Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-01-17
Even the Heathen Are Beating Us!

Editor Clarence Poe, of the Pro-
gressive Farmer, who is making tour
through Asia furnishes some astonish-
ing figures in the last issue of his pa
per as to Japan's educational progress.
Although Japans war taxes alone Con
account of her struggles with China
and Russia and her present enormous
, military expenditure) amount to ten
times the average tax rate in the south,
Mr.. Poe points out that the people
gladly tax themselves enough to pro-
vide for nearly every boy and girl in
Mr.. Poe says:
These brown Mongolian farm chill
dren, whose land we opened to civili-
zation but fifty years ago, and whom
we thought of but yesterday as back
ward heathen-they are getting, as a
general proposition, just twice as much
schooling as is furnished in our south
ern rural districts: their parents are
providing, in their zeal for their chill
drens welfare, just twice as good edu
cational facilities as we are giving our
southern farm boys and girls who bear
in their veins the blood of a race
which has carried the flag Of human
progress for a thousand years, and
whom we are expecting to continue to
be leaders in civilization and enlight-
eminent.
I'm other words, so DR.. Matsui told
me (and I went today to the Japanese
national department of education to
verify the fact), the Japanese farm
boys and girls are getting ten months
schooling a year, while the southern
farm boy or girl is getting only five or
six months-and when I was in a
southern school fifteen years ago not
nearly so much as that! Do you Won
der that 1 avoided telling the Japanese
educational officer just how our pro-
vision for fa' n boys and girls COM
pares with ]; ans and that also neg
lected to tell him how we compare in
the matter Of utilizing school advan-
tages, when he showed me that of all
the children between 6 and IA in all
the empire of Japan the school attend
ance is SO per cent-9S out of every 100
children of school age" attending
school, and in several provinces SO
out of every 100. Thirty-five years
ago the average school attendance In
Japan was only %, and in 1893 only
SO, but by the time of the war with
Russia 1t had passed 80, and since then
has been climbing straight and steadily
toward the amazing maximum itself,
the official figures showing a gain Of
per cent a year-94 per cent, then 95
then 90, and then 81, and now SO, and
the leaders are now ambitious for SO or
100, as they told me today.
And then in the matter Of compul-
sorry attendance: when this officer Of
an inferior race showed me that ia
pan is so intent upon educating every
boy and girl in her borders that she
compels attendance on the public
schools for eight years. didn't tell him
that in civilized America, the great en-
lightened nation so long held up to him
as a model, demagogues and others.
on one pretext or anorner, have defeat
ed almost every effort for effective
compulsory education laws, in the
south at least, and if a boys parents
are Indifferent to his future, the state
does not compel them to give him
fighting chance in life-for its own
sake and for the boys.
with these facts before me, as
have said, l did not make any vain
glorious boasts of the great education
al progress of our southern states these
last twenty years. all the proud re-
ports I have heard at educational rail-
lies and conferences seemed somehow
to collapse like punctured gas-bags.
However much progress we have made,
these brown Japanese brethren have
beaten u.s."