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Show - 43 - In The Schools. A few words regarding some of the individual schools. The Grammar Department of the Atwater School has continued under the efficient leadership of Mr. Wang Chi Shan. Mr. Leete has had charge of the athletics and an inter-scholastic meet is arranged for at the close of the year. . A class of twenty-seven men are preparing for graduation in June. The Primary Department at T ai Ho Ch'iao has an enrollment of eighty-seven, the highest in its history. Three men of the Bible School have given an hour a day each in turn to the Pao En Si, the West, and East Suburb schools, in practicel work that has brought much inspiration to the schools. Shang Ta is still in its old quarters, it being impossible last year to accept the offer of the temple made by the town, since the funds required for repairs we could not obtain. P'ei Hwei cannot do satisfactory work until its quarters can be enlarged. At Hsia ch'u, the new school building now rapidly nearing completion will add greatly to the ef-fiency both of school and church. The schools at Loa Ch'cnar, San Ch'wan and Chi Ts'un have doubled their enrollment this year. The work of the other twenty odd schools need not be detailed here. The course of an ordinary school is very largely one of regular routine, and corresponds in most respects to a similar school in America. Some of the unsolved problems which hold over for the year to come may be noted. They are those which perhap; confront all educationalists in China •who are seeking to build up efficient work on a self-supporting basis, but complicated by the transition changes of the period, and aggravated in this field by the flood conditions of the past three years and the poverty resulting therefrom. First of these is the subject of textbooks. No greater problems face educators in China than those connected with textbooks for students. Quite aside from all questions of the unfitness of the many from a ped?.gogical point of view, and the constant change in the books authorized by the authorities, there is that of cost to the student. Reduced to the lowest prices modern textkooks are still beyond the reach of most students. In the second place the people at large have not yet come to understand the meaning of the new education. It has not yet been popularized. There is little in the arrogant, money-loving nature of many of its disciples to commend itself to the people as a whole, and yet no movement can succeed in China •which does not reckon with the multitude. Again there is the problem of getting a larger number of students to complete their courses in the higher schools. At present only a small proportion pass on to the higher schools. The reasons are first the cost of education, second, the family requiring the earnings of the boy in order to live, and third, probably growing out of this, the desire to learn a trade at once. Then there is the problem, or problems, resulting from the early specialization of studies, a specialization beginning so early that the choice of a profession is practically forced upon the graduate of a Middle School immature and uncultured as he of necessity is. This tendency very materially affects even ihe lower schools and is in some way to be offset. |