—————————————————————————————————- Number of |Number of |Number of |Number of |Number of |Remarks Evange- |Evangelistic|Medicals |Days spent by|Days spent|and listic |Workers |Assisting.|Evangelistic |by |Conclu- Tours. |Assisting. | |Workers. |Medicals. |sions. —————|——————|—————|——————-|—————|———- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | —————————————————————————————————- | | | | | __________|____________|__________|_____________|__________|_______
Finally, we inquire how far the direct evangelistic influence of the hospitals and dispensaries can be traced. We might at first suppose that this could be done by asking the number of inquirers enrolled as a direct consequence of attendance at hospitals and dispensaries; but it is not surprising that patients are willing to enrol their names as inquirers simply to please the doctors or nurses, without any intention of pursuing the matter further when they leave the hospital; and consequently such a question by itself might be very misleading. We therefore add two further questions, the first, what number of communicants trace their conversion to their visits to hospitals or dispensaries, the second, what number of places have been opened to Christian teachers and preachers by the influence of doctors and patients. Some missionary doctors are much interested in this inquiry, and we all might well be interested in it. The answers would be a most important contribution to our study, and might go far to justify medical missions as an evangelistic agency.
+———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Inquirers Enrolled in the Year as a Direct | | Consequence of Attendance at Hospitals and Dispensaries.| | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Total Inquirers. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Enrolled in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Communicants Derived from Attendance | | at Hospitals and Dispensaries in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Communicants Enrolled in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Places Opened to Christian Teachers through | | the Influence of Doctors or Patients in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Total Places Opened in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Conclusions and Remarks. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+
CHAPTER VI.
EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE STATION DISTRICT.
The difficulty of providing tables for the survey of educational work is as great as that of finding tables for medical work, and for the same reasons. There is the same separateness, the same diversity of immediate aim, the same alteration of character, the same uncertainty of policy.
Educational missions have been designed to convert the young whilst they were yet pliable, to influence the growing generation in order to prepare for a great advance of Christianity later, to Christianise society, to educate young Christians in a Christian atmosphere, to prepare leaders for the Christian Church, to elevate an ignorant and illiterate Christian Church. All these various objects have been set before us as the reasons for the establishment of schools, both separately, each in different circumstances, and unitedly, all at the same time, as though one school could fulfil all these different purposes without any confusion. At one and the same moment Christian children were to be educated in a Christian atmosphere, and non-Christian children in large numbers were admitted, and non-Christian teachers employed. At the same time non-Christian children were to be converted and not converted, but filled with Christian ideas.
All these aims and objects are confusedly set forth, each as its turn comes round, as the immediate aim of our educational missions; but the attempt to draw tables for a survey which shall embrace impartially all these objects is enough to satisfy the inquirer that they are not easily combined into one. We propose, therefore, in this bewildering maze of mixed purposes and ideas, to follow the line which seemed possible in the case of medical missions—to accept the idea that there is an educational need of the people which it is the business of the educational mission to meet so far as it can; and then to add a further inquiry concerning the direct evangelistic influence of the educational mission, and its relation to the evangelistic and medical work.
But in educational mission survey there is an added difficulty which arises from the fact that scholastic education is divided into many grades, and this division has no common standard in different countries, sometimes not even in the same country. We, then, who are seeking light not from one country only but from all, are compelled to simplify these grade distinctions as much as possible, and to accept the local definitions. This does not really invalidate comparisons between different areas so seriously as we might at the first glance be tempted to expect. There is in every country a grade which is primary; there is a secondary, or middle, or high school; there is a normal, or college, or arts course. The primary in one country may run into higher primary and be at its best far in advance of the primary in another country; and so far the two are incomparable; but, nevertheless, this primary grade is the lowest grade in each country, and if the inquiry is, what number of pupils are taught in this local first grade, then the comparison is admissible. Similarly of the second grade and the third. If the inquiry is understood to imply no more than it states, and no conclusion is drawn as to the relative stage or merits of the education in the two countries in relation to one another, it may justly be argued that the primary pupils in one country stand in relation to the illiterate and more highly educated pupils in their own country in a similar position to that in which the primary pupils in another country stand to the illiterate and more highly educated pupils in their own country; though the primary pupils in the one may be far more advanced than the primary pupils in the other. On this basis a possible comparison can be made.
But since colleges and normal schools generally serve a larger area than the station district, these are reserved for provincial survey, and the present tables deal with nothing above the secondary, or middle, or high school. In the station district area the matter of chief importance is the extent to which the need of the district for primary and secondary education is met, and the proportion in which the needs of the many and the few are met.