Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/403

Rh Encouraged by the more liberal atmosphere created by the colonial government and by the contiguity to the great empire to be influenced, the Morrison school, started four years before in Macao, was removed to Hongkong in 1843, followed in 18-14 by the Anglo-Chinese College of Mallaca (founded also by Morrison in 1818). Many educational enterprises have since developed in Hongkong, though the results do not measure up to those in most of the schools in central and north China.

Educational work within the actual borders of China began when the treaty ports provided for in 1842 were opened up. Canton was the chief of these, and there as early as 1835 Dr. Peter Parker had opened the Canton Hospital, and this together with other benevolent medical work helped to pave the way for more extensive evangelistic and educational activities by creating a more friendly feeling towards foreigners among the Chinese. Though having its beginnings in the south, this educational work rapidly spread, and there is now scarcely a mission from Canton to Peking without its primary school, day school, intermediate school, night school or college. There are about 2,000 day schools with 35,400 pupils, and 170 higher schools with some 5,000 or more students. A few of these are girls' academies, in which there are courses of study equal to those of schools of a like grade in the United States, and pursued with equal credit. The oldest of these boarding schools for girls is that begun by the Wesleyan mission at Canton in 1861. Among the leading christian colleges, the one which has had the most graduates and the widest influence is the Shangtung College, founded at Tengchou (now at Weihsien) by the Presbyterians in 1864, under Dr. Calvin W. Mateer.

The work of this body of christian educators, small as it has been, has had an immeasurable effect. Awakened under the influence of this silent agency, and more rudely by the results of the China-Japan war and the events of 1899-1900, China's leaders have been made to see that the trouble lies in their faulty system and ideals of education; and have in nearly every case of educational reform called to their aid men hitherto prominent in educational missions. One of the most remarkable indications of the change that is coming over China is the spectacle of such eminent officials and scholars as Chang Chih Tung and Yuan Shih Kai urging upon the younger scholars the necessity of studying western sciences and becoming acquainted with the accomplishments of other nations. The government has begun to adopt measures to facilitate this course. In 1901, while the court was still in exile, a series of edicts was issued commanding a reorganization of the educational system of the empire, calling for changes in the examination system hitherto in vogue, for the establishment of an Imperial University at Peking and a large number of other high-grade institutions in all parts