Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/434

 the sounds of the ideographs, not in unison, but each for himself. There is no such thing as a class, for no two of the boys are together, and to the unaccustomed ear the babel that results is almost stunning. But the system has its good as well as its bad points.

As the boys are not graded, the bright ones are not held back by the dull ones, nor are the dull ones forced ahead superficially in order to preserve the semblance of grade. Each one goes on his merits, and individuality is developed more than in our schools. Then, again, the deafening noise about him compels the boy to extreme concentration upon his own work. It is difficult for us to fancy that mentality would be possible under the circumstances, but the truth is that no one of those shouting boys hears any other than his own voice. The outside confusion, instead of shattering his mental processes, drives him in upon himself and probably enables him to memorise better than if he were alone. On the other hand, the Chinese method puts a veto upon all esprit de corps, and the boy loses a large part of the beneficial influence of comparison and competition.

The study of the ideograph is a consuming passion with the well-born Korean. We talk about burning the midnight oil, but the determined Korean student is said to tie a string about the beam overhead and attach the end to his top-knot in order to keep himself from falling over and going to sleep.

Pedagogy is neither a finished science nor a fine art in Korea. It merely consists in sitting before the boys with a stick and seeing that each one continues to shout, but there is plenty of evidence that, under cover of the noise, the urchins frequently talk with each other, as the choir boys in a Devonshire church are said to have done. During an antiphonal chant one boy changed the devotional words to : "John, ye owe me fower marbles." And the reply came back in sacred song: "You'm a liar; 't is but two."

However high may be the esteem in which letters are held, the ordinary teacher is a very humble member of so-called good