If it prevailed it would, no doubt, by means of hygiene, save the
lives of many Chinamen, but would at the same time make them not worth
saving. It cannot therefore be regarded as wholly and altogether
satisfactory.
The best Chinese educationists are aware of this, and have established
schools and universities which are modern but under Chinese direction.
In these, a certain proportion of the teachers are European or
American, but the spirit of the teaching is not that of the Y.M.C.A. One
can never rid oneself of the feeling that the education controlled by
white men is not disinterested; it seems always designed, unconsciously
in the main, to produce convenient tools for the capitalist penetration
of China by the merchants and manufacturers of the nation concerned.
Modern Chinese schools and universities are singularly different: they
are not hotbeds of rabid nationalism as they would be in any other
country, but institutions where the student is taught to think freely,
and his thoughts are judged by their intelligence, not by their utility
to exploiters. The outcome, among the best young men, is a really
beautiful intellectual disinterestedness. The discussions which I used
to have in my seminar (consisting of students belonging to the Peking
Government University) could not have been surpassed anywhere for
keenness, candour, and fearlessness.
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