Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/356

350 trained educators. Educational institutions are expensive and even the missionaries who were skilled in the art of teaching had no money for the necessary equipment.

The main reason why no teachers of high standing, who could hold professorships in any of the reputable colleges at home, have been working in China is the lack of money and facilities to induce them to come. When a scholar leaves civilization to go to regions far from home he must see some advantage in going. If he can go with a financial gain or library and laboratory advantages, he is willing to sacrifice the comforts and conveniences of the homeland. But China did not have the money to pay for high-salaried teachers or to provide any library or laboratory inducements for the scholar.

Nowadays we hear much of the colleges of western learning which the Chinese government proposes to establish in all parts of the empire. This calls to mind another difficulty, viz., the inability of the Chinese to manage a school properly. Most of the Chinese who try to start institutions of learning have no idea what a foreign college looks like. They have no means of knowing how to select men; neither are they capable of knowing whether the teachers whom they employ know how to give instruction. Formerly they thought that any foreigner could teach any or all of the subjects constituting 'western' learning. There were always plenty of unscrupulous foreigners willing to take advantage of the ignorance of the Chinese regarding educational affairs and to pose as 'professors' of anything or everything for the sake of the salaries. There were also numerous equally unscrupulous Chinese, who, having obtained a smattering of English in some foreign land, returned to China and undertook to give instruction in many branches.

Experience with such impostors has taught the Chinese to be suspicious of everybody and everything concerning western learning. We can not blame them for this. Confused by such experiences and reinforced by their profound ignorance of modern education, the Chinese school managers are exceedingly difficult to 'handle.' Notwithstanding their good intentions, they really do not know what they intend to do. As a result, the instructors whom they employ have to spend a large portion of their energy in managing the 'school-managers,' instead of being free to devote all of their attention to their school work proper.

Most of the schools in China, present as well as past, have big names only, regulations by the volume and curricula which exist only on paper. With their characteristic power in imitation and their time-honored conservatism, the Chinese school trustees want to follow this or that school instead of leaving the instructors free to administer the affairs of each school in accordance with its own peculiar needs.

What China needs to-day is not so much the higher theoretical