Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/433

 CHAPTER XXVI T has been only in the capital and in a few of the prominent provincial centres that there has been any considerable modification of the immemorial methods of education, and so we will first explain the old system, which still generally prevails, and afterward note the modern innovations.

Education, in its narrower sense of scholastic training, was introduced into Korea from China along with the literature and religions of that land. Both the subject matter and the method are therefore exotic rather than indigenous. For this reason it is easy to explain why Korea has no national literature of a distinctive type. Through all the long centuries education has meant the study of the Chinese character and the great classics which form the recognised curriculum of China. Most educated Koreans can tell you much more about the history of China than they can about their own national history; just as any English or American college boy can tell you more about Latin grammar than he can about the grammar of his own tongue.

With the few exceptions to be noted later, there are no public schools in Korea. It is only within the last decade that such a thing as an educational bureau has existed in Seoul. Even to-day the annual appropriation for this purpose amounts only to twenty thousand dollars, a large part of which is used in office expenses.

Generally speaking, education is a private affair and has so been considered from the first. Every village has its little room, always in a private house, where the boys sit on the floor with their large-print books of Chinese characters before them, and, as they sway back and forth with half-shut eyes, they drone out