--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Mosiah Hall collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 3 number: 10 published: 1900-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Mosiah Hall, "Chinese Education," *Improvement Era* 3, no. 10 (August 1900): 756–759.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera310unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera310unse start_page: 756 end_page: 759 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1900-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera310unse publication_year: 1900 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1900, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Chinese Education CHINESE EDUCATION. BY PROFESSOR MOSIAH HALL, OP THE BRIGHAM YOUNG COLLEGE, LOGAN, UTAH. The Chinese may be taken as the highest representative of the Turanian races. They had a consciously organized scheme of education long before any other people. The Chinese say, "When letters were invented, the heavens, the earth and the gods were all agitated. The inhabitants of Hades wept at night, and the heavens as an expression of joy, rained down ripe grain." Writing was practiced among them in 1700 B. C, and it is believed to have existed in some form even in 3000 B. C* According to Laurie, the Chinese character is child-like, gentle, kindly and peaceful, united with cunning, suspicion, trickery and immorality. They have a marvelous industry, and are wonderfully contented; in fact, they have an enormous national conceit, and * "It is not so long since the nobles of our most civilized western lands counted it a vice to write well, and slept on rushes in their torch-lit, wooden halls. Their ideals were war and hunting, with bows and arrows, for the most part, with legalized plundering of the agricultural population to renew their supplies of bread. In those days China was far more civilized than any European country; and in the life of the Chinese empire, that period is only as yesterday. The two things which have done most to change the relative positions of east and west are gun powder and printing, yet both of these have been known in China for ages. So that any inherent superiority on the part of the west is rather a pleasing fiction,"— CAarZes Johnston, of the Royal Asiatic Society, in July, North American Review. CHINESE EDUCATION. 757 their personal habits are temperate. They are, however, cruel, almost inhuman in their treatment of criminals, and human life is held in low esteem. It is most remarkable that in China about one-third of the human race — its population is about four hundred millions — have for over four thousand years had a settled system of government and form of life, and an educational system for at least three thousand years of this time. Confucius (551 B. C.) was their great religious teacher, and much that is peculiar in their life and thought may be traced to the influence of his teachings. Order is the chief characteristic of this religious system. Man having this cannot err. Knowledge is virtue. Absolute truth is the course or way of nature. They aim at a social and political system which is as unvarying as the return of the seasons in nature. "Connected with the official religion is an annual ceremonial of worship in honor of the powers of nature, and expressing the dependence of man on the order of nature, the productivity of the soil, and the recurrence of the seasons." Their religion is a moral and political system resting ultimately on the recognition of a supreme God or divine Order, but this being is regarded only as a fact, and as something outside of their daily life. This religion includes the worship of ancestors. Immortality is a blank with them.* In their religion there is a formal morality, but nothing ideal or truly ethical. The Chinese have a reverence for the past that amounts to a superstition. Antiquity is a guarantee for truth, and an infallible guide for present action. The family is the center of the moral, social, and political life of the nation. Out of the idea of family life, all virtues grow, and * "Christianity owes most of its converts in China to the fact that it is more alluring than any religion we have there. The idea of a future life and rewards for the righteous is tempting to many. Confucius teaches no such doctrine. He was once asked if he believed in a future life, and he answered: 'If I don't know what will take place tomorrow, how can I know anything about a more remote future?' He exhorted men to do their best today with no thought of reward. That seems to me the higher view." — Wu Ting-Fang, Minister of China to the United States, in the London Christian Commonwealth. 758 IMPROVEMENT ERA. after the family ideal the state is modelled. ''The state is only a largely developed family, and the emperor, at the head, has like a father in China, the power of life and death over his subjects, and commands and receives absolute obedience." The relation of wife to husband is practical slavery. A father in naming his children, counts only his sons. Prudential virtue takes the place of the ideal and spiritual. If a man attain a perfect nature, he must observe the five relations: between king and subject, father and son, elder and younger brother, husband and wife, friend and friend, and practice the usual daily virtues. One of their chief characteristics is a love for formalism and ceremonies. "The Book of Rites, which must be learned by heart, gives minute directions for the acts of daily life in the family, and in the state, and is also a manual of etiquette." This helps to give permanence to their institutions, and yet it deprives them of vitality and stifles all progress. Virtue becomes propriety, and morality, conventionalism. Their ideographic language also restricts the free play of mind. The mental effort necessary to learn one thousand of their characters is no doubt as great as we put forth to read a small library. Their educational system with its almost total reliance on memory and fixed forms of examinations, is the most stupendous intellectual machine ever devised by man.* It, however, seems to answer the * Speaking of Chinese education and the recent, so far unsuccessful, efforts of the emperor at infusing new life and change into the wonderful system of intellectual training, perfected in China centuries ago, Mr. Johnston, in the Review, already quoted, says: "It is the battle of utility against culture fought out once more on Chinese lines. Chemistry and physics, engineering and military science are to take the place of essays and poems exquisitely fashioned after ancient models, now the sole test of talent throughout the empire, and perfection in which is the royal road to fame and fortune. "It is hard to tell which we most admire, the genuine enthusiasm of all China for literary culture, for familiarity with the highest thoughts and noblest words of the sages, or the marvelous ingenuity and precision with which this knowledge is tested by a system of examinations hardly equalled, and never surpassed, by any nation in the world — the vast halls, with their cloister-like divisions for ten thousand candidates; the seals CHINESE EDUCATION. 759 purpose demanded by their social ideals. It turns out obedient citizens, and proficient officers who perpetuate their idea of government. From all of which it seems evident that the educational ideal of the Chinese is social or political culture. It rests first upon the family; next upon a cold, formal morality, then upon absolute reliance on system, order, and the dead past; and lastly upon the huge conventionalism of their schools. All have a formal culture, rather than a spiritual end, in view. As Laurie well says, "everything tends to fixedness, and order — to a statical rather than a dynamical social and civil life. For four thousand years they have made no substantial progress in the essential thought, and lifestandard of the nation." Some valuable lessons, nevertheless, are to be derived from them — mostly, however, of a negative nature. Enthusiasts for order and system, as a means for placing our own schools on a better basis, should study Chinese education carefully. Ardent pedagogues, who believe the social phase of education should be our ideal, may find something here to hold their attention. Above all, the results of formal, conventional teaching and education may be seen here at their best. «et on the doors before the papers are given out; the counted sheets of stamped paper with name and number for the essays and poems of each candidate; the army of clerks copying the themes in red ink, lest any personal sign or mark should lead the examiner to recognize a favored pupil; the enthusiastic crowds gathering at the doors; the canons and music which greet the candidates first to come forth; the literary chancellor ceremoniously presiding; the lists of the successful eagerly bought up in the streets; the chosen essays and poems sent to Court for the delectation of the Emperor; the gold-buttoned caps and blue silk gowns of the graduates; and lastly, the almost pathetic provision that whoever continues without success to try for any degree until his eightieth year shall receive it free, from the emperor himself, as a reward for faithful love of learning."