Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-09-10

been established at nearly all of the capt.
tails of the procedures, which will bring
modern education, formerly left entirely to
the missionaries, officially within the reach
of three-fourths Of the population of emma
Great Demand for Teachers.
1t cannot be expected that these institu-
tons will assume a very high standard or
furnish perfect education, for the same
reason that bricks cannot be made without
straw. Their faculties are composed almost
entirely of foreigners Three-fourths of
them are Japanese. The remainder are
Americans, English, French, Germans, Bel
gians and Chinese graduates of foreign col
leges and missionary schools. The demand
for teachers is so great that almost any
body with foreign education who is able
to speak Chinese can obtain a chair in one
of the faculties. The work of all these in
situations must be superficial and imperfect
for many years, but the Importance and
significance of the innovation will cOmpen-
safe for all defects they may possibly have.
Several of them are being built upon
grand scale. l shall take advantage of my
opportunities later to describe some of the
more interesting in detail. They are per-
manent They are being established with
dormitories to accommodate anywhere from
500 to 300 students and quarters for hum
dreds of instructors.
cism of these mushroom institutions it Is
already beginning to be published. But you
must always remember that they have
sprung up in obedience to an extraordinary
and unprecedented impulse. Such a thing
never occurred before, and probably will
never occur again, because similar condi-
tons would be impossible elsewhere.
In addition to these emergency educa-
tional facilities, the missionary schools and
other institutions already established have
been crowded, and more than a thousand
Chinese students have gone to Japan to be
educated.
Scarcity of Textbooks.
The problem of providing textbooks has
been perplexing one, as they did not ex-
list in the Chinese language. The govern
ment bought $4,000 worth of books from
foreign and native shopkeepers in Shang-
hal, Tien-Tsin and other cities, and from
what 1 hear it's agents have been outra-
geously swinded The booksellers unloaded
all of their stale and obsolete stock upon
them, good, bad and Indifferent regardless
of the subjects treated, and car loads of
similar worthless literature haze been
brought over from Japan.
For months the Society for the Diffusion
of Christian Knowledge, whose headquar-
tiers are at Shanghai, has been employing
all the printers and presses it could obtain,
night and day, and has sent several manu-
scripts to Japan to be published DR.. Tim
othy Richard, the head of this society," SAYS
That not long ago one missionary teacher
sent in order to be filled by mail upon
He says also that Shanghai booksellers
have opened branches in all the principal
cities, where they are selling an average of
$500 worth of books day.
AS the japanese written language is
three-fourths Chinese" said Dr. Richard,
"a large staff has been engaged by the
government to translate japanese text
books into Chinese. In that way 1t can be
done much more quickly and cheaply, but
thus far few valuable books are ready in
the Chinese language for higher teaching.
Only fraction of the books brought out
this way will be of much good, and some
of them will be positively harmful The
difficulty is not a lack of students. but
lack of competent teachers. professors
translators and authors of textbooks in
chinese. Chinese interpreters with no
learning, but who can speak, read and
write English, can command s120 per an
mum, and those who can speak English well
and have gone through a college course in
addition can get $40 per annum in this
country, where, be it remembered, teachers
ordinary salaries are only quarter of
what they are in England or America The
reason for this extraordinarily high nav is
that the few government and missionary
colieges cannot supply the demand for
teachers"