On the 21st of January the college closed for the Chinese New Year holidays. These are the great holidays of the year to the school boys of China. Except on a few feast days the native schools are open all the rest of the year. They have no longer summer vacation, such as we have, neither have they any Sunday. All days are alike to them; Sunday has no sacredness and the summer’s heat no terrors. All the more eagerly therefore do Chinese school boys look for the New Year holidays. In this school there is of necessity a long vacation of two months or more in the summer, as the foreign teachers could not possibly continue their work. The Chinese teachers, however, must be on hand if required to teach any scholars who wish to continue their studies.
This long holiday time does in no wise lessen the joy of our students when New Year comes, they must have their holidays then with the rest.
The closing exercises were extremely simple, no long commencement orations, no fine singing, and immense assemblage of gentlemen and ladies to applaud their favorites. We trust these will come in time when the school becomes popular, and the ladies and gentlemen of China take an interest in it.
There were public examinations, the reading of essays, and some interesting gymnastic exercises. The trustees of the college, and others who were present, declared themselves pleased with what they heard and saw, and expressed their satisfaction at the progress the pupils had made. This was all the more gratifying to the teachers as their work had been done under great difficulties.
As a short statement of the work done may be interesting, I give a list of the studies of each class. The boys were arranged in four classes. The fourth had reading, writing, dictation and elementary arithmetic; the third, reading, grammar, arithmetic and geography; the second, reading and grammar, arithmetic, algebra through simple equations, and geography with map-drawing; and the first finished Loomis’ Treatise on Algebra, studied four books of Loomis’ Geometry, and parts of Swinton’s Universal History and read selections from Addison.
Five days every week were given to this work. Saturday morning was spent in writing compositions, reading before the school and practicing simple gymnastic exercises. A little time each day was given to systematic physical exercises. In addition, all the students studied the Chinese classics, to teach which two competent native scholars were employed.
Next school year, which begins on the 19th of February, the fist class will take up plain trigonometry, and Dr. Rennie, one of the foreign physicians, has kindly offered to spend two or three hours a week in teaching physiology. I hope after the summer vacation to begin elementary physics or chemistry with this class. It depends somewhat on whether some generous friend of education will give us the necessary apparatus.
Our numbers were not up to those of some previous years. We have much to contend with: ignorance and prejudice on the part of the people, and the influence of the “almighty dollar.” America is sometimes spoken of as being the favorite land of this bad but mighty divinity, but one must come to China if he would see people fall on all fours and worship him. Not many of the people indeed are the recipients of his favor, and it is perhaps on this very account that they worship him so earnestly. In education, as in everything else, it is difficult to interest the average Chinaman, unless you can show him that in a year or two his exertions will begin to enrich him.
The Chinaman is not a man of high or distant ideals. He lives in the present, pursues what experience has shown him to be profitable, and can with difficulty be persuaded that Western knowledge is worth the trouble of acquiring it. He must see that it pays before he will have any thing to do with it. That it does pay we hope the course of events will soon show him.
The government school, situated about ten miles from here, is crowded with students, but it holds out attractions to which we can make no pretension. The students there are well paid, and if they distinguish themselves as scholars and go through the course, they are sure of lucrative positions in the service of the government. Of course we no not claim, we do not even pretend to compete such a school. We have a higher aim, however; we propose giving a much better education, and if we have the means we can do it.
If it should occur to any that the Anglo-Chinese College and its work are foreign to the purposes for which missionaries are sent here, and that we are doing nothing directly to Christianize the people, I would say that we are educating, and educating is part of the work of the church in our day. We are not living in the times of the apostles; we have more to give than they had, and for that very reason we must give it.
Many of our students are regular attendants at the Sunday-school, and the two most interesting and most interested classes there are composed of the students of the first and second classes in the college. They are fortunate in having as their teachers, Sunday after Sunday, Miss Jewell and Miss Fisher, the two young ladies in charge of the Girls’ Boarding School of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society.
Some of the older students are earnest, practical Christians. A few weeks ago I called some of them together, and we organized a Branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The little society now numbers twelve members, of whom nine are students in the college, the other three being foreigners, the Rev. J. H. Worley of this mission, Dr. H. T. Whitney of the American Board and myself. Mr. Worley is the General Secretary. This is the first Young Men’s Christian Association ever organized in China, and we hope that the Inter national Committee, when we communicate with them, will recognize us. Already some of the members have done good work. When revival services were held in the church some weeks ago they went out on the streets and brought to the church many a man who probably had never heard the Gospel preached before.
Thus our college is a Christian school. We are not a propaganda and do nothing to force the students to become Christians. They are entirely free to accept or reject. We are Christians nevertheless, and the education we give had better be given in Christian schools than in those in which Christianity is rejected. It will be given, and the only question is, where and by whom?
Our work would be better and more thoroughly done if we had better means of doing it. The term closed with not a dollar in the treasury, and the Trustees were compelled to borrow $800 to carry on the work for another year. We need more for other purposes. Our most pressing wants are a suitable dormitory, and suitable apparatus for the teaching of science. If we had $2,500 we could erect a large Chinese building on the college grounds and purchase such apparatus as we are most in need of.
I would that I could lay this matter properly before some of the many members of our church to whom God has given means abundant to aid in carrying on this work. I am convinced they could find no object more worthy of their giving. There are some young men here of such high character and promise that many who now take but little interest in our work, would, if they but know them, give unstintedly to assist in education them. The College is here and it has accomplished something. The great object now should be to keep it open till by its work the people are persuaded of its usefulness. But give us the means of working, and, to borrow the pregnant words which I once heard Bishop Fowler use in addressing the theological students at Drew, we shall be able to “bring things to pass.”
Since writing the above the new school term has begun, and I am happy to be able to add that so many new students have entered that our roll is much larger than it was last year.
Foochow, China, Feb. 26, 1886.
(Published in The Gospel of All Lands by Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Society in 1886, written by Rev. George Blood Smyth who was the then ACC principal.)
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