The letter which appeared in yesterday's correspondence columns from the Rev. P. C. Marruews, on the subject of Shanghai's lack of higher education is not only timely, but coming from a man obviously so well acquainted with his subject deserves the closest- attention. It is a question which gravely affects the foreign community now, and may be expected to do so even more seriously in the future, for with exchange in the parlous condition it is at the present moment there is the possibility that parents who ordinarily could have afforded to send their children home to their native lands for schooling additional to that which they have obtained in Shanghai, may, in many instances, no longer be able to do so. Indeed when the dollar dropped to 84d. there were people in Shanghai, and for that matter in other parts of China, facing such inroads into their dollar incomes for the education of their children at home that they have already been obliged to bring them back to China. It is obvious that, conditions being as they are now, many more will probably have to follow suit or make such sacrifices as will bear upon the rest of the family living in the Far East. It has to be admitted that the education which is chiefly given to foreign children in Shanghai is not such as would prepare them for the careers they should be expected to follow as adequately as can the educational facilities which are available in the home countries, and the result must necessarily be that unless a child has qualities much above the ordinary, with a steady determination to improve himself for better things the chances of his rising to any great degree of eminence are extremely slim. A little shorthand, a little typewriting and many children leaving local schools enter upon a future the horizons of which are severely limited. They merely swell the ranks of unskilled, and half educated workers, when in fact the home background should have qualified them for much better things. It may be argued, and very often is, that education is not the only qualification for success in life. It can even be admitted, but the fact nevertheless remains that the well educated child has a better start than he or she whose only evidence of educational fitness is the school certificate, with perhaps exemption from matriculation, meaning in fact that the child is equipped with the knowledge which a sixteen-year-old ought to possess.
Nrw Low in a communication printed today takes the point that the foreign community in Shanghai is not very large and that out of it there would hardly be enough young people of the required standard to keep the institute going. If the: word "foreigner" is intended merely to cover the British community the point is well taken, if, however, it is accepted in its more catholic connotation that may not prove to be the case, and as Mr. Marrmws suggests that the Municipal Council should open an Institute, or Technical College, it is to be assumed that he is approaching his subject from the wider angle. When the number of foreign children attending the various schools in Shanghai are considered there should be sufficient children needing such higher education as to justify the maintenance of the suggested Institute. The list of grant aided schools for foreign children for 1938 shows the number of pupils to be 5,894, of which 4,014 are Japanese, and might not some within the scheme because of their proximity to their own country. Leaving then 1,880 from schools under this heading, there has to be added to that number the foreign children attending Council schools, which in 1938 was 1,232, but which in more normal years, according to the annual report of the Superintendent of Education, would seem to be nearer 1,600. There are then about 3,000 to 3,400 children from which students would be drawn for higher education where such available, but that figure has nów to be increased with the unascertained number of children who have [already been withdrawn from home schools by their parents, and those other who may be placed in the same position as a result of exchange developments, It is difficult to ascertain how many children leave school every year, but if the school period is taken as about nine years some 300 to 350 children are launched lutd the world annually half-educated and fit only for those minor jobs which will be their fate unless some happy chance opens up avenues which may well be denied their less fortunate fellows.
How many of that number would care, and be able to remain in an institute for higher education for the necessary number of years must be a matter of speculation, but it is an uncomfortable fact that so many promising youngsters, and there is quite a number of them, are being denied, and will be continued to be denied even more in the future, those facilities which would better equip them for their future careers. But consideration of the figures alone does not throw complete light upon the situation. It has to be remembered that the for€ign grant aided schools follow curricula best suited to their own particular nationality, and one of the difficulties which seems to present itself in this connection would seem to be the correlation of primary education along such lines, as would make any such institute as Mr. Marruzws suggests the most effective means of pursuing secondary studies. In Britain where the elementary school follow a very definite course of instruction the problem which Shanghai presents in this connection does not arise, and while local schools undoubtedly have the same objective in view, the manner in which they approach it may very well present some difficulty in insuring that the groundwork now given should be such as to make the acquisition of higher education easier than it seems would be the case at the moment. That is in no way intended to deprecate Min. Mar-THEWS'S very natural concern over the absence of those facilities for which there is an undoubted need. Unfortunately recognition of the need does not afford the much desired solution. The success of Shanghai children in the schools of their homelands is ample proof that the quality of the education provided here is excellent so far as it goes, but with Mr. MaTTHEWS'S contention that it does not go far enough there can be nothing but the completest agreement. Whether a solution for the problem which he presents can be found in a technical college, or whatever else it may be called, remains to be seen, but he has fairly stated a problem which though it may not be particularly urgent at the moment may in the not too distant future require solving. Whether the Council could undertake it, is another question, and one which may have to be answered by something in the nature of communal effort instead.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.