Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/108

 74 and girls from twelve to eighteen following the Government curriculum, which is the same all over the Empire from Poland to the Far East. The type of education is very similar to that of the classical side of our public schools in England, except that perhaps less attention was paid to Latin and Greek and more to French. French and German are obligatory, and English, Latin and Greek are at present optional. Elementary science was taught, but from books only. Such scientific instruction, to my mind, would tend to create only foggy notions about the laws of nature in the minds of the human raw material of these parts of Siberia. The lessons were accompanied by no sort of practical demonstration; and the teachers indeed informed me that they had never done any practical work themselves, and frankly stated that all their information came from books.

In fact the Government does not encourage modern scientific education in the middle schools, and is more desirous of instilling classical education into the minds of the growing Siberian bourgeoisie. In so far as they insist upon a grounding in history, geography and the German or French languages, I am inclined to think that this middle-school policy is right. The fault lies in not giving sufficient facilities elsewhere for the more practical scientific side of modern education, by the opening of technical schools and universities throughout Siberia. There is only one university in the whole continent where modern education can be obtained, and that is at Tomsk. Attempts to start one at Irkutsk have been vetoed by the Government in spite of the fact that all the money has been found by the Siberians themselves.