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Show FUTURE LEADERS OF CHRISTIAN CHINA 2? changes have helped to make the machinery run more smoothly. In TUNGCHOW, one of the members of the educational committee solved the problem of the best way to instill certain pedagogical suggestions by sugar-coating them with a delicious foreign dinner, to which the teachers were ceremoniously invited. Even carts, whose dignity, to the Chinese heart, far outbalances paltry- jounces and bumps over the stone-paved streets, were despatched for distant school ma'ams, and had so stimulating an effect as to induce the guests to arrive two hours early! Accordingly it was a smiling set of teachers who discussed the standardizing of curricula, better educational methods, and even the still further repression of the unconquerable Chinese craving for memorizing. In FENCHOW, government recognition was asked and gladly granted, on condition that "the curricula of the schools must, in the main, conform to the curriculum of T?<?NEWITH t h e * o v e r n m e n t s c n o o l s of the same grade; there THE GOV- lnU5t ^e t w o n u n d r e c l a"d twenty days of teaching. ERNMENT exclusive of examinations and holidays ; certain record and examination papers must be kept for the inspection of the government; certain reports must be made ; there must be a certain proportion of licensed teachers ; the school buildings and grounds must conform to certain regulations; and the work of the school must always be subject to government inspection." This year has shown that the restrictions of the government in the matter of curriculum are so broad as to allow-all the modifications and additions the mission may care to make. They even went so far this year, however, as to prefer to use the government text-book in ethics to the purely Bible course which they were at liberty to substitute for it. The government text-book is thoroughly good as far as it goes, and is being used as the basis while the Bible serves as a source-book. Such cooperation naturally puts the mission school on its mettle, and it is for this reason that further steps in the negotiations for the joint management of the government school in Fenchow, of which so much has been made, are delayed until the new men who have come out for this work can get the language and be in shape to do the thing as it should be done. Meanwhile, the most cordial relations with the authorities are continued, although the magistrate who helped with the normal school last summer has been replaced by one much less friendly. |
