Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: such reforms can be only partial. Yet, with the prizes for learning, and the extensive system that exists for instruction, or at least for examination, change cannot but be rapid, when, as is the case, the learned classes are becoming more sympathetic with the new ideals. CONTENT, ORGANIZATION, AND METHOD OF CHINESE EDUCATION. — It is the uniform testimony of all competent observers that in no country is education of a formal, that is literary, character, so highly valued ; nowhere has education such a direct and permanent influence in shaping the character of the people ; nowhere are the educational activities and processes so uniform. By reason of its education China is a land of absolute uniformity. It is a land of observance of tradition and of custom, a land in which no change from the accepted way of thinking, feeling, or doing is permitted, and in which comparatively little really occurs. Yet that education is most restricted in its content, most formal in its method, and most stereotyped and inflexible in its organization. Let us examine each in turn. Content. — The purpose of the elementary stages of Chinese education is to familiarize the boy — it goes without saying that the girl has no consideration whatever in their literary or institutional education — with the language and with their sacred literature. Familiarity here means an absolute verbal knowledge of the entire literature and an ability to compose in the stilted formal and archaic style of their writings. The greater part of elementary and of higher education consists in memorizing these forms of language and literature without any necessary knowledge of their real significance. The character of this task can be appreciated by noting the character of both language and literature. Character of the Lang...