In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

The educational work thus far actually accomplished in Korea has been chiefly done by the missionary schools. Among these schools those belonging to the Korean Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the United States are most numerous and effective. The Annual Report of this Mission for the year 1906, under the head of “Educational Work,” furnishes information as to the following among other particulars. The total enrolment of the “Academy” was 160, of whom 104 remained in school till the close of the year. In the autumn of 1905, twelve of the students, “contrary to advice and orders, left the school and joined the throng at Seoul, who wanted to lay their lives on the altar of their country in the effort to retain their national independence. The twelve were suspended for the year. Order was finally restored, and the remaining pupils returned to their work with renewed zeal.” The class which graduated in June, 1906, consisted of four members. In the fall of 1906 a sum of money amounting to somewhat more than $2,000 was collected with a view to starting a so-called “college.” The theological instruction which was carried on at Pyeng-yang during the months of April, May, and June, of the same year, became the germ of a developing “Theological Seminary” for the training of an educated native ministry. An advanced school for girls and women had an enrolment of 53 for the year. The number of local primary schools was 4 for boys and 3 for girls, with a total attendance of 494; to these should be added, of the “country schools,” 62 for boys and 8 for girls, with a total attendance of 1,266. Such is the report of the “Pyeng-yang Station.” In the “Seoul Station,” for the same year (1906) the report shows a total of 105 boys, in 4 schools, under 5 teachers, and of 48 girls, in 4 schools, under 4 teachers (rated as “Primary Schools”), in the city of Seoul; and 27 schools with 303 boys and 35 girls, belonging to the churches in this station, outside of Seoul. There was also in this district one “Intermediate and Boarding School,” with 60 boys and 23 girls numbered among its pupils. While the building to accommodate the boys of this school was in process of erection, they were combined with those of a corresponding school belonging to the Methodist Mission; and the united work carried on in the building belonging to the latter Mission thus attained a total enrolment of 150 pupils. Without mentioning the educational work done in less important stations of this Mission, it is enough to say that in the year 1906 there were 7 schools of a grade above the primary, giving instruction to 255 boys and 125 girls, and 208 schools of the lower grade with an enrolment of 3,116 boys and 795 girls as the aggregate number of their pupils. Most of the schools of the primary grade, however, consist of “classes” somewhat irregularly taught, insufficiently supplied with teachers, and wholly without adequate permanent accommodations.

Into the actual condition of educational work in Korea, so far as such work is dependent upon the attitude of the Koreans themselves, the following extract from the Report of the Union High School gives a significant glimpse:[74]

Union school work was opened up in the building known as Pai-chai, and was carried on there during the year. As is usually the case in opening a term in Korea, the first two weeks were a period of growth. The students who were with us last year came straggling along, while those who came for initial matriculation found their way to us from day to day, until about 130 names were on the roll. It will be a day of rejoicing when Korean students come to appreciate the opening day and are to be found in their places on that day, ready for work. As it is now, a day or two, a week or two, or even a longer period, matters little to them; they come to take up their work when it is wholly convenient to them. It is easy to see that this slip-shod way of doing things is a serious drawback in school work, and it is hoped that in some way it may be brought about that every day late at opening will be counted a day lost by the student himself. But this can be secured only when a higher value is placed upon time than it now has. Now that our boys are fairly well classified, it is hoped that the difficulty may in a measure be remedied by compelling those students to drop back one form whose general attendance grade, class-room work, and examinations do not come up to the prescribed standard.

The Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Korea, in its Conference Report for the year 1906, gives the number of its so-called “High Schools” as 2, with 3 teachers and 93 pupils, and of its “other schools” as 54, with an enrolment of 1,564 day scholars. A year later the statistics presented to the Conference stated: “The Mission maintains 106 schools with 3,787 pupils under instruction.”

In connection with the hospitals under both these Missions at Seoul and at Pyeng-yang, a beginning has been made in the preparation of medical text-books for native use, and in the training of natives for the medical profession.

The showing made by the facts just stated is meagre enough, when we consider that it is the best that can honestly be made for a modern nation of about ten millions. There is reason to believe, however, that the statistics exaggerate, rather than minimize, the results already achieved along educational lines. There has, indeed, been a beginning, but only a beginning. There are generous plans adopted and set in operation; but the effectual working of these plans on any considerable scale remains for the future to bring about. The interest of the Emperor and his Court in the educational reform of Korea was no more to be depended upon than was their interest in any other reform, or real and substantial good, accruing to the benefit of the Korean public. So far as these influences prevailed, the Korean system was in 1904, and would have remained, an affair of paper only. But the Korean Department of Education, under the Residency-General, has co-operated faithfully in efforts to give to the country an efficient system of public education. The former Minister of Education, now (1907) Prime Minister Yi, has been at once the strongest and the most sincere of the Korean officials under the Japanese Protectorate. The hope of Korea, and the realization of the hopes of the Marquis Ito for Korea, depend upon the initiation and execution of a wise Government policy of education more than upon any other one influence. Unaided by Japan, Korea would never bring this about. As said Mr. Hulbert, when in his better mind:[75] “What Korea wants is education; and until steps are taken in that line there is no use in hoping for a genuinely independent Korea. Now we believe that a large majority of the best informed Koreans realize that Japan and Japanese influence stand for education and enlightenment; and that while the paramount influence of any one outside power is in some sense a humiliation, the paramount influence of Japan will furnish far less genuine cause for humiliation than has the paramount influence of Russia. Russia secured her predominance by pandering to the worst elements in Korean officialdom. Japan holds it by strength of arm, but she holds it in such a way as to give promise of something better. The word reform never passed the Russian’s lips. It is the insistent cry of Japan. The welfare of the Korean people never showed its head above the Russian horizon, but it fills the whole vision of Japan; not from altruistic motives mainly, but because the prosperity of Korea and that of Japan rise and fall with the same tide.”[76]

In the future development and administration of educational affairs in Korea two principles are especially important to be kept in mind. The first is the necessity for co-operation on the part of all the educative forces under some system or general plan. On the one hand, the private and missionary schools could never suffice for the educational reform of the nation; neither could they supply adequately the needed number or kind of schools for its proper educational development. In general, missionary schools belong to the planting and earlier stages of religious propagandism among peoples who have either no system of public education or a system which is hostile to religious influences. Missionary schools are of necessity foreign schools; when they have effectually performed their initial work, they should somehow become a part of the native equipment for educating the people. As we have already said, they have until recently been almost the only—though exceedingly meagre and faulty—means for giving the rudiments of a modern education to a small fraction of Korean youth. They never could be developed, if they remain simply missionary schools, so as to cope with the entire educational problem in this land of public ignorance and of intellectual and moral degradation. Those who are in charge of them, therefore, should be among the most forward to welcome cordially, and effectively to assist, the organization and advance of a national system of public education in Korea. Otherwise their highest service can never be rendered to the country; their most important and ultimate purpose of contributing toward the evolving of an intelligent Christian nation can never be realized.

On the other hand, any plans for the establishing and developing of a system of education in Korea at the present time should be wise and generous in the matter of taking into its confidence, and availing itself of, the assistance of the mission schools. So miserably poor is Korea in all resources of this character, that the barest principles of economics enforce the necessity of her availing herself of all possible helps. Moreover, the converts to Christianity—although a very considerable proportion of them are ignorant of the truths, and negligent of the morals, of the foreign religion they suppose themselves to have espoused—are multiplying rapidly, and are destined to become of more and more political and social significance in the near future. Some sort of regulated co-operation and conformity to a general plan should, therefore, as speedily as possible be secured between the Government and the private Christian schools. The Japanese and Korean Governments and the Missionary Boards should speedily agree upon some common plan for the requirements of the primary and secondary grades of instruction, and thus actively assist each other in the attainment of their common end. That this cannot be done without sacrificing the special interests deemed most important to each, it would be in contempt of the good sense and sincerity of both to affirm.

The second most important principle to set in control of the educational system of Korea is this. At first, and for a long time to come, it should be pretty strictly limited to fitting the Koreans themselves for a serviceable life, in Korea, and under the conditions, physical, social, and economic and political, of Korea. To educate—after the fashion followed too much by Great Britain in India—thousands of Korean babus, who thus become unfitted for the pressing needs of their country at this present day, and inclined to idleness rather than any hard and disagreeable but useful work, would be a mistake which neither the Government nor the Missions can afford to make. It is a fact, however, that, up to the present time, too large a proportion of the Korean youth, whether educated abroad or in the missionary schools at home, have lapsed into this worthless class. When called upon to work—manfully, faithfully, persistently, doing with his might what his hand finds to do—the Korean, like the Indian babu, is likely to show that his modern education has the more unfitted, rather than the better fitted, him for the effectual service of his country. If this should be the result of modern education, it would be scarcely more to be commended, under existing conditions in Korea, than was the education of the old-time Confucian schools.