EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS IN CHINA.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 277, 18 July 1918, Page 12

EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS IN CHINA.

Hi shop Frodsh.im gave «i lecture to the students of the Cheltenham Training- College foi teachers some time ago upon the education policies of the Far Hast. After de scribing the methods of the old regime which he had s°en working in 1902, the Bishop stated that the old sysl *ni had been completely disorganised by the revolution. Yet in the very year of the revolution, iql2, the Chinese had ~et to work to constitute a wholly new education system based upon the most efficient Western ideals. A conference of educational experts was summoned by the Republican (Government in 1912. The conference lasted for a morth, and no less than 43 Bills affecting educational matters were considered, and 23 were approved in their original 01 amended form. The result had been that the Chinese Republic had laid down a scheme for national education beside which Mr Fisher’s Bill was small and incomplete. The outstanding point of the new Chinese system was the nationalisation of education upon lines which included public and private schools. The ladder was complete from top to bottom. Any boy from a primary school had a f.»ir opportunity to climb to the highest office in the State. In the interlocking of the various types of schools the German system (which was also akin to the Japanese system) had bo'n followed, with this remarkable difference, ethics and civic duties were p! red in the forefront of education. More than all peoples of the world, the Chinese for thousands of years had valued education, and had placed the training of character before everything else. It was beside the point to say that theory in China was far alvvd of practice. A nation which in the year of a revolution could frame not only a new but a workable system of educ tion must be taken seriously. Those who, like the speaker, had worked with the Chinese knew that, having set their minds upon the educational methods of the West, they would m>t only succeed in making the next generation of Chinamen well-edu-cated, but they would pregs hard the Western races upon their own ground. Wise people would look not only at Germany and America, but at the Far East in (Considering the future. The Fa’- East, to the speaker’s mind, provided the most urgent reasons he knew for the improvement and centralisation

of education in thi< country, and the tust step forward was to pass Mr Fisher’s Bill without delay. There was another point. The Republic of China allowed for variation of religious belief. Christians and Confucians and Buddhists had equal religious rights so far as the education of their respective children was concerned. It would he monstrous if Christians in this country could not come to an agreement among themselves, bas°d not upon prejudice, hut upon freedom to all denominations. 'This point had been raised by resolutions at the Conference in the Cathedral Chapter House, and it was the most important resolution passed by Gloucestershire Churchmen.