The Chinese.
—The Committee on Education and Labor has introduced a bill, which has been passed in the House, forbidding the master of any vessel to bring more than fifteen Chinamen at any one time to the United States, under a penalty of $100 fine for each passenger, and imprisonment for six months. We hope the Senate will have the good sense to refuse its consent to such action, which is a slight upon the Chinese Embassy here, and may easily lead to a withdrawal of the privileges to American citizens in the Flowery Land, which it was thought worth a good deal of effort to obtain.
OUR QUERY COLUMN.
We print with great satisfaction the two following answers to the question about the training of nurses. The first tells what is being done in Le Moyne Institute; the second lays down foundation principles.
Training for Nurses.
I note with interest the “query” in the January Missionary relative to the training of nurses. It is but one of many indications of a rapidly growing dissatisfaction with the present system of education in this country. More and more it is coming to be the feeling that education, in its true sense, is not designed, as has been thought in the past, to fit people for “higher positions,” but rather to fit them to make the most of life in the positions they do occupy, and which must, in any event, be filled by some one. To satisfy this most reasonable feeling, more of the things that pertain to practical life must be thought and talked and taught in our schools. It is no doubt a serious question as to how a safe transition can be made from the present highly artificial system to one that will have a more practical bearing on the every-day life of the masses. In this case advice of a similar nature to that which Horace Greeley gave about resumption will prove, at least, the most reasonable. The best and only way to make the change is to change.
But for the query. At Le Moyne School, where we have one almost continuous daily session from 9 A. M. to 3 P. M., at least an hour of this time each day must be given by the pupils to some branch of practical or industrial knowledge. We cannot wait for all the desired appliances in this work, or to have a beaten track pointed out to us. We are beginning with such appliances as are at hand, and we expect to learn from our own experience as well as from other sources; but at any rate in time to earn success.
In the direct line of training nurses, each girl in the school, sixteen years old or over, will devote the industrial hour, for two days in each week, to studies under this head, including special lessons in anatomy, physiology and hygiene. For the present, at least, no text-book is to be placed in the hands of the students. They are to gain their knowledge from lectures, which are to be followed by general and familiar conversation between instructor and pupils on the same subject. Each girl will be required to take notes of the lecture, and to write out what she can of the knowledge imparted. After a subject is completed, each member of the class is required to prepare an essay, putting in the best possible form her knowledge of the entire subject in all its bearings.