The Portland daily press., 1870-07-29
DAILY PRESS.
t"pEEI LAND.
Friday Morning, July 20. 1870.

t"0HTJa.Ar%Ig II

L
MIR. NJ. j. knowlton, in the following com.
munication to the Boston journal. corrects
some misapprehensions which have gained
currency in rega,d to education in China: at
is often asserted in the newspapers and by
| public speakers that the Chinese can all read
| and write.' Even Mitclelrs new School Geog-
| raphy has the following remarkable para
graph: Education I'm China) is general and
learning is greatly respected. All classes can
read and write. Newspapers and books are
printed in great numbers A residence of six
teen years in China, and constant intercourse
with the people during that period, enable me,
from personal observation, to deny positively
the truthiuiness of these assertions. The mar
ration OF few facts will, trust, place this
matter OF education il, Chino IN. its t.,,o l;ht
before the public.
There are no schools in China for girls, and
with very rare exceptions no female can read
or write. Thus we at once find half the popu-
laton utterly destitute of education. OF the
males, the tillers of the soil, the mechanics,
the boatmen, the fishermen, the coolies or
the working population, with very few excep-
tions can neither read nor write. The Bud
dDist priests should also as a general Iu,e be
elassed among the non-readers. The meii-
chants, the petty tradesmen, the doctors, the
fortune tellers and mountebanks, and the off
cial runners or lictors, can for the most part,
just read and write sufficiently to keep ac-
counts and conduct business correspondence.
Very few among these classes can read and
understand any Chinese book written in the
usual classical or literary style. We sometimes
see in their hands Chinese novels which are
written in a more dilfuse, colloquial STYLE
The reason why so few can understand the
book language is the fault, in part, of the bad
system of teaching in the schools. Three or
four years are spent by the pupils (which is as
much as most boys can spend at school in
committing 10 memory the names and forms
of characters, and in learning to write them
before any explanation is given of their mean
ing.
The classic or book language of China is
dead language. 1t is about as unlike the COL
loqual dialectsAbf which there are over SEQ
in the empire-as Latin is unlike the English,
French and italian dialects. The only class
in China which can read and write it, is tie
literary men who devote their whole lives to
literary pursuits. The proportion of these
Mr.. Knowlton estimates as about zone in Is
or one and one-third per cent. on an average
of the males. There are no public or COM
mon schools in China, nor does the govern
ment have anything to do with schools. The
so-called colleges in China are buildings
where students can go and find retirement,
free of charge, for reading and practicing the
writing of essays and poetry. In the Sc
lect schools nothing but reading and writing
is tausht-no science of any kind not even
geography and arithmetic. AS for grammar
they have none. As. for newspapers
there is not one printed in all China" The
official bulletin, the Pekin Gazette, Mr..
Knowlton does not consider a newspaper in
the usual sense. The examinations for liter
airy degrees are narrow in their scope, AMI do
not embrace science or law.