“Come, ye children—I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”

---

Four little boys less than ten years of age came trudging over the muddy Korean road three long miles to school. In their chilly, little, bare hands they carried bowls of cold rice for dinner. But cheerfully they marched along, for the daily six-mile walk took them to and from the mission school, and oh! what a wonderful privilege it was to be able to study,—a privilege not enjoyed by all the boys of their village.[51]

The closing session of a school for Jewish children in the heart of Asia was being held, and many mothers listened with awe and admiration as child after child took part in the simple exercises. “See,” the mothers exclaimed to each other, “see how our daughters are learning to read, instead of growing up to be like donkeys as we have done!”

A woman in the capital city of Persia, head of a Bahaist school, insisted on sending her little daughter to the American mission school, paying all tuition charges gladly. “Lady,” she said to the teacher in charge, “whenever I come into this school my life is renewed.”

Over the African trail came a young man who had given his heart to Christ and was now ready to enter the Bible Training School in order to fit himself for a life work that no foreign missionary could hope to accomplish. Earnestly he pleaded with the missionaries to let him bring his little eleven-year-old wife to be taught and trained so that she might some day be a true help-meet in his work. But there was no boarding school for girls, no available place for the child. Think what that future home and work might have been had the little wife received a Christian education!

A missionary was returning from an evangelistic tour over one of the lonely roads of Palestine. Suddenly he was accosted by several armed men in disguise, who demanded that he should promise to grant their request before it was stated to him. He naturally demurred, but, becoming convinced that they were not robbers, he finally consented, realizing that his journey could not otherwise be continued. Whereupon they demanded that certain mission schools which had been closed for lack of funds should be re-opened, promising to give as much as possible towards the necessary sum. “It is like depriving our children of bread and water and air,” they exclaimed, “to deprive them of the opportunity for religious teaching and useful education.”[52] A peaceful missionary held up by a set of masked bandits in a Mohammedan land, who demanded, not his money nor his life, but a Christian education for their children!

Loud and clear and insistent are the voices from country after country. In many tongues they call to us Christian women,—“Give us a chance to learn, let us children have what our parents never had, put books into our hands, train our hands and eyes and ears and hearts as well as our minds, show us how people who love that Jesus whom you tell about may read of Him and may make their lives good and happy and useful!”

It may be the honest conviction of many that with advancing civilization and the great political, social, and educational awakening in many lands, there is no further need for mission schools or for pushing missionary educational work. Japan has her public school system with six years of compulsory school attendance, and higher courses combining cultural with practical education in a way that Western nations might well follow. China has done away with the old educational regime and is patterning her new system after those of Christian lands. In India we hear that “Mr. Gokhale’s bill for universal primary education has stirred the whole country and will be a constant issue until it is an accomplished fact. Already the government has voted to increase immediately the number of primary schools from 120,000 to 210,000.”[53] The demand for education of girls as well as of boys in Persia, Turkey, and Egypt has caused a marvelous overturning and re-arranging of custom, prejudice, public opinion, and government action. In view of all this and much more in the same line, has the time come when the matter of education can be left in the hands of the awakening East, and does our obligation to the little ones of non-Christian lands cease at the door of the school room?

In order to arrive at a fair answer to these questions it might be well to study and discuss some divergent views on education and then to learn how these questions are answered by those who were born in non-Christian lands or who have lived and worked there for many years.

Some Views on Education

“To educate a girl is like putting a knife into the hands of a monkey.” Hindu Proverb.

“The hope of our country is in the education of our girls, and we shall never have statesmen till the mothers are educated.” A Persian Nobleman.

“Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other.” The Koran, Sura 4.38.

“No scheme of education for primitive races can succeed that neglects the woman’s influence in the family and the tribe.” E. W. Coffin.[54]

“When a man does not ask, ‘What shall I think of this and of that?’ I can do nothing with him. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Confucius Quoted in “Oriental Religions,” Samuel Johnson.

“Education should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself, to peace with nature and to unity with God.” Froebel.

“The aim of female education is perfect submission, not cultivation and development of the mind.” Confucius.

“Not knowledge or information, but self-realization is the goal. To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one’s own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion.” John Dewey.

The Head Master of an English school declared it to be his ideal of education to create an atmosphere of loyalty that should teach the pupils to adapt themselves to the sphere in which their lives should be cast, at the same time giving them self-reliance through the knowledge that they are responsible for doing the things that are worth while, and arousing their ambition to achieve that which is highest and best.

As a practical basis for the study of our topic, “The Child at School,” write out if you will your own definition of the scope and ideals of education, drawing up a list of those members of the human family who would benefit by such an education.

Referring again to the question of whether our missionary obligation ceases when the child’s education begins, we must first of all realize clearly how recent has been the awakening in most of these lands, how appalling is the illiteracy, how long it will take the most advanced government to meet the need without assistance, and how infinitely more a Christian education will do for the little ones than a merely secular education can possibly accomplish.

From the new Cyclopedia of Education[55] the following latest available statistics are taken:—

Country	Illiterate	Basis			Year
America	7.70%	Pop. over 10 yrs.			1910
England & Wales	1.80%	Marriage			1901–1910
German Empire	0.03%	Army Recruits			1904
Ceylon (all races)	78.30%	All ages			1901
India	92.50%	Over	10	years.	1901
Cape of Good Hope (Other than European.)	86.20%	„	„	„	1904
Egypt	92.70%	„	„	„	1907

Quoting further from the Cyclopedia we learn that “in Turkey, India, and China we find a high illiteracy among the males, and an almost complete illiteracy among the females. The least illiteracy today is to be found among the people in the countries to the north and west of Europe, and of Teutonic or mixed Teutonic stock. It was in these countries that the Protestant Revolt made its greatest headway and the ability to read the Word of God and to participate in the church services were regarded as of great importance for salvation.”

Sir J. D. Rees, an official of high position and distinction in India, makes this significant statement in his volume on “Modern India,” dated 1910—“While it is true that only half the boys of school-going age were following a course of primary education when the last census was taken, it is extremely improbable that in any other part of Asia anything approaching that number has been ever attained, or in any Oriental country under European control.”

Let us go back to Japan as to the one of all non-Christian lands that has made the greatest advance along educational lines. After a visit to Japan with many opportunities for observation and study of the subject, Miss Kate G. Lamson says:[56]

Education for the masses has long since justified itself to the Japanese. That education is universal and compulsory is abundantly proved by the crowds of school children seen in every part of the country. This naturally leads the observer to question the need of outside help, especially missionary help, along educational lines, and outside of two or three large centres our Board has applied itself largely to the development of church organization and evangelistic work. Yet the experience of years has revealed an imperative need of the missionary even in the ranks of education in Japan....

With schools everywhere, under an able and full staff of instructors, with up-to-date appliances for every branch that is to be taught, moral and religious training are not provided for, and the well-polished husk of educated manhood and womanhood without the inner life is the result. The dangers attending non-religious education have not failed to make themselves apparent to the watchful Japanese....

In every land we believe the hope of the nations lies largely in the training of little children. Christianity in Japan has laid hold upon this and has set the pace in the establishing of kindergartens....

Although education in Japan is compulsory, it is a fact that it is beyond the reach of the poorest people. This anomalous situation is caused by the charges for tuition and books imposed upon all scholars. These charges are so high as to be prohibitive for the very poor, and the result shows in the absence of their children from school. In this lies a direct invitation for missionary effort.

These words from a Christian observer and student of missions find an echo in the remark of a leading Japanese, himself a non-Christian, to one of the team of workers of the Men and Religion Movement:—“I am convinced that Japan must become Christian or she will never become a great nation.”

So much is being said and published about the wonderful developments in China and the new system of education that is taking the place of the old, time-honored memorizing of the “Four Books” and the “Five Classics,” that we need not here go into the subject in detail. Where shall the teachers be trained? But we must stop to query:—Where is China to procure the hundreds and thousands of teachers who are needed to train not only the children at present but the teachers of future generations of children? For many long years she must look largely to missionary schools to prepare her future educators. From a report on the Educational Work of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions we quote the following:

The wisdom of the West in matters of courses of study, together with methods of teaching, discipline, etc., are brought directly from our best institutions and freely offered upon the altar of Chinese regeneration. The results of these years have also proven that these best things are adapted to the young Chinese minds, and that they appreciate them when they once come to know them. The products of these years show that our Christian schools have been getting hold of some excellent material, and that there is such true worth and high possibility that all effort to develop these bright minds and sincere hearts is well worth while, and that in doing so a great service is rendered to China.... A number of young women of fine type have been educated in the schools for girls, who are proving themselves apt to teach and work for their own people in the conduct of boarding and day schools and women’s classes.

So highly does the Indian government prize the work of the missionary schools that each of them which is held to the required standard of efficiency receives a grant for partial support. The American Board Bulletin says, “Our tremendous school system in Ceylon of more than ten thousand pupils is carried on practically at government expense.”

In a village in India the parents’ request for a school was answered by the statement that if such a school were opened, the Bible would be taught in it. Quickly the reply came, “Teach your religion, but educate our boys.”

When the century opened, Persia and Turkey were asleep. Suddenly came the awakening, the reaching out for something new and different, and, as in the case of China, one of the first thoughts was,—Our children must be educated. Instinctively they turned to the missionaries who for long years had quietly, steadily, sown the seed, prepared literature, set up printing presses, trained preachers and teachers. Boys and girls began to flock into the mission schools.

“Fathers sent pleasant messages,” wrote a missionary in Teheran in 1911. “One said, ‘Your girls make better wives and mothers and in every way better women, than others.’ Another, ‘I wish my wife had been educated, but I am determined my daughter shall be.’ An Armenian of wealth and influence is reported to have answered to a remonstrance against sending his little daughter to us instead of to their national school: ‘Did I ever refuse to give you money? I will continue to help support our national schools, but I must send my daughters (he has five) where they can really obtain an education. They can learn in one week all you can teach them about going to theatricals and dances.’ A friend was telling us that her sister would send her girls to us. ‘Why?’ ‘Because every Moslem in this city understands that your school is the only one where girls really learn. Why should my sister be the only fool?’”[57]

These messages are significant in view of the fact that in a brief time seventy girls’ schools were reported to have sprung up suddenly in Persia’s capital city, with an enrolment of five thousand pupils.[58] But scarcely half a dozen of those at the head of the schools had ever been to school themselves, and the testimony from all over Persia was the same as that at the capital,—“The missionary schools are the best.”

Here is the eager call from Turkey:[59]

The gradual awakening of the villages to the need of better schools increases yearly the calls for teachers. The Sivas Normal School reports that the work of the past summer was very hard. “We were obliged to refuse calls for more than forty teachers, not a few of them from places to which we had never supplied teachers. The following quotation from a letter from the Armenian Bishop of one of our large cities is a fair sample: ‘We wish to call for the Armenian schools of our city the following teachers: a principal, a lady principal, teachers for Armenian, Turkish, and French, and three teachers for scientific branches. If you have among your experienced teachers or among the new graduates persons to recommend, please inform us at once in order that we may invite them.’”

One hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry over the Kurdish father up in the wild mountains of Kurdistan who brought his boy to the little school taught by a native helper, whacking him with a stick to make the reluctant youth walk in the paths of learning, while he declared, “I am not going to let my boy grow up in the street.”

When great governments, ecclesiastical authorities, wealthy noblemen, and fierce warriors from the mountain fastnesses all clamor for what the missionary schools can do for their children, have we a right to refuse their request? Can we claim freedom from responsibility?

Rather let us glory in the unparalleled opportunity for giving to the needy children of non-Christian lands that which has proven to be the only true source of mental preparation for life-work,—a Christian education. Hear the testimony of Dr. F. W. Foerster, author and special lecturer in Ethics and Psychology in the University of Zurich, a man who began his educational work with sympathies strongly socialistic and entirely aloof from all forms of religion. In the author’s preface to his book, “Marriage and the Sex Problem,” he speaks with no uncertain sound of his own experience and conviction.

The author of this book comes from the ranks of those who dispense with all religion. But as the result of long experience, theoretical and practical, in the difficult work of character-training, he has been led to realize for himself the deep meaning and the profound pedagogical wisdom of the Christian method of caring for souls, and to appreciate, through his own experience, the value of the old truths.... He has absolutely no doubt that modern education, in discovering the extraordinary practical difficulties of character-training, will be increasingly cured of its optimistic illusions and led back to an understanding and appreciation of Christianity.

How about the children themselves? Do they enjoy and appreciate school privileges offered them by the missionaries, and does the work show results that are worth while?

If, as Miss Lamson claims, “the hope of the nations lies in the training of little children,” there is hope for Japan in the ninety-eight mission kindergartens that are maintained by fourteen Protestant Boards and have an enrollment of four thousand and sixty-eight children. The report of the Kindergarten Union of Japan is a most fascinating volume, with its presentation of opportunity, need, method, and the result of teaching the tiny children who are to be the future parents, teachers, and leaders of thought and action in that Empire. A few extracts will give a little idea of what is being done for the children and through them for their homes and friends.

The kindergarten in our country today is at its most critical stage, and therefore needs the best and most profound thinkers who can put their ideals into practice most tactfully. This must be accomplished by native Christian kindergartners. Education without religious foundations is like an egg without the germ of life in it. Most of our public and government kindergartens, which have the purely so-called educational views of today, are leaving the very springs of child life untouched, and therefore are not fulfilling the real meaning of education. They are not disciples of Froebel, because he based his philosophy on the Christian faith. (Fuji Takamori of Holy Love Kindergarten, Methodist.)

A teacher writes, “A little girl whose father and mother were Christians entered our school. At first a little nursemaid brought her, then her grandmother came with her. This grandmother was a devoted Buddhist. She would not even look at the foreign teacher, much less listen to anything being taught, but at last she began to listen, and eventually became convinced that she needed Christ for her Saviour. Today she is a truly converted woman.”...

The blessing asked at the noon lunch seemed to make a deep impression on some children, and doing it at home attracts the parents’ attention, so that a number of them have been known to come to the church services to hear more about the meaning of prayer and praise. (Mrs. A. D. Gordon.)

We are told that the songs, the games, the stories, and sometimes the prayers, are household exercises in many homes. On a recent morning, which we spent by invitation of the wife of the Governor in her garden, the little son of the family, not yet of kindergarten age, took an active part with the other children. His mother told me that the older sister comes home and “plays kindergarten” with her small brother, and that, when they have guests to entertain, the children are often called in to give some kindergarten exercise. I did not tell her how strongly I disapprove of “showing off” children before company. I only prayed that “a little child might lead them.” (Mrs. Genevieve F. Topping, of Morioka Kindergarten, Baptist.)

An amusing incident happened one day when the children were off on an observation trip. They had to stop to let a detachment of soldiers pass, and spontaneously burst out singing “Soldier Boy, Soldier Boy,” to the great amusement of the soldiers. Then they all saluted the officer in proper fashion, but he only smiled. “Sensei, we saluted politely, why didn’t he return the salute?”

Later as the soldiers were drawn up in circular formation on the parade ground, the children said, “Oh, now they are going to play just as we do in kindergarten, let’s watch!” So the expedition which started out to study insect life changed into a lesson on soldiers and their absolute obedience to orders. (Alice Fyock of Sendai Aoba Yochien, American Episcopal.)

A similar Kindergarten Union is being formed in China, and from all missionary lands comes the urgent cry for trained kindergartners who can not only start schools, but, far more than this, can train native kindergartners to take up the work. It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of this particular service which missions are rendering.

Dr. Thomas M. Balliet of New York University voices the opinion of modern educators when he says, “All the more recent studies in child psychology emphasize the great plasticity of the early years of childhood. The habits which the child then forms, and the attitude both intellectual and emotional which is then given him, are more lasting and more determining for his adult life than was even suspected some years ago.”[60]

After a hasty mental review of what has been studied in earlier chapters regarding the home life and training of little children in non-Christian lands, it is surely a mild statement to make that the Christian kindergarten is an absolute necessity if these little ones, so cunning and capable and helpless, are to have any chance at all for proper development. The words “Christian kindergarten” are used advisedly, and agree with utterances of experts such as Elizabeth Harrison, who says,—

“The foundation of the kindergarten is based upon the psychological revelation that, if man is the child of God, he must possess infinite possibilities, and that these possibilities can only develop as he, man, makes use of them—that in other words, man is a self-making being, that his likeness to the Divine Father consists in this power within him to unfold and develop his divine nature.”[61]

Students of primitive and backward races tell us that the small children show as much promise and as many signs of undeveloped capability as do children of civilized lands, but before many years a cloud seems to overcast their minds, while selfishness and sin and passion take possession of their moral natures. Never again is there the same chance to make them what they might have been, as there was during those first early days when the kindergarten should have opened wide her doors to receive them. This argument would in itself seem sufficient to urge missionary Boards to speedy, thorough action in this matter, but there is another far-reaching argument to be considered. All through the East, wherever there are missionary kindergartens, mothers come to them to learn how to train their children, and countless homes have caught and passed on a reflection of the Christ life because of what the mothers have heard and observed and what the children have taken home with them. Make a flying trip to the Fuchow Kindergarten and watch “the irrepressible John.”

“This little lad’s father died, after a period of faithful service in Miss Wiley’s kitchen, and when the widowed mother came back to Miss Wiley from her country home to earn a living for herself and John and baby Joseph, John was already master of the situation and of his mother, and enforced his will on that by no means weak-minded woman by kicking, biting, pulling her ears, and similar methods. Now Miss Wiley is a famous trainer of boys, and she soon taught the young mother that the masculine will is not necessarily law at the age of two plus; the kindergarten carried out the same idea, and now John devotes vast energy and determination to the shaping of inanimate clay into pigs and other fascinating things, and treats animate nature as a well-mannered and kindly little gentleman should.”[62]

It would be most interesting and instructive to make a tour of missionary kindergartens for the purpose of seeing how ingenious our missionary teachers are, how they adapt Froebel’s ideas and methods to the most extraordinary circumstances which would have made that great educator gasp, how they must not only translate and adapt songs and tunes and games, but compose and create and invent,—all in an acquired language which has perhaps been only recently reduced to writing by some pioneer missionary. It might be pertinent to ask if all Women’s Boards provide the kindergartners and other teachers whom they send to the foreign field with a first-class outfit of all needed material, and if they remember that such an outfit needs to be replenished at least as often as a similar one does in the home land. It is not fair to require a missionary to make bricks without straw.

A visit to a West African Kindergarten will show an inventive and adaptable missionary in charge.

We have a new primary Sunday-School room which will be my kindergarten. It is a low wall covered by a round thatched roof high enough to leave a good big space for air. The floor is mudded and marked in squares. It looks very nice, but I shall take pains to get the cracks filled up, for they catch too much dirt and jigger seeds. The benches are not yet made, so the children who were cleaned up for Sunday went after leaves to sit on. The classes have to go out under trees to separate, but it is a great improvement upon the dirty and dangerous saw pit where they have met for so long. The only advantage about the saw pit was the roof for shade and pieces of wood and logs to sit upon. The big folks have been getting most of the attention and all of the advantages, but we feel that the children should have most because they are in the future. They do not show such shining results at once, but work with them will lay a foundation which is greatly needed here for really effective work....

I have a box cupboard, a sand table, two long low tables marked with squares, and strong benches. I have not much kindergarten material, but I do not need more at present. My first “gift” is a basin of water. They march in singing “Good morning, kind teacher” (only I am thankful to say the Umbundu words leave out the “kind”). Then we sing another song or two, and the prayer with bowed heads. I have no music, so I have to learn the tunes myself before I come to school. The children are the dearest, cunning things and they do want to learn.[63]

There are lands such as large sections of Africa and many of the Pacific Islands where no education whatever existed, where the language was not even reduced to writing, until Christian missionaries began their work. Other countries gave a certain so-called education to their boys or to the sons of certain privileged classes, leaving the girls absolutely illiterate. They agreed in principle if not in expression with that man in the mountains of Kurdistan who was asked by a missionary to send his bright little daughter down to the mission school at the beginning of the fall term. “Do you want my girl?” questioned the man in amazement and disgust. “Why don’t you take my cow?”

Again in other sections girls have a brief chance to learn, but are not expected to keep pace with their brothers or to attain to anything beyond the rudiments of book learning.

A missionary educator from Turkey says that one of the greatest difficulties in school work arises from the fact that the children have no power of concentration, no idea of how to think and study on one line for any length of time. It often takes five or six years for a child really to learn how to study. Obviously, the earlier these preparatory years occur in a child’s life, the more benefit may he hope to derive from his education.

Then again, if children learn their first lessons in the native schools of Turkey, Persia, Korea, and various other countries, they will become fixed in the habit of memorizing without giving any intelligent thought to what they learn. Dr. S. M. Zwemer says:

“A Moslem lad is not supposed to know what the words and sentences mean which he must recite every day; to ask a question regarding the thought of the Koran would only result in a rebuke or something more painful. Even grammar, logic, history, and theology are taught by rote in the higher Mohammedan schools.... Thousands of Moslem lads, who know the whole Koran nearly by heart, cannot explain the meaning of the first chapter in every-day language. Tens of thousands can ‘read’ the Koran at random in the Moslem sense of reading, who cannot read an Arabic newspaper intelligently.”[64]

How utterly this differs from the theory and practice of Dr. Montessori, who “calls a child disciplined who is master of himself, and therefore able to dispose of or control himself whenever he needs to follow a rule of life. The liberty of the child must have as its limit only the collective interest. To interfere with this spontaneity is, in Dr. Montessori’s view, perhaps to repress the very essential of life itself.”[65] How can a child be master of himself who is not even allowed to inquire into the meaning of what he reads and studies?

It is not always easy for the missionary suddenly to introduce changes of method and practice, and many a missionary school which is infinitely superior to the native institution might shock an American school superintendent beyond recovery. A missionary from China wrote,—“I found I must still keep many old methods or the Chinese would not send their children. I have found it necessary to let them learn portions of Scripture and classics and shout them at the tops of their voices, then gradually work in music, geography, and arithmetic.” Another argument for beginning as early as possible with the children who can so easily adapt themselves to ideas of a quiet, orderly school if they have never enjoyed exercising their lungs in one of the other kind!

In speaking of primitive education among backward nations, mention was made of the scant attention given to girls as compared to boys. The London Times not long ago stated in commenting on the women of Persia, “As a matter of fact, probably not one girl in a thousand twenty years ago ever received any education. When the parents were rich enough, tuition of a sort was given at home, but in the case of poorer persons it was enough if their sons were taught to read and write.”

In contrast we learn that in the spring of 1913 about one thousand children from Moslem homes were in attendance at Protestant missionary schools in Persia, over two hundred of them being girls.

In Mohammedan and other lands the custom of early marriage is an almost insuperable barrier to an adequate education for a girl. That this custom must be changed, if men are to have worthy wives and if children are to be properly trained, is a truth that is beginning to be realized. The recent great awakening and desire for education is creating a marvelous change in age-long customs.

Lord Cromer says: “The position of women in Egypt, and in Mohammedan countries generally, is a fatal obstacle to the attainment of that elevation of thought and character which should accompany the introduction of European civilization, if that civilization is to produce its full measure of beneficial effect. The obvious remedy would appear to be to educate the women.... When the first efforts to promote female education were made, they met with little sympathy from the population in general.... Most of the upper-class Egyptians were not merely indifferent to female education; they were absolutely opposed to it....

“All this has now been changed. The reluctance of parents to send their daughters to school has been largely overcome.... The younger generation are beginning to demand that their wives shall possess some qualifications other than those which can be secured in the seclusion of the harem.”

In 1912 Lord Kitchener states that “There is probably nothing more remarkable in the social history of Egypt during the last dozen years than the growth of public opinion among all classes of Egyptians in favor of the education of their daughters. The girls’ schools belonging to the Ministry of Education are crowded, and to meet the growing demand sites have been acquired and fresh schools are to be constructed, one at Alexandria and two in Cairo. Very many applications have, however, to be refused.”[66]

To these quotations Dr. Sailer adds the significant words,—“The missionary schools for girls are yet in the lead in their moral atmosphere. The government officials were prompt in acknowledging that missionary teachers brought to their work a spirit which money could not buy.”

Scant justice can be done in these few pages to the whole vast subject of the education of girls in the East, and the rapid changes that are taking place in regard to it. A careful study of the subject will well repay the thoughtful woman. Now is the time to educate the future mothers. As all roads lead to Rome, so all reading and observation along this line will lead the candid student to one conclusion:—Now is the time to determine the character of the mothers of the next generation of children in non-Christian lands. What those little bright-eyed baby girls of Africa and India, Turkey and Korea are to be and do, what their homes are to be like, what start in life their children are to have, will be largely determined by what we Christian women do or fail to do for them today. If it is too late to do much for their mothers before these children have left their homes, why not gather the children into kindergartens and primary schools, why not teach the little ones now while their minds are plastic and impressionable? Why not do our share toward bringing Christian civilization into darkened lands by educating in Christian schools today the mothers of tomorrow?

In the preceding chapter great emphasis was laid on the necessity for teaching the children of many mission lands how to play, not only for the benefit of their health and to bring joy and brightness into their lives, but also in order to teach them what “fair play” and co-operation mean. It is the missionary school, from kindergarten up to university, that gives the golden opportunity for this teaching, as is shown by the testimony of a missionary from Tientsin, China:—“We believe that such games teach them to be honest in business dealings later, to be truthful, unselfish, quick-witted, and self-controlled. The change which I have seen in these little, un-taught, ill-cared-for children after five years in the mission school is due in part, I believe, to the lessons of ‘fair play’ learned in their games.”

But the school must go even further than this and include in its curriculum physical education of a very definite kind if it is to meet all the needs of the children it is serving. Taking as an example of all mission lands, China, whose system of education antedates by many centuries all our western civilization, let us observe through the eyes of the former physical director of the Shanghai Y. M. C. A. what the real situation is.

Physical training should be dignified by giving it an equal place with the sciences, philosophies, and languages in the curriculum, and the same careful provision of means and trained men to direct it. No educational system is adequate which does not aim at the whole man, which does not recognize the physical basis of intellectual and spiritual efficiency. Professor Tyler of Amherst says, “Brain and muscle are never divorced in the action of healthy higher animals and in healthy men. They should not be divorced in the education of the child.”...

It is clear that physical training, in the largest sense, must play an important part in the making of the “New China.” The questions involved in her uplift are most largely physical questions. The personal, domestic, and public observance of the laws of health and life is a physical question; the combating of that terrible scourge, tuberculosis, is a physical question; the checking of the fearful infant mortality is a physical question; etc....

The progress which has been made in physical training in China must be viewed in the light of the fact that physical exercise for its own sake has had no part in the national life of China for centuries. It has been considered improper for a Chinese gentleman to indulge in it. The popular conception of a Chinese scholar has been that of a man with a great head, emaciated body, and hollow chest, sitting and contemplating the problem of life by thinking dissociated from doing. Until ten years ago athletics were almost unknown. When foreigners were seen playing football the Chinese were greatly puzzled, and wanted to know how much these men were being paid for cutting up such foolish antics, conceiving it as out of the question that any one would work so hard without being well paid for it. All that is rapidly being changed. Physical training is changing China’s conception of a gentleman. The ideal of all-round manhood, well-balanced in its physical, mental, and spiritual aspects, is rapidly gaining ground.[67]

Could all China’s children today be taught this ideal, the task would be far easier than it will be when they have reached adult life.

The story of the Missionary School for Boys in Srinagar, Kashmir, is as thrilling as a novel, and illustrates to a remarkable degree how body, mind, and soul must be trained and disciplined and developed in order to realize the ideal of the Principal, the Rev. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, who says, “We are making citizens, of what sort remains to be seen. But we hope without wavering that these citizens will be Christian citizens, for Christ is our ideal.” Some of the difficulties are thus described:

“To teach the three R’s in Kashmir is easy work. The boys are willing to squat over their books and grind away for as many hours a day as nature makes possible. To get an education means sedentary employment cum rupees. And that to the Kashmiri is living.

“But to educate is a very different matter. To make men of a thousand or more boys who care nothing for manliness; among whose ancestors for hundreds of years, chicanery, deceit, and cruelty had been the recognized and honored paths to success, while generosity and honesty had been the mark of a fool; to try to quicken and develop the good in such boys,—boys coming from impure homes, squatting in unclean rows, with bent backs and open mouths—was flatly pronounced folly by many a visitor to Kashmir.”[68]

The story tells how boxing, swimming, rowing, and gymnastics are required of the students as a most necessary and vital part of their education, and how they are trained to be proud of using these accomplishments in helping others. By the time a Brahmin boy,—they are almost all Brahmins in this school,—has saved a child from drowning, rescued a family of despised sweepers from the roof of their flood-swept house, delivered a poor woman from being beaten, and helped clean up the streets and alleys of a city during a cholera epidemic, he has received an education such as no books in the world can give him, and Kashmir is one step nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven.

“Train not thy child,” says Emerson, “so that at the age of thirty or forty he shall have to say, ‘This great work could I have done but for the lack of a body.’” Elizabeth Harrison, after quoting Emerson, adds, “Is not this carelessness as to health one of the ways in which we are not conserving the forces that make for righteousness and truth, one of the ways in which we are neglecting to build up ‘a great personality’ in our children?”[69]

Up to this point our study of The Child in non-Christian lands has shown that the missionary must touch the home life, the customs and ideals handed down from remote ancestors, the play and work and education and physical development of the child, in order to give him his inalienable rights, while in the next chapter we shall dwell on his right to know of Jesus Christ, the children’s Friend. It may seem to the reader (as it does to the writer) that the chapters overlap one another in spite of the heroic effort to treat each subject by itself. But most of us find,—do we not?—that it is a bit difficult to attend to the spiritual culture of our boys when they are clamoring to go out and play ball, or to get our little girls to tell what they learned at school, when they are hungry for their dinner. The mother must train all parts of her child’s nature by attending to the need that is uppermost at the time,—the missionary must do the same for her foster children, and the woman at home, behind the missionary, has to recognize the same inseparable inter-relation of body, mind, and soul in the little ones of whom she is studying. Our divisions into “subjects” must be more or less artificial. However, to this particular subject of “The Child at School” belong naturally two more matters which must be touched on briefly.

When the Turkish girl has learned to read, when six thousand boys have annually been trained in that great chain of Anglo-Chinese schools started by the Methodists in Malaysia, when Korean children have acquired a taste for reading and study, where are they to find suitable, interesting books? The Cyclopedia of Education pays a wonderful tribute to what one Book has done for Korea, saying that “the translation of the Bible into Korean and its rapid distribution, and revivals marked with habitual study of the Bible, compelled many to learn the alphabet to master a sacred library so rich, and has constituted a national school of intelligence and culture.” But other books than the Bible must be translated and written in order to give clean, interesting, wholesome literature to the children of countless thousands who never had any use for a literature for themselves. As Miss Lilian Trotter of Algiers says,—“Those who have been patiently toiling over the schooling of Moslem girls and women begin to feel that the powers of reading gained in school days should be used as a means to an end, not left to lapse in the first years that ensue for want of following up. Letters from the whole reach of the Moslem world give the same refrain,—the girls drop their reading largely because there is nothing published that interests them. The few upper class women who read, read little but newspapers and French novels. Could not some one who understands child minds work out bright beginnings for the use of their waking powers in stories and pictures with colored lettering and borders? Easterns must have color to make them happy!”[70]

Here is a call to missionary work for some one who never dreamt that her particular literary and artistic talents are absolutely needed today by the children of the East.

The second matter mentioned above is the need for industrial training. Great progress has been made in this respect in recent years, but much more progress is needed, and trained teachers and suitable equipment are required. As a missionary in Persia says when urging that more industrial training be given the school girls,—“A woman may be able to read, but, if unable to bake or prepare a good meal, her husband will not care if she reads about the Bread of Life. She may play the organ, but, if she cannot wash, mend, make the children’s clothes, and make a happy home, he will have little interest in hearing her play or sing ‘The Home over there.’”

There is abundant testimony to prove that America is already doing great things in the line of missionary education. Here is the testimony of a traveler and newspaper man.

The number of mission schools and colleges supported by Americans with American money is nearly as large as that of all the schools conducted by the missionaries of all other countries combined. We have approximately 10,000 schools in lands that are not under our flag and from which we receive not a cent of revenue.

If a man in quest of material for an American educational exhibit were to sail out of San Francisco Bay with a phonograph recorder, he would come up on the other side of Sandy Hook with a polyglot collection of records that would give the people of the United States a new conception of their part in the world’s advance toward light. His audience might hear a spelling class recite in the tuneful Hawaiian tongue or listen to Moros, Tagalogs, and Igorrotes reading from the same “McGuffey’s Reader.” A change of records might bring the sound of little Japanese reciting geography, or of Chinese repeating the multiplication table in a dozen dialects. Another record would tell in quaint Siamese the difference between a transitive or an intransitive verb, or conjugate the verb “to be” in any one of the languages of India. One might hear a professor from Pennsylvania lecturing on anatomy to a class of young men in the ancient kingdom of Darius; or a young woman from Massachusetts explaining the mysteries of an eclipse to a group of girls in Constantinople; or a Princeton man telling in Arabic the relation between a major and a minor premise. And when the audience had listened to all this and to “My country, ’tis of thee” in Eskimo and in Spanish, the exhibit of American teaching would have only begun.[71]

One American Mission Board alone (the Presbyterian) uses the following languages and dialects in its educational institutions:—Arabic, Armenian, Beng, Bulu, English, Fang, French, German, Hainanese, Hakka, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laos, Mandarin (and many dialects in our eight China missions; the dialects of China are as diverse as the languages of Europe), Marathi, Mpongwe, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Sanscrit, Siamese, Spanish, Syriac, Tagalog, Turkish, Urdu, Visayan.[72]

But in spite of all that is being done, we continue to make our plea for the little children. Whatever emphasis may be laid on the need for boarding schools, colleges, normal, and industrial training schools, let us remember that those who are taught while small will make the most hopeful students in these more advanced schools, and the best workers in the future.

How quickly and easily and naturally the little ones learn of Jesus, the children’s Friend, and their relation to Him, we have already seen illustrated in the kindergarten work of Japan. A little six-year-old Greek boy in Syria, who had attended the missionary kindergarten, spent the summer in the mountains and became dreadfully wild and profane. On his return to school the teacher asked why he had been so naughty. He replied, “I didn’t pray during the summer. Now I’m going to pray and be a good boy.”

To Mrs. Pitcher of Amoy we owe the following incident:—

A scholar in one of our schools, whose relatives were all idol worshippers and very ignorant, was led to give her heart to Jesus, and became a most active little Christian; but one day she was taken very ill with plague, and during her last hours she was so happy singing hymns she had learned at school and telling her parents and old grandmother about the Home beyond, where she would soon be with the Lord, that all that heathen family were led by this dying child to believe in a God of love, who could so comfort His little child, and save her from the terror and dread of the many evil spirits in whom they had blindly trusted.[73]

This chapter cannot end before we follow into their later life some of the children whose early and perhaps whose only education was received in missionary schools.

“The home in Syria whose mother was taught in a school can always be distinguished at a glance, whether it belongs to the Protestant community or to one of the old Christian sects. Neatness and good taste prevail, the children are more carefully trained, the members of the family work for each other’s benefit. One of our school girls, who was married to an uneducated man, told us years after: ‘Letter by letter I taught him to read, figure by figure I taught him arithmetic, and then I drew him down upon his knees and word by word I taught him to pray.’”[74]

From the Spirit of Missions we quote the following about the boys at Cape Mount, West Africa:—

“These people can be reached by Christianity best in their childhood, before superstitions, belief in the Gregre, or the influence of the life of a Mohammedan has become grafted into their lives. If allowed to grow up in their native villages they often become leaders of tribal wars, and, unknowingly, men of the vilest character. In one tribe from which several boys are at the mission, the mother tattoos curious marks on the forehead of her babe, in order that if during war he is captured and in after years she becomes able to redeem him from slavery, she may be able to recognize her own child. With the influence and training of a Christian mission, even though the boys go back to native life, they do not go back to all of its vileness, and one can soon distinguish between them and the un-Christianized heathen.”

It takes faith and hope and love and a vision far into the future to teach boys like these. But it pays, and the “bread cast on the waters” is often found again in most unlikely places, such as those described in a letter from Mr. W. C. Johnson of West Africa:—

“Everywhere I find in the village schools sources of Christian influence. In one village where I stayed all night, all of the boys and all but two of the women were Christians. This was entirely the work of Christian school boys. In another place a young man told me that there were only two young men in the community who were not trying to lead Christian lives. This too was the work of the Christian school boys.”

A little Mohammedan girl attended for a very few months the mission day school in a near-by city street. Her cruel step-mother persecuted her bitterly, throwing her school books on the floor and trampling them under foot to show her contempt of Christian learning. Some kind friend at the school gave the child forty cents,—unheard-of wealth to the little one,—and the missionary suggested that a teacher should help the child spend it for something she greatly needed before the mother could take it away. “No,” said the little girl, “I don’t want to spend it in that way. I want to give it all to the Lord and then I shall have treasure in heaven. I learned that at school.” She was married,—without any choice in the matter,—to a man who had known Christians and was favorable to them, and the little wife lived a consistent Christian life and died trusting in Christ as her Saviour.

Only a few months at school for a few hours of each day, but they made all the difference for time and for eternity! How many children are having such an opportunity because of us and our missionary society? How many are deprived of the opportunity because it is “not our business” to help them realize the truth of what was said in days of old,—“Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

American missionaries were the pioneers in true educational work in Siam. They gave to Siam its first real school. They aided Siam in establishing the Government Educational system, and encouraged the Department of Education to establish normal training schools. They introduced the printing press into Siam, made the first Siamese type, and taught Siam the art of printing.

American missionaries gave Siam its first newspaper in the Siamese language, and gave the first Geography, Astronomy, Anatomy, and Physiology, Chemistry, Arithmetic, and Geometry in the Siamese language.

When the King of Siam made the first move for the establishment of a school system over Siam, he placed an American missionary at the head of the work. The present Minister of Education was at one time pupil of a missionary, later on he became fellow student of one of the missionaries in Sanscrit, and still consults the missionaries on educational questions and literary subjects.

In the past twenty-five years the Presbyterian Mission at Siam has received more money from the Siamese king, princes, nobles, and common people for the maintenance of educational work, than it has received from the Presbyterian Church in America. (Educational Work of the Bd. For. Miss. of the Pres. Ch.)

PERSIAN SCHOOLS

An English boy learns to read his own language first, and does not always go on to a foreign language. A Persian boy learns to read a foreign language first, and does not always go on to his own language. When a little Persian boy goes to school he is given a big Arabic book, with a great many long words in it, and he is not taught how the words are spelt, but is told what they are, and made to repeat them from memory, pointing to each word in the book as he says it, and gradually he gets some idea of which word is which.... The Mohammedans think that reading the Koran, quite apart from understanding it, is a very good action, so the little Persian boys work away at it, and they do not think it hard lines because all men and big boys began in the same way, so it seems the natural thing to do. And perhaps it is a little consolation to know that when they reach certain points they will be given sweets. One little boy who was asked how far he had got in the Koran, said that he had just got his first sweets. Having finished the Koran, our little Persian boy goes on to Persian books. These, too, he studies in much the same way as he did the Koran, but it is more useful, because now he understands what he reads. After plodding through the Koran it is a pleasant change for little Ghulam Husain to turn to the “War between the Cats and Mice” or the “Hundred Fables.” Later on he reads the poems of Hafiz and Sa’adi, and other great Persian poets.

The Persians do not apparently think much of their own system of education, for they are always laughing at their schoolmasters. They have a story of a charvadar, or muleteer, one of whose mules strayed one day into a school. It was quickly driven out, and the muleteer claimed damages to the extent of half the value of a mule. The schoolmaster indignantly asked on what he based his claim. The muleteer turned to the crowd which had gathered to listen to the argument. “My beast,” said he, “went into his school a mule and it has come out a donkey.” You see, a donkey counts half a mule in caravan traveling, just as child counts half a person in train traveling.

When a boy is caned in punishment he lies on his back and holds out his feet instead of his hands. Sometimes his feet are held in a kind of stocks while he is caned across the soles. They call it “eating sticks” or “eating wood.” (Mrs. Napier Malcolm in “Children of Persia.”)

EDUCATION, BULU TRIBE, AFRICA

There is no more extraordinary feature of the work among the Bulu than the readiness with which this little forest creature submits himself to the discipline of school. From a heritage of liberty he comes to knock at the Mission door and to set his little jiggered feet upon the new way of order. He who came and went at will keeps the commandments of the school drum. He who has been bred to inter-tribal hatred eats out of the pot with his hereditary enemy. He earns his food in all honor under the Mission law of labor. He permits himself to be “tied” with “ten tyings” to a standard of conduct which is the reverse of his racial standards.

In the rude school house, with his alphabet before him, or in the open, cutlass in hand, he performs daily acts of order and discipline, and these little tasks are regenerative. His little sister is beside him and subjected to the same process. The presence of the Mission in a Bulu community is a great blessing to a little girl. It is a kind of sanctuary and a police patrol. I cannot think that you would like to know from what perils it saves her.... Such little girls, following in the paths after their brothers, have come to own a slate, to own a primer, to ply a needle, to sleep at night in peace under a Christian thatch and in innocent company. (“Other Children” by Jean Mackenzie, Wom. For. Miss. Soc. Pres.)

A GIRLS’ SCHOOL IN THE KURDISH MOUNTAINS

Ever since coming here I have talked to both men and women, as occasion offered, about the folly of not allowing girls to learn anything. When I felt pretty sure of two little girls, I announced one Sunday to the women who were gathered in my room that on Thursday I should begin a girls’ school for any who cared to come. What was my surprise and delight on Thursday to have one of the Kashas (Old Church pastors) come bringing, not two but four little girls who promptly walked up to me and kissed my hand. The next day another, who had not heard of the school the first day, came. After three days one girl disappeared. On Saturday I visited her home and found they were keeping her to work, and this, according to my idea of the circumstances, seemed very unnecessary, for I keep them only two hours a day at present. When I expostulated with the father, he said, “Why should I take the trouble to let her go to school, when after a little time I’ll marry her into some other family?” Here girls are married very young, at twelve years, many of them. All I could say was of no avail. During all this conversation poor Rachel sat between us, the tears running down her face, and saying repeatedly, “Father, let me go.” The father was too selfish to be moved by her pleadings. (Letter from Mrs. E. W. McDowell.)

BIBLE READING
TEACHING THE CHILDREN

Deut. 11:18–21 with 2d Tim. 1:5 and 3:14–17.

The natural, constant teaching of God’s commandments in the daily life of the home by parents and grandparents will prepare the children to lead prosperous, successful, useful lives. What is learned in childhood “furnishes” the man or woman for life.

“Therefore if to the goodness of nature be joined the wisdom of the teacher in leading young wits into a right and plain way of learning, surely children, kept up in God’s fear, and governed by His grace, may most easily be brought well to serve God and country both by virtue and wisdom.” (Roger Ascham in the year 1570.)

PRAYER

O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Child of Bethlehem, bless, we beseech Thee, the children gathered in Christian schools; may they be truthful, pure, obedient, and ever ready to do their duty in that state of life to which Thou shalt be pleased to call them, Who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

QUESTIONS

1. Give five reasons for multiplying kindergartens and primary schools in non-Christian lands.

2. In the missionary Forward Movement in China, should the emphasis in advance educational work be put on primary or on secondary education? 3. Give the reasons for and against an increase in Missionary educational work in Japan. What is your personal opinion on the subject?

4. Should the missionary teacher aim to secure a large number of scholars, or to give more time and personal attention to a few? Give your reasons for your answer.

5. If you were facing a school of fifty little children who had absolutely no idea of education, cleanliness, manners, morals, or Christianity, what would you try to teach them during the first week? How would you go about it? (This takes it for granted that you know their language.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY. CHAPTER IV.

The School and the Child, John Dewey.

Stages in Missionary Education, T. H. P. Sailer, Woman’s Work, Sept., 1912.

Christian Missions and Social Progress, J. S. Dennis. (Revell) vol. ii.

“On the Education of Backward Races,” E. W. Coffin, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1908.

Report on Educational Work of Bd. For. Miss. of Pres. Ch.

Daylight in the Harem, Van Sommer and Zwemer, (Revell.)

Children of Persia, Mrs. Napier Malcolm, (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)

Education of Girls in Persia, Moslem World, Oct., 1912.

The Education of the Women of India, M. G. Gowan, (Revell.)

Modern India, Sir J. D. Rees, (George Allen and Sons.)

The Athletic Method in Kashmir, Henry Forman, Outlook, Sept. 24, 1910.

Village Life in China, Arthur H. Smith, (Revell.)

The Education of Chinese Women, Margaret Burton.

Possibilities of the Kindergarten in China, L. Pearl Boggs, Child Welfare Magazine, Feb., 1913.

“The Opportunity and Need for the Mission School in China.” F. L. Hawks Pott, D.D., Intern’l Review of Missions, Oct., 1912.

Report of the Kindergarten Union of Japan.

Fifteen Years among the Top-Knots, Mrs. Underwood, (Am. Tract Soc.)

The Land of the White Helmet, Edgar Allen Forbes, (Revell.)

LEAFLETS

Into a New Life	Woman’s Board of Missions of the Congregational Church.
Kwuli, a South Sea Maid
The Story of Aghavnitza
The Children’s Gardens
The Story of the Imadegawa Kindergarten
The Cesarea Kindergarten
Coral Island Brownies
Ling Te’s Letter	Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church.
The New Persia	Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church.
Our Investments in India	Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America.
Schools in the Arcot Mission, India
Hindu Girls’ School in Arcot Mission
Key to Hindu Homes
Educational Work in Japan
From Kindergarten to College	Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
A Peep into Yokohama Day Schools
A School Day at Aoyama
Luchmi
How Orthodox Mohammedans Educate a Child	Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America.
Messages to Mass. from Blackmer Home, 1912	Woman’s Universalist Missionary Society of Massachusetts.
Story of Matsu Koyama
Midori Kindergarten
Concerning the Blackmer Home	Woman’s National Missionary Association, Universalist.