THE Chinese begin to sce that they have been wrong to leave their people without education, and this appears from the tone of some of their recent 8 writers. There has been a fundamental defect in the Chinese view on the need of education, for the Chinese statesmen have held and still hold that the reason why there is need of education is to train politicians and magistrates, but the fact is that this is only a subordinate reason and the main principle is that men need in their youth to be trained to fulfil the duties of life. The cultivator of tea, for example, should in the first place be educated that he may become a' good and intelligent father of a family; he ought to be so taught that he may as a man be a useful member of the community to which he belongs and 931 then, too, he should have technical instruction in his special work as a cultivator of tea, while in this he ought to possess intelligence and 934 ability. The same is true of all handicrafts and professions. These are truisms to the European, but they are not yet clear to the Chinese mind. It is important, then, to notice what recent writers say on the need of education, for if all the people should become educated this would be the brightest hope possible for the future of China. Well would it be if those' who have the opportunity to confer with Chinese of high influence would impress on them the overwhelming importance of a scheme of general education for all the people.
It would be of advantage if the Central Government would offer rewards to all private persons who found schools for the poor in their distri This would be a stimulus to philanthropic effort, because government rewards in the form of titles are highly valued in China. The rich men of China should have it impressed upon them that the ability which results from education is quite as necessary for all occupations as for the civil service. A tradesman will be more successful in his business if he knows arithmetic and geography the dyer and soap manufacturer will do better if they know something of chemistry; the gardener and farmer should know something of soils and subsoils and something of natural history; the merchant and banker should know book: keeping, geography, mathematics and political' economy. Science enters into all departments of human industry, and science then ought to be taught to all pupils in schools. The tendency of education should be in future to include more than has been customary rather than less, for as a rule enough' is not taught, and the foundations of knowledge are not laid broadly enough. There is too little variety in the teaching of many schools, and this is specially true of Chinese schools. ''The curriculum is sadly limited, and this necessity of healthy i struction is caused to a large extent by the number of characters that have to be learned. It takes a long time out of a boy's stay in a school to learn from 3,000 to 5,000 characters, as he must do to be able to read ordinary books. He has not only to learn separate characters, but combinations of characters. This pressure on the attention of the boys in a Chinese school makes the teacher think he cannot enlarge the curriculum. It is, however, necessary to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.