VI.—The Chinese People and Western Education: What has been done by the Missionary, the Educationalists and the "China Hand" to Distort Chinese Views Fnom A Srectat, ConnesrowoeNt Kalgan, If I have not made it plain that rhe Chinese gets his social ideas Tam far from. hostile to the New of foreigners largely from the Ch'na, of which T have been citing missionaries, who permeate China some of the ad interim phenomena, ore than any other class; then I have lamentably failed, the missionaries draw their sala-What- China needs from the from abroad, not for Yoreigner is not repression, nor the marauding tactics here and there employed after the Boxer rising,—cating a but let me postulate that the stout theory. However closely they may Jdefence of one's material advant-study the Chinese language and Jages and reasonable rights is not jons, however sympa-repression. Still less does she they aim to be, they rereed. sentimental statesmanship_ of tnain obsessed with the idea that the kind which assumes that _be-there Is something fundamentally cause the foreigner usually arrives wrong with the Chinese, Their in China by a gangplank instead of judgment is confounded with nigrifrom his mother's womb, ergo tude. They define China as "dark, steps which he takes to install hi darker, darkest." Their mission self comfortably are violently wrong is not to develop but to convert, und anything which the Chinese He gets his educational ideas ces to make him uncomfortable is reign society from any one of a divinely right. China's soul is at number of institutions, Some were! present too unformulated to be Founded by Government, becatise the practically dealt with. What she] Chinese wanted to learn the tricks requires is sympathy with her which made the foreigner so handy spiritual struggles no doubt, but with a steamer or.a fletd-piece, her capital need is understanding Some were founded by philanthroof her material difficulties, from pists who were sorry not to be Ishich the spiritual confusion springs. able to think so much of the The man best fitted to understand Chinese as they did of themselves China, if to knowledge he can and handed over some spare cash 10d sympathy, is not the theorist for schooling with the air of one with an idea fixe but the resident saying "Spend this wisely, little business man the China hand, whose bey, and some day you will grow interest is real and tangible, can bea big man like your bbe reckoned by profit and loss on balance sheet, and is bound up He gets his political ide with Chinese interests. modern. state economics from Education tone with voice enough to shout,) Ever since the first Imperial Re-flattery enough to cajole, money ough to bribe, or brass enough to for western education, forms, the Chinese have clamoured tis adver rainy ways a pi The "China hand," faced with a Tot their old civilization go by the modern China which speaks with board, as one school of modernist the many tongues- taught it by all thought is beginning to recognize.
amazing relations of his, However, foreigners have rushed the buffer of every shock.' His ancestor, on coming to China, was to give them the education they] Gj want. We have fostered education fanned in the ancestor of the to-in China tions, as sects, a3 lorn Concession, because he was considered a barbarian out of whom money might be made, but whose free association with the simon most ancient heresies, and—most yare Chinese might be. dangerous, deserving to be exploded—that He stayed there, because all he civilization proceeds from education, wanted was business. When China whereas really it precedes educa-grew turbulent, he digged himself tion. "Education is not the foundafs, because still all he wanted was tion, but the culmen of civilization. hatiness. "He made a better job You cannot make humans out of of his digging and his business than the Chinese did of their turbulence, horses by teaching. them to point to letters of the alphabet with thei and now the descendants of those {orehoofs. When horses are civ Cainese (who are still turbulent) ed into moral beings they will confront his descendants (and still fovolve an alphabet and speech, all they want is business) saying Prior to that, no multiplication of "Why have you special the number of trick horses petition for yourself, getting a jereate a human race. Perhaps the Sustice from "your own consuls greatest foreign crime against Which T do not get from my of-China—yet the Chinese are just as ficial, and despisthg me asa much responsible—is the sin of native' and inferior? Twill draw trying to treat them like trick a picture of your Sikh Policeman horses—to change the political ticking a bayonet into the stomach philosophy of the race by educating of my Working Man, while you let individuals, instead of trying to off an automatic in the direction make easier and more gradual the of some Female Students; by which transformation of conditions of tokens all men shall know you for China already has her civiliza tion, The practical philosophy to-'The Gadarene Swine wards which she is stumbling is Phe China hand meets with little the adaptation to it of some of sympathy from his Elderly Aunt the material advantages of the the Missionary, because he drinks, west. If, these adaptations were smokes, dances and is a Gadarene made, adaptations in the forms of Swine generally. Me is hardly ledueation would be able to follow noticed by. his Platitudinous Uncle normally. An adjustment of the the Educationalist, because he pr -work of a civilization can fetses not fervently enough the faith ye brought about by practical that China will be saved by the spplication—not by text-booke, not newepattern student, nor he [by learning an alien speech, not always prompt to offer wonderful by the investiture of alien Jobs to the man with a fraternity trousers. Yet most of us pay lip Pu or the man who knows the service, not to the man who labours Gifference between the Marble Arch at the wheels of progress, but in London and the Marble Boat to the professor of social dynamics in the Summer Palace lake. And who greases them. We have all of what he suffers from his Lo-professed, if we have not believed, Cousins the Reach-me-down that Chinese educated abroad ian and Itinerant Journalist, railway and industrial engineering from the later Lord Northeliffe to (L will not touch on the disastrous the egregious Mir. Gannett, an topic of government) would create serutable providence preserves the ys_and factories in China. reckoning.
Consequently, we have let the The least heard, but potentially'
Chinese and ourselves down badly. the most valuable'to tie Chinese What's to be Done? of all the legion of cooks who stir the China broth, is that materially We suppress a Boxer rising, and inded man the China hand. mulct the Chinese in retaliatory these letters from the seclusion of sums, earning their dislike—be-the interior can serve any good cause they are human enough purpose, it will be in so far as remember their losses more than hey shew forth, not what is pro-their offences. Then we relent, and fessed in Ching, nor what is ad. tell them they can have the money vieed, but what is happening and back if they will learn out of what™ may be expected to ensue, books, not to be like. us, but to feom the gross material view-point imitate u—it is typical of the of the rule-of-thumb Cama hand.
Americans that they should have! ported to be mi:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.