ead and write form about five per cent, of the
population.

The establishment of normal schools for the training of teachers on
modern lines, which grew out of the edict of 1905 abolishing the old
examination system and proclaiming the need of educational reform, has
done much, and will do much more, to transform and extend elementary
education. The following statistics showing the increase in the number
of schools, teachers, and students in China are taken from Mr. Tyau's
_China Awakened_, p. 4:--

1910 1914 1917 1919

Number of Schools 42,444 59,796 128,048 134,000
Number of Teachers 185,566 200,000 326,417 326,000
Number of Students 1,625,534 3,849,554 4,269,197 4,500,000

Considering that the years concerned are years of revolution and civil
war, it must be admitted that the progress shown by these figures is
very remarkable.

There are schemes for universal elementary education, but so far, owing
to the disturbed condition of the country and the lack of funds, it has
been impossible to carry them out except in a few places on a small
scale. They would, however, be soon carried out if there were a stable
government.

The traditional classical education was, of course, not intended to be
only elementary. The amount of Chinese literature is enormous, and the
older texts are extremely difficult to understand. There is scope,
within the tradition, for all the industry and erudition of the finest
renaissance scholars. Learning of this sort has been respected in China
for many ages. One meets old scholars of this type, to whose opinions,
even in politics, it is customary to defer, although they have the
innocence and unworldliness of the old-fashioned don. They remind one
almost of the men whom Lamb describes in his essay on Oxford in the
Vacation--learned, lovable, and sincere, but utterly lost in the modern
world, basing their opinions of Socialism, for example, on what some
eleventh-century philosopher said about it. The arguments for and
against the type of higher education that they represent are exactly the
same as those for and against a classical education in Europe, and one
is driven to the same conclusion in both cases: that the existence of
specialists having this type of knowledge is highly desirable, but that
the ordinary curriculum for the average educated person should take more
account of modern needs, and give more instru