t EDUCATIONAL REQUISITIONS FOR THE CHURCH IN CHINA THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION TO THE CHURCH IN CHINA By W. Henry Grant Secretary, Trustees, Canton Christian College and Honorary Secretary Foreign Missions Conference of North America TRUSTEES OF THE CANTON CHRISTIAN COLLEGE I 56 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK 1924 PREFACE HOSE wishing to extend their study of the points -L brought up in this brochure or in the “Report of the Commission” representing the Mission Boards and Societies conducting work in China will find quite an extensive new literature available, comprehending almost every line of wiork, organization and method suggested. The distinctly missionary literature and articles which should be noted are “Education in Africa,” the report prepared by Thomas Jesse Jones, Chairman of the Commission, issued by the Phelps-Stokes Fund, 297 Fourth Avenue, New York—1922, “Village Edu¬ cation in India,” the “Report of a Commission of In¬ quiry,” Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press 1920, followed by the report of a subsequent confer¬ ence at Moga, Punjab, December 5-11, 1922; National Christian Conference, Calcutta; Articles and reports on Latin America. General educational surveys and studies are issued by every state in the U. S. A. and by the Bureau of Education in Washinton, D. C. Much of the literature is available on request. Bulletin 1922, No. 42, “Analytic Survey of the State Courses of Study for Rural Ele¬ mentary Schools,” Charles M. Reinoehl, 116 pages, 20 cents; Bulletin, 1923, No. 9, “Supervision of One Teacher Schools,” Maud C. Newberry, 55 pages, 10 cents; Bulletin, 1923, No. 36, “Rural Education,” by Katharine McCook, specialist in Rural Education of the U. S. Bureau, 35 pages, 5 cents; all three obtained at the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. An invaluable book for college administrators has recently been published by the General Education Board, 61 Broadway, New York, entitled “College and University Finance,” including a chapter on organiza¬ tion, by Trevor Arnett, many of whose suggestions are applicable to any board or mission administering the finances of a school or group of schools which in¬ volve organization and accounting. These Notes are in line with the Report of the Commission of 1921-22 on Christian Education in China. 6 CHAPTER I Introductory T HE Commission on Christian Education in China of 1921-22 has made a general analytical survey and published its report thereon with many valuable suggestions. This report should be carefully studied by every missionary educator and administrator responsible for the conduct of educa¬ tional work in China. Doubtless the chief concern of the Commission, as of those who have given years of thought to the subject, is that the official boards, representing the churches, shall seriously study this report in relation to their missions in China in order to discover where and how* the recommendations of the Commission actually apply to their work and how far the organizations suggested are practicable, and to that extent encourage their missions to carry out the recommendations of the Commission. The mis¬ sions need such encouragement from the boards to enable them to break away from tradition and take new steps which in some cases reverse or change policies initiated by their predecessors. The centrifugal force in missions is always stronger than the centripetal. Many missions are too extended for their numerical strength in effective workers, pres¬ ent or prospective. It is exceptional for a mission 7 to be sufficiently consolidated and efficiently organized that it naturally produces unity and organization in educational work or anything that can properly be called an organized system of schools under a qualified administration and organized personnel. Many schools have too many students for good re¬ sults and some are too many kinds of a school. There are many captains with no generals. Most of us are trying to do too much and too many kinds of things. It is plain that this is not what is meant by organiza¬ tion. Most missionaries engaged in educational work prefer to be privates or at most sergeants rather than generals. Nevertheless there must be generals, if there is to be a plan and an objective and co-ordination in attack. These generals will somehow have to be selected rather than elected. The official missionary boards cannot overemphasize the importance of concentrating effort upon the prepa¬ ration of Chinese leaders in education rather than upon the maintenance or extension with church funds of all kinds of schools without a qualified native per¬ sonnel to warrant such maintenance or extension. As Thomas Carlyle puts it, “When the man is got, all is got.” How futile then to conduct so many half- manned schools and elementary schools with half qualified teachers, especially without expert and con¬ stant supervision. (See remarks Ecumenical Mission¬ ary Conference, New York, 1900.) For w'hile the Commission does not say “Your schools are ineffec¬ tive/’ it virtually says “You would much better give up some of them in order to make the others stronger” 8 and “Your schools would be more effective if they were co-ordinated under an organized system.” The chief difficulty in dealing with the closing of any particular school is that after a school is once opened there are so many reasons for its continued maintenance, considering its opportunities as compared with some other school maintained by the same group, that it seems somewhat like deciding whether to cut off one’s right or left leg, also that co-ordinating dis¬ similar schools is fraught with the danger of dis¬ organizing their internal adjustments and unsuiting the type of school to the staff and students available. It were perhaps a delicate matter upon which to ad¬ vise the missionary boards and societies that their administrative machinery both at home and in China is in conflict with the idea of “specialized administra¬ tion.” More and more does it become necessary for missionaries to specialize and even highly so, and spe¬ cialists cannot function along lines of highly organized work demanding a continuous policy without adminis¬ trators who are specialists in administration. A clear statement of this is contained in the Report of the Committee on the Training of Hospital Execu¬ tives, April 1922, entitled “Principles of Hospital Ad¬ ministration, etc.,” page 14, under Hospital Organiza¬ tion; “The chief function of administration is to cre¬ ate an environment conducive to the spontaneous crea¬ tive expressions of the groups working within the organization and to relieve the professional workers as much as possible of non-professional and non¬ technical duties; to provide, then, the facilities and 9 V« 9 _> O. o machinery by which the fullest expression of functions may most easily be obtained. A sound plan of organi¬ zation must be constructed in relation to the funda¬ mental unit of operation, to the objectives sought, to the personnel it serves and not the reverse.” 10 CHAPTER II Education and Training for Leadership the Definite Objective of All Everything that can be done should be done to prepare the highest grade of teachers and adminis¬ trators for secondary and higher schools. Pedagogy and teaching practice in some measure should be in¬ cluded in all high school and college curricula, for even when the percentage of students actually special¬ izing in Education and electing it as a life work must in the nature of the case be small, all students who show any aptitude for stirring thought, imparting knowledge, and for training others, should be induced to participate in some form of educational extension, whether as teachers, head-masters, administrators or founders. This applies equally, if not more to girls and women than it does to boys and men. Edward Thring, Head Master of Uppingham School, England, 1853-87, says: “In my judgment, the main lines are the same for men and women, . . . the same main direction of thought and culture. The most plain, the most practical fact in man’s world is this, that every human being for the first ten years of his life, is in the hands of woman.” The Church in China has been on too low an intel¬ lectual scale. Many ministers after having exhausted their original stock of material for sermons have fallen 11 into ruts. Their illustrations have become stereotyped and uninteresting and out of date to the rising genera¬ tion. As Christian literature in the Chinese language of a stimulative order is still very limited, it is of great advantage to the Chinese preacher to be able to read in a modern European language. The new order of college educated preacher easily fills his church every Sunday with eager hearers and secures volunteers for many congregational activities. Preachers doubtless should be Bible students and theologians, but they should also be trained teachers. Preachers should be teachers with a preaching method, that is, they should understand the psychology of their hearers in order that their hearers may understand them. The difference between the teacher method and the preacher method is largely one of circumstance and rhetoric. The preacher gives one or two lessons a week in a church covering several points, mainly with the idea of imparting motive and impulse to action. A preacher is like a race-horse; all his powers are con¬ centrated in his sermon, so that his week’s study is discharged in thirty minutes. This means much quiet study and hard thinking,—the shorter the harder. All leaders are teachers of one sort or another, but not all teachers are leaders. Some teachers only im¬ part information; the leader teacher teaches his pupils to look up the facts and factors and to think things out for themselves and to apply their thinking in action in the most effective way. Men are not clay to be pressed in a uniform mould, for even when they study the same subjects they ultimately apply their thinking 12 power to a great diversity of problems. Heads of professions and businesses have many of the same problems as the headmasters of schools, and their business houses are schools for their employees. Why High Educational Standards in the Lower Grades Are Essential A clear distinction should be made between schools directly leading to college and those not leading to college. If a boy is going to college he should have expert teaching in the lower grades, and his parents must either be able to pay for such teaching or else it must be paid for in some other way. Maturity in all round sound thinking is a matter of years of training and experience. It takes a certain amount of time and work to learn anything of value. Therefore, the earlier one begins most subjects the better. Under the most favorable circumstances few men can be called educated who did not begin to apply their minds to definite problems and enter the struggle for mas¬ tery of them early in life. The wasted years in college preparation are more generally in the elementary than in the higher grades. This is due to a lack of the early mastery of the symbols and instruments of observation and expression. Boys and men bungle along all their lives without apparent improvement because they did not master the rudi¬ ments or initial steps. Abilities in embryo at ten swiftly become impossibilities if their development is delayed, and mere practice which is bad in principle and method never makes perfect. Students must thor- 13 oughly understand the elementary equations and be able to use them freely and effectively if they are to climb high on the educational ladder. The lower rungs of the ladder cannot be left out or be insecure. For the elementary grades teachers and teaching of the highest quality that can be secured must be retained if the pupil is to become a student. The Corollary of Christianity in China Christian missions can neither advance nor retire from the field, without confessing failure, until Chris¬ tian Colleges are well established and their alumni able and willing to carry them on. The College is the nucleus or generative center from which all the educational lines radiate. It is not a fancy addition of a certain style of culture, but in its very nature must face all the difficult problems of lower as well as higher educational training. When one thinks in terms of efficient creative work it becomes evident that certain kinds of preparedness and ability to lead and do, supervise or superintend, must depend upon the college for fundamental training and under¬ standing of principles and order and actions, whatever the vocation may be. Theory and practice are not disconnected, but each cooperates with the other and leads to further knowledge and efficiency of action. The chief objectives in a college education are, the de¬ velopment of thinking power, disciplined ordered mental processes, a judicial, discriminating mind, cul¬ ture, appreciation, the broadening of interest and sym¬ pathy and contact with others, zeal for knowledge, re- 14 search, righteousness, the use of (tools of observation and the mastery of the means of execution, personal habits in living, study and work, wholesomeness, a higher, richer and more “abundant life.” So the college is both a center of vision and of ad¬ ministrative action and should be so equipped and used as an efficient means of attaining the objectives of or¬ ganized Christian educational effort. While not disparaging what has gone before, which has freed so many from superstition and which has brought them personal joy and strength in the new life, one may say that it has taken college-trained men to organize the Church for greater things and to give its members the courage and standing which have enabled them to reach out into their communities in a larger way. Church extension and the chief weight of the Christian movement in China must rest upon foreign initiative and aid till there are trained Chinese teachers with sufficient Christian motive to enable them to par¬ ticipate fully in an educational advance. The value to the Church in China of central schools and colleges of the highest order, capably administered and taught, cannot be overestimated. The Church above all needs leaders and supporters with the most thorough preparation and training and this requires those conditions which promote student organizations and activities in forms conducive to leadership. The highest and most self-perpetuating, multiplying and self-extending work a mission can do is to produce trained leaders. 15 CHAPTER III The Cost of Secondary Education The cost of education, that is the cost per student, of maintaining a staff of equivalent standard and quality, is not materially less in China than it is in America. Estimates of cost are too often based upon the getting of so many students over so much ground, and not upon their mastery of principles so as to use them freely in other cases than the ones given in the book and upon their development in power of initiative. In mission budgets and accounting the real cost of education is frequently hidden under such general headings as “Salaries,” “Furlough Allowances,” “Travel,” “House Rent,” etc., covering a whole station or mission, which headings do not show what portion of these various items are charged against a particular school for the support of the teaching staff and for its administration, for the cultivation of givers, etc. This leads to the happy delusion that education in China is materially less than it is in America. The minimum requirements of a teaching staff for any given school must be determined by certain factors, such as (a) the hours of class room work per week or per year; (b) the number of students to be taught and (c) the nature of the subjects. The quality of the results will be determined by multiplying the “class hours” by the number and quality of the teachers and dividing it by the number and lack of quality or pre¬ paredness of the students. 16 Ten students in half an hour will get from a teacher not very far from the same amount of help as twenty would in a full hour or thirty would in an hour and a half. Of course, it is easily seen that this is too mathematical and does not take into consideration cer¬ tain psychological factors. However, personal power in an average good teacher only carries him or his pupils so far. He may be able to lecture to a class of one thousand persons as well or better than he can to a class of ten, but he cannot teach or tutor a thousand persons who have not already been trained to do their own work. Let us take an extreme case, a class might have as many as thirty students, but no teacher should have more than thirty hours of class work per week. In a class of thirty students the teacher could only give two minutes of individual attention to each student per hour of sixty minutes or ten minutes per day during class room work. If the students were studying six subjects this would mean an aver¬ age ten minutes individual attention per week for each subject, but as in most cases over half the time is taken up teaching the class as a whole it would only allow one minute per hour for individual attention. If instead of thirty hours per week the teacher had twenty-five hours of class room work and twenty-five students and gave half his time to teaching the class as a whole and the other half to individual attention the equation would appear as follows: 25 (hours) X 60 (minutes) — 1500 minutes divided by 2 (}4 time) — 750 (minutes) divided by 25 (students) = 30 17 (minutes) per student per week. This is better but even with this amount of personal attention sufficient tutoring cannot be practiced. Running a school is a business and as such requires balanced judgment. One teacher can teach all that he knows and by process of good teaching may enable his pupils to acquire much more than he himself knows, while other teachers to put it mildly, “labor under difficulties.” The principal or superintendent has to measure these capacities. It ought, however, to be perfectly clear that the average student in a middle school will require several times five or six minutes a day “tutoring” to make him proficient and that the teacher will require fully as much time per student to allow him to do work of a strictly high quality, such for example as is found in our best schools in America and England. To assume a case under very favorable conditions, in order to graduate students in a six year course, from sixth grade elementary grade to college entrance, the number of students and teachers required, in order to insure results and have twenty or twenty-four stu¬ dents in the graduation class would be something like this: STUDENTS TEACHERS STUDENTS TEACHERS 4th year Middle School.. 20 1 24 1 3rd year Middle School.. 27 1 31 1 2nd year Middle School.. 36 2 42 2 1st year Middle School.. 48 2 56 3 7th year Elementary Sch. 64 2 75 2 6th year Elementary Sch. 85 3 100 4 280 11 328 13 18 These estimates would be on the bases approximating twenty-five students for each teacher, whereas half as many more would be nearer the actual requirements. PER STUDENT a—The estimated cost of 11 teachers for 280 students G$ 81 b_The estimated cost of 16 teachers for 280 students— 138 c _The estimated cost of 13 teachers for 328 students— 92 (j_The estimated cost of 19 teachers for 328 students 128 a and c=l teacher to 25 students, b and d=l teacher to 17 students The median of a and b $109.50 is about the same as c and d $110.00. This is the estimated cost for teachers only, and does not include rent and mainte¬ nance of the educational plant, but does include rental of staff residences. Nor does it include cost of admin¬ istration and incidental expenses, nor students loom rents and board. Probably the whole cost, not deduct¬ ing fees, will be twice the cost of the teachers. As the Commission’s Report shows, it is not most economical to run smaller schools. Though many leaders of the first order have been tutored in very small schools where they have had much individual attention or tutor¬ ing, thus while the cost per student may have been higher, the results may have justified the cost. As the case stands now there are many small schools with three or four teachers for thirty high school students and less than six students in the fourth year class. Unfortunately it often comes about that such a school will have the same number of teachers when the thirty students become a hundred. 19 In considering these details we must not lose sight of the fact that there must be a Christian Educational System and that college trained teachers are needed for high school work and high school graduates for the grades below. Whether a middle school is to be a lower or higher middle school or both can only be settled by establishing a standard reckoned in terms of the num¬ ber of students available for the upper classes and the number of college trained teachers on the staff. The cost of teaching with these factors will give us some idea of the standards adopted. The whole cost less receipts from students (for tuition, incidentals and board) will show very clearly the actual cost to the school or mission. 20 CHAPTER IV Suggestions on the Rural Schools Problem The problem of rural schools is substantially different from that of the city elementary and middle school. It takes unusual grit and administrative ability and self- denial for a highly educated man or woman to open a school in even one of the larger villages without outside aid, and very few such young people under the present social conditions can be expected to immolate them¬ selves in small villages. Conditions and tendencies should be carefully studied and weighed in the attempt to solve the rural day school problem. In the future, village primary schools may have to depend to a large degree for their teachers upon village girls or young women and widows. It would appear on the surface that the solution of the village school problem is largely drawing these boys and girls from the villages into lower normal or high school normal schools centrally located where they may get their first inspiration and training for such work. The prospective Chinese teacher for a village school should not be taken far from his native environment. It would seem best that lower normal schools to prepare girls for teachers in village schools should be closely associated with and in the neighborhood of the schools for which they are endeavoring to prepare the teachers. There should be no attempt to teach English in these schools. These young teachers should be closely super- 21 vised and their education continued. It is not in any sense a lowering of our aim, of opening the way for the highest education possible for the individual, to adapt and limit the education given to village teachers, most of whom will be girls, in order that they shall return to their own villages as lower primary teachers in village primary schools, especially as young women, unmarried or married, are by nature the most fitted and accessible instruments for such work and the only ones available for the economic extension over the entire country of elementary instruction. As the Chinese must use literary characters, most of which characters are not pronounced in speaking, one wants to know how many years it takes for a student to learn to read freely enough in Chinese character in order to read the Bible and ordinary newspapers, and be able to write an ordinary letter in easy Wenli char¬ acter? Some say five years, but to become a junior master in charge of a village school certainly would require eight or nine years. The teachers in the lower normal schools should be high school graduates with educational courses and training and have as broad an education as possible, including home-making. The head of such schools should have at least two years in college, taking at least one year in educational science and school admin¬ istration. Although the ultimate aim in agricultural districts will be to develop the country high school, the grade attained by rural normal schools will at first be lim¬ ited by local conditions, which in most cases will prob- ably limit them to the grade of the proposed lower middle school, with two-thirds of the students in the higher primary grades. In such schools a vocational course (such as may readily be introduced in a prac¬ tical form like sericulture, applying simple scientific methods to an existing industry) even for a short period would be an attractive bait to lure the boys and girls from the villages to a nearby center and a strong inducement to the parents to send them and meet their expenses and for the villages to employ them to conduct primary schools. The Agricultural attache at a rural normal or high school should have had an agricultural college education especially fitting him for this type of work. Then if he undertakes the work of conducting a model farm demonstration he would better follow the example set by experience in America and get the best local man he can employ as assistant superintendent or “number one boy.” If he is a foreigner he would better “ob¬ serve” for some time before undertaking anything be¬ yond and improvement of existing methods, until he is quite sure of his ground. Small experiments not included. With the proper man in charge, the rural school may begin as an adjunct to the demonstration farm., but, if it is the beginning of the rural school work in the district with no local central school nearby and without close supervision of a competent supervisor, it should be in charge of a well-trained teacher. The specialist in agriculture will have enough to occupy all his time, without looking after the very technical matter of supervising elementary schools or a central boarding school. The recommendations of the Commission are so re¬ plete with suggestions regarding vocational, social, agri¬ cultural and home-making courses and training, and the adaptation of foreign aided schools to China’s defi¬ nite needs, that one has to watch lest ready assent to some of these excellent proposals leads him to conclude that the Commission has overlooked the difficulties in the way of finding the personnel to carry them out. We are still very much in the position of the small boy sitting on the wharf with his line in the water waiting for a bite and contemplating his chances of catching a fish, while he is saying to himself, “When I catch this fish and another I’ll have two.” So far as I have observed, we have not as yet one such school completely adapted to the training of teachers for the lower primary work in the villages, and it is still only an ideal on paper that village teachers should be agri- culturalized or industrialized, even in a small degree through books or talks and the school garden or work¬ shop. Perhaps I have not the equal balance of all things Chinese and especially rural education in China and how we as foreigners can initiate and participate in effective measures to promote or conduct a system of rural schools. My impression, however, is that so far as the Chinese Christian forces, coupled with the missionary forces, attempt to conduct rural schools, they will, for the next ten years, be much more apt to succeed if they were closely connected with an Educa- 24 tional Department or Headquarters in a Christian college. Of course, if a specialist on Rural Education of just the right sort were to go into an agricultural center, learn the language, study the people and conditions and work out a good plan, the whole experiment would be individual and be worked out according to the said specialist’s ability to secure the necessary local co¬ operation. But, whether Chinese or foreign or both, such specialists will in all probability not be equal to the working out of a plan or system taking in the training and supervision of the teachers in a dozen or dozens of village schools, so that the whole will be self-supporting, without an educational base, such as at present would only be found at a college center. The country normal school could start on a low enough basis to get the business going and gradually expand its curriculum with special reference to con¬ tinuing the education of village teachers, supplement¬ ing their work by a few specially trained visiting teach¬ ers who will visit each school in turn and help the teacher on the special lines. This means simple but very high class management. The normal training will be given in the earlier stages after the student has become a village school teacher, by visiting supervisors and week-end classes and summer school teacher in¬ stitutes. The young teacher of a village school cannot be expected to carry much weight in a farming village considering the many types of agriculture already suc¬ cessful in operation. There is even danger that such 25 village school teachers may assume to know all that the farmers in the village know plus the rudimentary knowledge gained at the rural normal school. Whereas the chief value of ruralizing these normal schools is to introduce him and his pupils into a life-long study of rural and agricultural problems and have them realize that such studies have real values in their im¬ mediate life and surroundings, so that they may not regard education as something foreign to the soil and rural life. It is not easy to add very much to the community knowledge from the outside without getting very close to the actual operations as at present conducted. There are a few outstanding defects in Chinese agriculture, some of which any wide-awake boy or girl can learn but to move toward improvement belongs to the system and not to the village teacher alone. 26 ?