aptitude for it has not been If earnest rel differ on religious matters, at least they all agree in' the importance they attach to these matters, and the desire is common to all to bring up their children in those views which they respectively conside: moat in accord with the truth and best calculated to call out their noblest capacities. Let us see, then, how the matter stands.
There is, I understand, a virls' school conducted by Miss Abbot, which is both deserving of and receiving encouragement. 'The question therefore of a girls' school is} parents accord. No rel not a pressing one. Let what I say be understood to refer only to the education of our boys. For them there appears to be an educational establishment in Shanghai under the care of the Jesuits. I know nothing of this particular school, but it is bringing no unfair or obnoxious charge against our Jesuit friends to assume that the ultimate aim of their work is the increased honour of their Church and the spread of their theological views, So far from this being a charge against them, I presume it would be their boast. It iso more than in other places we Protestants are doing. In Oxleutta nearly every Missionary Society is spending its chief strength in Missionary Colleges, in which native students are prepared for the examinations of the University, and the Missionary tutors make it no secret that the aim of these Colleges is to give an uglish education to the Bengalis, if not in the hope of making them converts, at least in the hope of commending Ohristianity to them and increasing the influence of Christian morals and trath, I charge of which they have occasion fo be ashamed the French Fathers, therefore, with nothin
if Tsay that they may be supposed to be more interested' in the advance of thei Church than in the education of Englis youths. But for this reason, any one with strony Protestant convictions will fail to regard their school as the most satisfactory for his children, The same would apply to any Protestant school established under the auspices of any particular section of Protestants. It could not command the confidence of the whole community The only method that can do this is that which you advocate:—a Public School in the hands of representative men, teaching through its masters those things concern: ing which these representative men can agree. The name ' Board School" can with it the idea of something low in class, but that is owing to the character of many of the children' drafted into the Board Schools of England. A school on the same principle, the character of which would be taken from that of the average Shanghai south, would I believe be the best solution of your ditliculty. Let there be a Buard chosen by the Ratepayers, a grant being ven by the Municipality. Amanof culture tried teaching-power should be obtained, th a suitable salary and a large discretion in the choice of his subordinates, The grant and the fees together should allow the engagement of a success-ensuring staff. The old question would come up in some form or other of "The Bible in the school." I, for one, would advocate its exclusion. If 1 seem inconsistent with my position asa Christian teacher, my answer is simple. In the first place, with regard to the Bible itself, I have too much respect for it to make it a school text-book. Ihave no wish to teach boys to dislike it by having to commit passages of it to memory asa part, and this not the most pleasant, of the school routine, And, Puritan though I be, I still find something to shrink from in seeing it used as.acommon missile in the hands of one boy for throwing at another's head, a use to which in my schoolboy-its equate and compact form offered obvi temptations. Then in the second place with regard to the teachers. The; will be chosen for reasons special to their particular subjects. hey will not of necessity be the best qualified for expounding the Scriptures, and if it be urged that the reading of the Bible might be admitted " without note or comment" forbidding any explanation or position by the teacher, I should reply it better to leave it out altogether than to admit it under such a police surveillance as that. I hold that the school must not supplant the home. Religious training is the responsibility of the home, supplemented as it may be by the religious training of the Sunday Schools connected with the religions societies with whose teaching the ious training must.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.