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 CHAPTER XII.

The Village School.

village school might appropriately be called the boys' school, since in Korea there are no schools for girls, or at least there were none before the coming of the missionaries. Now there are a number of good schools conducted by missionaries in different parts of the country where girls are educated. In many Christian communities there are now day schools for girls as well as for boys, the two always being conducted separately. I was delighted not long since, in visiting one of our Christian schools, to learn that a few small girls were allowed to attend and study with the boys. This means that the day is not far distant when our Christian boys and girls will be attending the same schools and learning the same lessons.

Our village school is wholly a voluntary arrangement entered into by a number of men in the village who want to educate at least a part of their boys. The government formerly took very little notice of education except to hold examinations for those who were striving for political preferment. So the school of which we are now writing is one of the old-time village schools, of which many remain till the present day.

It is not the hope of any village that a school shall be established to accommodate all the boys in the community, but only the favored few whose parents can Rh