Dec. 7
The important and lucid statement of the Municipal Council's plans for application of educational policy, approved in principle by the ratepayers, to the non-municipal schools, will be read with interest and attention, It deals mainly with Chinese schools for they ceive by far the larger proportion of the Tis, 150,000 set aside by the authority of the la ratepayers' meeting, for "grants in-aid of non-municipal due tional establishments". over the Council appears to have devised an arrangement which will satisfy the desire of Chinese authorities for the control of ich private Chinese schools, consistently with the exigencies of Settlement Administration and will also relieve the anxiety lof ratepayers who realise that extensive responsibility for educational developments would loppressively increase the Council's financial commitments. [Generally the Council takes the line that the private Chinese schools should be enabled to conduct themselves in accord-lance with the conditions of the educational policy of the Chinese Government, as carried out by the Education Bureau of Greater Shanghai. The adoption of any other attitude would create Janomalies calculated to embarrass the Council's relations with the Chinese, It would also place the Council in the difficult pos tion of having either to admit its inability to contribute usefully to the serious problem of Chinese education in the Settlement or to embark on grandiose schemes beyond the capacity of its revenues to bear.
Fortunately Mr. Justice Feetham's report has assisted materi ally in guiding the Council in this matter. It has long been recognised that a grave obstacle to Council support of private Chinese schools lay in the anti foreign tendencies of certain teachings under the Government curriculum. The statement now with the con-lered opinion of Mr. Justice He points out that the Council cannot spend its revenue on the maintenance of schools in which the children of different nations represented therein were tought to regard each other as heredity ary enemies, or to feel that their duty as citizens of their own leountry were to hate the people may safely asserted" that the ratepayers would not tolerate the fulfilment of their mandate to the Council if such a use could be made of their money. It is axiomatic that Shanghai has a specially stringent reason to be solicitous on this point. Its very existence depends on the continuance of an atmosphere of international harmony. Moments. occur whea, in the mingling lof nationals of countries from all lover the world, the strain is lereat. It is Shanghai's pride that seldom has the community jas a whole been unequal to the demand made upon its tolerance land its spirit of civie service. To no single community is the preservation of this amity more vital than to the Chinese. It is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.