Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 588

1841.

Morrison Education Society.

571

and little apt to attract the attention of men at large, and it is only when he can exhibit the accumulated results of long application, that he receives the meed of praise. Still farther removed from the cog. nizance of most men, are the humbler labors of the school-master, and it would be too sanguine, for me to expect to present to you, at this early day, facts for the public that will rival in interest those that are reported from other quarters around you. Nevertheless I would fain hope that the report now submitted to your inspection, may meet with so much approbation as to give fresh encouragement to the com- mittee of trustees, and strengthen their confidence in the practica- bility and the excellence of what they have undertaken.

"The same general principles and plans, that were alluded to in my first report of April 1840, have been followed since then in the conduct of the school. The same division of time, between English and Chinese studies, exists as before, half of each day bring allotted: to either. Thus the morning is devoted to Chinese, and the afternoon and evening to English lessons. A respectable elderly Chinese man is employed as teacher, whose habits and manners are becoming and exemplary, and who is very faithful in teaching after the Chinese mode. Being myself obliged to spend the same hours in Chinese study, I have not as yet been able to introduce any essential im- provements upon the common method of teaching pursued in this country; consequently the pupils have spent this portion of time in committing to memory the Chinese classics, and in learning to write Chinese. In the meantime, their ability to understand the native books has increased. The subjects of those books which they read at school, as well as the style, are the main hindrances to a more intimate acquaintance with what they read. We should rarely look for or find young persons like them, even in England or A- merica, who could discourse on moral or political economy, and these are the topics which fill entire volumes of the books which are put into the hands of tyros in China. There is also another difficulty in the way of a Chinese boy, when he commences to read the books of his own country, that which in the nature of the case cannot be experienced in an alphabetic or syllabic language. The English child has only to learn the powers of 26 letters, and then he is master of most of the phonetic elements that compose all words. Not so with the Chinese youth; he has no such royal road to the art of reading, for instead of having to learn little more than 26 letters, he must commit to memory the names and meanings of at least as many characters as there are words to be read. After all, I suspect that it will