105
18
The urgent claims of the new subjects are forcing the revision
of methods and a reconsideration of the curriculum, but the suc-
cess of the new scheme depends almost entirely upon the training
and preparation of the teacher. To progress, a scholar in Canton
informed me, can be hoped for with the master trained solel” **
the old studies. His exclusive attention to the old learning
puts him out of sympathy with the new, and above all his faith
in the value of his work is undermined by the obvious movement
away from his mode of thought, which he sees going on around him.
is lack of zeal is due then to the inner conviction that his
efforts at present are futile, because his work is dead and the
old influence and respect his occupation aroused or created are
going or are gone. There is no more tragic or pathetic figure to
the modern Chinese teacher in Canton than the old vernacular master
performing the rites and ceremonies of the past among an irreverant
and sceptical world of the present. The old learning must be
preserved, but it can never again occupy the proud position of
authority it held in the past.
Its content must be accessible in a new form, for there are
evidently rich veins of philosophic are to be mined and refined for
use in the modern world, and for that reason there must be a small
but scholarly group continually revealing those parts which are of
value and interest. That is the function of the old learning. It
must abdicate from its dominant position and be content to share
its power with the new subjects.
Such then are the general principles. Let us see how they are
being applied concretely in Canton, to which city the ucation
Society paid a visit during Chinese New Year. It was significant
that the schools were open the whole of that week and that the
work was being carried on as though Chinese New Year did not exist.
That was one definite breach with the old tradition but it was no
whit wider then the departure from the traditional methods of
teaching handed down from the past.