Chinese School Children and Teacher, Peking, China
If you were to go near a Chinese school, you would hear a loud buzzing. It is the voices of the pupils studying aloud. They are committing to memory page after page of Chinese classics. Their classics are the old books written by the wisest men China has had. If a boy becomes lazy, the teacher roars at him in a loud voice and bangs his stick on the desk. He may beat him over the head, shoulders, and back. The parents expect the teachers to keep the children hard at work in school. In China education is held in high respect. The government offices are held by educated men who have passed the examinations. So every Chinese father and mother wants his child to become wise. Education is also a part of their religion. Their religion teaches them to love their parents and to respect learning. You would not like to study in these Chinese schools. It is very hard to learn to read or to write Chinese. Instead of having a few letters to represent sounds, the Chinese have a picture language. There are about 50,000 of these pictures! Of course the children learn only about 2,000 of them, but that is hard enough. And their writing you would give up at once! Instead of using a pen, they use a brush, and paint the figures on paper. These run in columns, up and down. The children you see in the picture are in a mission school in Peking. They are being taught more after the style of our own schools. In late years, the Chinese have added some of our studies to their courses. But they still hold fast to the old things their fathers are taught. Keystone ID: 12007 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.