China and the West

Dewey, John. America and Chinese education [ID D28500].
A Chinese student who is now in this country and who was an active leader in the Students' Revolt in 1918 in Peking, recently remarked to me that the conduct of the Chinese official delegation in Washington had led him to reflect upon Chinese higher education. Or rather, he thought their course was a reflection of Chinese education in certain of its phases. He regarded the delegation as having failed essentially in their task. He recognized that conditions in China and also the exigencies of American politics—or what the American representatives took to be such—had a large share in the failure of China to accomplish her aims. But he said there was another failure for which the Chinese delegates were responsible: there had been at Washington no representative voicing of existent Chinese national sentiment. Certain practical failures might be conceded to be inevitable; but there was only one explanation of the failure to express the active contemporary attitude of the Chinese people, and that was found in unrepresentative qualities in the delegates.
So far his view of the situation is of primary and practical interest to the Chinese. It concerns Americans only as they are sympathetic with China and desirous of seeing her just aspirations properly expressed. But the connection of the fact he cites— if it be a fact—with the state of the higher education of the Chinese touches us closely. All three of the delegates are American educated; two of them studied in missionary institutions conducted by Americans in China before they came to America to study. And these two—the diplomats of the delegation—are those whose methods have been most unsatisfactory to Chinese at home and in this country. The third member, the one who had not come under missionary auspices in his preparatory education in China, is the one who is regarded as most nearly representative
of present day China. Now the educational conclusion which the student-leader had drawn was that American missionary education has failed to develop independent, energetic thought and character among even its most distinguished graduates. It has produced rather a subservient intellectual type, one which he characterized as slavish.
The literal correctness of his premises and his conclusions need not be categorically affirmed. It is easy to deny the premises, or to hold that they are too slight to bear the burden of the conclusion. There are not many non-Chinese who know enough to judge the situation and I do not count myself among the few who can judge. But one thing can be positively affirmed. The view in question expresses a belief that is widely and increasingly held in China. It contains elements that are of prime importance. It suggests the attitude of the Young China of today as distinct from that Young China which figures in the writings of men like Mr. J.O.P. Bland, who if not important in himself is important as the spokesman of a definite class of foreigners in China who have been the most influential persons in purveying information and forming foreign opinion about China.
The Young China of which the Bland School speaks consists of a group of foreign educated men, of whom the two diplomats of the official delegation at the Washington Conference are good representatives. Young China viewed from this angle means men who have gone into politics, domestic and diplomatic, with Western, usually American, preconceptions, and who have tried to force Western, usually American, political conceptions and methods upon China. They have failed, failed tragically, it is said, because of the intrinsic unfitness of their conceptions and methods to immemorial traditions and customs and engrained racial traits of the Chinese people—immemorial, atavistic and racial are the literary slogans of this school of foreign commentators on China. The failure goes back to the well-meaning efforts of missionaries who have bungled because of their ignorant attempts to foist alien ways of thought and of political action upon China. With this condemnation of Young China and its foreign sponsors goes a condemnation of all attempts of China to become republican in government and to transform its culture.
I do not know to what extent this picture ever truly represented a Young China. But events move rapidly in China, and certainly the Young China of today has nothing in common with this picture. Present Young China is bent upon a genuine transformation of Chinese culture—sometimes a revolutionary breaking with the past, but in any case a transformation. It is democratic, but its democracy is social and industrial; there is little faith in political action, and not much interest in governmental changes except as they may naturally reflect changes in habits of mind. There is in it little sympathy with missionary efforts, not because they represent the West, but because it is believed that they do not represent what China most needs from the West, namely, scientific method and aggressive freedom and independence of inquiry, criticism and action. Hence the remark quoted earlier about the cause of the failure of Chinese diplomacy in Washington and its root in the weakness of the education given by Americans in China.
In wanting a transformation of their country, the Young Chinese have no thought of a Westernized China, a China which repeats and imitates Europe or America. They want Western knowledge and Western methods which they themselves can independently employ to develop and sustain a China which is itself and not a copy of something else. They are touchingly grateful to any foreigner who gives anything which can be construed as aid in this process. They are profoundly resentful of all efforts which condescendingly hold up Western institutions, political, religious, educational, as models to be humbly accepted and submissively repeated. They are acutely aware that the spirit of imitation at the expense of initiative and independence of thought has been the chief cause of China's retrogression, and they do not propose to shift the model; they intend to transform the spirit.
There is nothing which one hears so often from the lips of the representatives of Young China of today as that education is the sole means of reconstructing China. There is no other topic which is so much discussed. There is an enormous interest in making over the traditional family system, in overthrowing militarism, in extension of local self-government, but always the discussion comes back to education, to teachers and students, as the central agency in promoting other reforms. This fact makes the question of the quality and direction of American influence in Chinese education a matter of more than academic concern. The difficulties in the way of a practical extension and regeneration of
Chinese education are all but insuperable. Discussion often ends in an impasse: no political reform of China without education; but no development of schools as long as military men and corrupt officials divert funds and oppose schools from motives of self- interest. Here are all the materials of a tragedy of the first magnitude. Apart from this question of education what is done and what is not done in Washington is of secondary moment. It makes vital the matter of American influence. There is a great and growing philanthropic interest in America for China. It shows itself in support of educational schemes and in generous relief funds. It is not motivated to any considerable extent by economic considerations, by expectation of business profits, nor by political expediencies. It is motivated largely by religious considerations. It is well intentioned, but the intentions are not always enlightened in conception nor in execution. It was not a disgruntled foreigner nor a jealous, anti-foreign Chinese who told me that American missionary colleges in China had largely simply transplanted the American college curriculum and American conceptions of 'discipline'; and that instead of turning out graduates who could become leaders in developing the industries of China on an independent Chinese basis, it had turned out men who when they went into industry took subordinate positions in foreign managed industries, because of their training especially in the English language. There is no difference in effect between this statement and that quoted at the beginning of this article about fostering the dependent, the slavish, mind and character. And a missionary actively engaged in educational work was its author. American influence in Chinese education should have something better to do than to train commercial, political and religious compradores.
Something can be done by encouraging such American managed institutions as are trying to develop a better type of school; by freeing those men who are adapting their curriculum and methods to Chinese conditions against the petty opposition and nagging they now meet from reactionaries. There are a few institutions in China where the Chinese members of the faculty are put on the same plane of salary, of social dignity and administrative importance as the foreigners. Let the philanthropically inclined whose philanthropy is something more than a cloak for fanatic meddlesomeness or selfishness select these institutions for aid. Not many know that at present some American millions of a special fund are being spent in China for converting souls; that they go only to those who have the most dogmatic and reactionary theological views, and that the pressure of these funds is used to repress the liberal element and to put liberal institutions in bad repute as well as in financial straits. That is a shameful business from any point of view, and it ought to be met by a generous and wise business. China does not need copies of American colleges, but it does still need colleges supported by foreign funds and in part manned by well trained foreigners who are capable of understanding Chinese needs, alert, agile, sympathetic in their efforts to meet them.
But of course the chief work must be done in distinctively Chinese institutions, staffed mainly and managed wholly by Chinese. Instead of carping at missionaries we should remember that they have been almost the only ones in the past with a motive force strong enough to lead them to take an active interest in Chinese education. It would seem as if the time had come when there are some persons of means whose social and human interest, independent of religious considerations, might show itself in upbuilding native schools. Above all else, these schools need modern laboratories and libraries and well trained men of the first rank who can train Chinese on the spot to the use of the best methods in the social arts and the natural and mathematical sciences. Such men could train not only students but younger teachers who are not as yet thoroughly equipped and who too often are suffering from lack of intellectual contact. First class men who go to China in this spirit with nothing to 'put over' except their knowledge, their methods and their skill will meet with a wonderful response. Somewhere in America there must be men of means who can give their money and men of science who can contribute their services in this spirit. Their work will not be done for the sake of the prestige or commerce of the United States but it will be done for the sake of that troubled world of which China and the United States are integral parts. Build up a China of men and women of trained independent thought and character, and there will be no Far Eastern 'problems' such as now vex us; there will be no need of conferences to discuss—and disguise—the 'Problems of the Pacific'. American influence in Chinese education will then be wholly a real good instead of a mixed and dubious blessing.