those circumstances if allowed to do so. I am not a follower, as has been suggested, of Froebel or Rousseau or any other celebrated educationist. On the contrary, my theory, far from being derived from theorists as I have any practical conviction that even the best educational theories of the West, based as they are on the peculiar child-nature and social environment of Europe, are inapplicable to the treatment of Chinese children whose psychic predispositions and social surroundings are essentially different.
The patent fact demonstrated by the experience of the last thirty years, that the Chinese scholars of this school, though spending here from four to seven years, do not learn to speak or write English idiomatically, is in my opinion chiefly due to the following facts.
(1) Chinese boys, though exclusively coming to this school without being able to speak a single word in English, are here taught precisely as English boys are taught in England. The same reading books, the same grammar, the same organization and methods are applied to them in total oblivion of the fact that the circumstances are entirely different.
(2) The teaching of English here is hardly conversational English... of an English nursery, of an English home, an English playground and the whole range of conversational English.