THE MARVEL OF JAPANESE EDUCATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7938, 11 January 1906, Page 7

THE MARVEL OF JAPANESE EDUCATION.

In the National Review, Mt E. P. Culver-cell supplies a most interesting paper on "Japanese Education and Character." He says that the Japanese cu'ld in an elementary school breakfasts at six and stays at school from seven to twelve. Theeo five hours are broken by gymnastics and play. Sunday is a wholo holiday, Saturday is a half holiday, a fortnight in midwinter, a week in April and the month of August. The children in their play do everything but quarrel. An English teacher, after two years' experience, reports that he never saw Japanese schoolboys quarrel. There is at least one school journey in the year, when everything that can be taught is taught. There is no corporal punishment. No Japaneso teacher ever loses his temper witoout being disgraced. The pupil's mental atti tude is earnestness. The English sohoolboy's lashion of despising school tasks is unknown. Children of all classes, rich and poor, go together to the same school. All classes in Japan are characterised by extraordinary courtesy of action and speech. There are a few honorary prizes, for ("the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are far more faithfully observed in Japan than in those nations of Christendom which profess to recognise their Divine authority"; for duty, not self-advancement, is the motive appealed to. But loan saholarsbips are given, the student promising to repay them afterwards for the benefit of another student. Gymnastics are carefully taught, parrot memory is discouraged. Morals are taught two hours a week in the elementary schools, one hour a week in the secondary schools. Moral maxims are illustrated by deeda of history or actions of private men. These stories are not tales of triumphant strength and conquest, but of selfeffacement.' The nearest approach to them in Christian teaching would be the stories of the martyrs; but to the Japanese mind the martry's hope of reward in Heaven would rob the act of virtue. This force of self-control and self-efface-ment is rooted in public opinion, habit and patriotism. Of religious enthusiasm, there seems to be none. A olasa ,of children in 1892, asked what was their dearest wish, wrote: "To be allowed to die for our beloved Emperor." The Emperor is an abstraction put in the place for God reserved in our minds. The writer adds a note to say that since Western education has passed out of the hands of the missionaries Christianity has been practically at a standstill in Japan^