The Task of Education in China

Abstract

rHE problems of education in the China of today are faintly suggested by the difficulties of preparing a statement on the subject. In the immense areas occupied or cut off by the Japanese, there have been for nine years no adequate reports of the schools actually carried on, and no free or significant expression of thought regarding any aspect of education. In the interior regions, generally backward in education, the disturbed and changing conditions of wartime were tardily and poorly reflected in formalistic government figures. Publication of books and articles on education was meager, cramped by inflationary costs and by poor circulation, as well as by the mental and political exigencies of the war for existence double-shaded in Communist and Nationalist hostility. In the capital city of Nanking no useful library is open (April), and neither government documents nor private publications have arrived from Chungking. One is reduced to individual observation, fortunately including the prewar years with experience on both sides of the wartime line, which is supplemented by a few papers, public and private, and by exchange of views with a wide range of administrators and teachers. War damage goes deep. Fewer young people have been in school, and they have received poorer education, than was the case a decade ago. Thousands of school buildings were rendered unusable, and thousands more were stripped of their equipment, most of which was destroyed. Tens of thousands of teachers were scattered, some to take up similar work in new locations, some driven by displacement and by inflation to seek livelihood in government service or in trade. There were certain gains in interior provinces, benefited by the influx of refugee schools and refugee teachers. Yet, even in the safer areas, wartime training frequently slumped in quality, with few books, little apparatus, lowered vitality of teachers and pupils alike; and several provinces of the interior, not usually classed as occupied, were at one time or another severely upset by military operations. In the occu-