While a boy is at a wat he is not usually called a scholar or pupil, but a wat-boy—a name which generally implies everything that is naughty. His companions are idle, vicious fellows, fond of cockfighting, swearing and gambling, and he grows up among them bad just in proportion as he is clever and gifted.
The conservative men of Siam are bewailing these latter days, and among other things they aver that wat education is not what it was in the good old times long ago—that then the priests were more strict with their boys, and made them work and study more than they do now. This may be so. But if the men who were educated in the temples years ago, and who should now be the pillars and producers of the country, are to be taken as exponents of what that system of education can do for manhood, then we may safely infer that temple-life was at that time just what it is now—a school of idleness and vice, and those who leave its haunts are fitted only for a lazy, aimless existence. This the natives themselves freely admit, and the time has evidently come when something better is demanded.
While Siam has been doing, perhaps, the best she knew for her sons, her daughters in some respects have been much better off. They are not supposed to need any education, and are therefore trained from childhood to help their mothers with all kinds of heavy as well as light work. Thus it comes to pass that the girls grow up to be the “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” the planters and the traders of Siam, while the influence of their brothers is to a great extent a dead weight on the prosperity of the country.
And now what have missionaries done to show Siam a better way? Christianity implies knowledge, and missionaries believe in schools. “The Oriental mind is quick in childhood, but early stops its growth;” then to civilize and Christianize such a people the most hopeful plan is to begin with the children. So, wherever a Presbyterian mission has been established in Siam the church and the school have grown up together.
The mission-school for boys in Bangkok was opened in the early days of the work there, and through all these years it has been doing a grand work in educating the children of the Church as well as those brought to it from heathen families, who have often carried the blessed truths of the Bible with them to their heathen homes. In this, which was the first mission-school in Siam, many plans have been tried and much valuable experience gained.
In Siam, as in other Eastern countries, the native mind is becoming roused to seek for knowledge, and there is a growing desire to learn the English language. This wish draws many into the boys’ school who would not otherwise be found there. Trade and commerce are calling for clerks and assistants who have a knowledge of English, and a boy with only a smattering of the coveted foreign tongue is in demand at high wages, and is thus often induced to leave school long before he is fit for a business-life. This at present is a great detriment to all the schools, but as the demand becomes supplied a higher standard will be necessary and a more thorough education sought.
In the boys’ mission-school it has been found necessary to have all who enter make a written promise to remain a specified number of years, so as to ensure a reasonable knowledge of English and a better knowledge of that more important lesson, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” There is hardly a business-house in Bangkok that does not have one or more than one young man in its employ who has been educated in the mission-school, and some of them are consistent Christian men, a credit to their teachers and an honor to the school.
A SCHOOL IN SIAM.