CHAPTER IV.
THE CHILD AT SCHOOL
“Come, ye children—I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”
The call for schools from Mission Lands—Is missionary educational work still needed in the awakening East?—Divergent views on education—Reasons why missionary education should be continued—Comparative illiteracy—Testimony from Japan—From China—From India—From Mohammedan lands—Can we refuse the united demand?—Kindergarten Union in Japan—The impressionable years of childhood and the call for Christian Kindergartens—Inventive and adaptable missionaries—Primitive education among backward nations—Lack of power of concentration—Evils of the memorizing method—Old methods hard to discard—Education of girls—Early marriage a barrier—Now is the time to educate the future mothers—Mission schools and physical training—Building up a “great personality”—The need for good literature—Industrial training in mission schools—Extent of American missionary education—Where shall we put the emphasis?—How mission schools lead children to Christ—Mission school-children in after life.
The call for schools from mission lands.
Four little boys less than ten years of age came trudging over the muddy Korean road three long miles to school. In their chilly, little, bare hands they carried bowls of cold rice for dinner. But cheerfully they marched along, for the daily six-mile walk took them to and from the mission school, and oh! what a wonderful privilege it was to be able to study,—a privilege not enjoyed by all the boys of their village.[51]
The closing session of a school for Jewish children in the heart of Asia was being held, and many mothers listened with awe and admiration as child after child took part in the simple exercises. “See,” the mothers exclaimed to each other, “see how our daughters are learning to read, instead of growing up to be like donkeys as we have done!”
A woman in the capital city of Persia, head of a Bahaist school, insisted on sending her little daughter to the American mission school, paying all tuition charges gladly. “Lady,” she said to the teacher in charge, “whenever I come into this school my life is renewed.”
Over the African trail came a young man who had given his heart to Christ and was now ready to enter the Bible Training School in order to fit himself for a life work that no foreign missionary could hope to accomplish. Earnestly he [pleaded] with the missionaries to let him bring his little eleven-year-old wife to be taught and trained so that she might some day be a true help-meet in his work. But there was no boarding school for girls, no available place for the child. Think what that future home and work might have been had the little wife received a Christian education!