24th November.
EVERYONE remembers the Emperor's Reform Decrees of the summer of 1898, and their total revocation by the Empress Dowager in the autumn of the same year. Soon after followed the Boxer episode, and the migration of-the Court on a tour of exploration to remote Hsianfu. The period preceding and followin, the return of the Court to Peking, somewhat less than two years ago, was distinguished by the issue of a considerable number of Edicts implying that in the Celestial Empire changes of great pith and moment were about to take plac, for the apparent reason that they were perceived to be inevitable and that it was thought o be better for the Government to muke them voluntarily than to do so under any kind of pressure. By the time that the Imperial mind had got itself uttered, it seemed that in the course of four years the wheel of fate had made a complete revolution, and that which was absolutely condemned by the Empress Dowager in 1898, was now just. as absolutely and unqualifledly commanded. The Old was to ass away, a New Era tad already egun.
New aims in education were to be expressed and embody-d in all sorts novel ways. he Peking University was to be remodelled, provincial colleges were to be opened, the eight-legged examination essay, or "wen-chang," was to be relegated to the limbo of things outgrown and useless, young China was to be sent abroad to gather the freshest and the ripest fruits of Western culture. It was not unnatural that many shrewd and quite competent journalists in the home lands should have been misled into supposing that all these fine phrases and sentences in the imperative mood were to be taken at their face value, and that China had in reality "taken a new departure," and entered upon a new phase of her national existence.
These erroneous views we took occasion to expose more than fifteen months ago, and often since. But we do not know that we have succeeded in making any impression upon Occidental optimists who find it difficult to believe that the Chinese Government itself'in its own purely internal affairs is no more to be trusted than any individual Chinese when it is his interest to mislead others. It is not always easy to be sure at a glance n what direction on: of the planets is moving, but observations taken at intervals. of six mooths generally afford all the certainty felt to be necessary. It is by no means needful tomake a detailed examination of what the various Imperial Decrees have argued, denounced, promised, and commanded, for the reason that many them are obviously empty talking into the air, not indeed very unlike those speeches in Parliament or in Congress, addressed not to the deliberative body, but to one's constituents. Neither is it necessary to inquire minutely into the present status of all the new universities, colleges, intermediate schools, ete., that were to constitute the outer framework of the new educational system. So far as we can perceive, the so called Peking University, under its present management, has no influence whatever for the bet-ferment of China, but it appears to be, on the contrary, a mere travesty of what it ought to be, and what it might be. For those foreigners who under great discouragements and many embarrassments are struggling to do what they can as well as they can for purely Chinese education in the hope of better days to come, we have only admiration, although it is as yet impossible to foresee to what their labours may lead. They are indeed slowly toiling up the Hill Difficulty, with but little visible prospect of reaching its summit for many weary stadia.
The present Imperial prejudice against Chinese education abroad as tending to the diffusion of anarchical sentiments at home, the persecution at the capital of those scholars known to favour reform, and the appointment of reactionary Literary Chancellors in the pro felt to the remotest fibrilla of the body politic. In obedience to orders "from above" all sorts of colleges and schools have been everywhere set up with a show of leaving wonderful and edifying to behold. We should be glad to believe that within the range of the immediate influence Peking, at least, any considerable percentage of these are anything more or other than empty shams In one instance of this sort which we fear must be taken as typical, an instructor of the " Western Learning" type was sent out to a county-seat distant from the provincial capital. The local literati would have nothing to do with him, the pupils were set against him, and his immediate superiors treated him with that polite insult of which the Chinese are such consummate masters, until he soon took the hint and departed to more congenial regions, leaving the local fossils masters of the situation. The " wén-chang" is indeed abolished, but its place is taken by an equally useless although somewhat less complicated "lun," or discussion, relating not infrequently to topics in regard to which the students have only what Archbishop Whately called "tops of thoughts," or often no thoughts at all, but mere barren verbal repetition of the words of others. Text-books in large quantities are still called for, many of which no doubt fall into the hands of those who with proper instruction might make good use of them, but for lack of that instruction the books often remain a mere museum of unsolved riddles. Elementary instruction in the new branches of learning is practically non-existent. The present educational scheme as a whole is therefore merely a pyramid trying to stand upon its apex. As a result the rank and file of Chinese students entertain a strong and well-founded suspicion of the truth of three propositions: That the Government does not expect the pyramid to stand upright, nor wish it to do so; that the Government does not know what it does want; and that any month or any day may witness a crisis when the timid, vacillating, insincere, and fatal policy and practice of the present rulers of the Empire, may disappear in a eneral cataclysm. Under conditions ike these how is it possible that there should not be in China an educational muddle?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.