Wochang, June 24.
Although it is yet early in the summer, most of the government schools in Wuchang have already broken up. The students decided to have no exams,, and since' their! word is Iw, no exams. were held' and they have all gone home. Really, the discipline in these schools is so bad that they are worse than useless. The students] take up the attitude that they are the employers of the teachers, and the latter are merely their servants. There is an understood compact that nothing is to be expected of the students in class; the teacher is to]
the talking, and the students sit} and listen. Students attend classes fonly when they choose to, and the attendance records are rarely kept. The students also choose what sub-
Jects they shall study, and among! other things ethics has been definitely thrust out of the curriculum.
It may seem as if the above is an exaggerated or biassed account of] the state of affairs. As a matter of fact, it is merely a summing up of what your correspondent has heard from several trustworthy, witnesses who know the inside of government schools {rom personal experience, One only' wishes it were untrue, The worst feature of the situation is, that a whole generation of students is growing up, Jabsolutely ignorant of discipline, puffed up with the conceit of their own importance, and with only the! vaguest ideas about world history, the relations of China with other: nations, or the elementary principles: of polities and economies. It ix no. wonder that such a constituency is 'a fruitful field for the cowing of fall kinds of wrong and mischievous. Ideas, such as are represented by the pamphlet of which I sent you a translation a fow weeks ago. It is jelear that, if Boxer Indemnity money is to be returned to China for educational purposes, it ought not to be entrusted to institutions: which are entirely in Chinese hand
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.