They would, however, be soon carried out if there were a stable
government.
The traditional classical education was, of course, not intended to be
only elementary. The amount of Chinese literature is enormous, and the
older texts are extremely difficult to understand. There is scope,
within the tradition, for all the industry and erudition of the finest
renaissance scholars. Learning of this sort has been respected in China
for many ages. One meets old scholars of this type, to whose opinions,
even in politics, it is customary to defer, although they have the
innocence and unworldliness of the old-fashioned don. They remind one
almost of the men whom Lamb describes in his essay on Oxford in the
Vacation--learned, lovable, and sincere, but utterly lost in the modern
world, basing their opinions of Socialism, for example, on what some
eleventh-century philosopher said about it. The arguments for and
against the type of higher education that they represent are exactly the
same as those for and against a classical education in Europe, and one
is driven to the same conclusion in both cases: that the existence of
specialists having this type of knowledge is highly desirable, but that
the ordinary curriculum for the average educated person should take more
account of modern needs, and give more instruction in science, modern
languages, and contemporary international relations.
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