CHAPTER XXVI
EDUCATION
Education, in its narrower sense of scholastic training, was introduced into Korea from China along with the literature and religions of that land. Both the subject matter and the method are therefore exotic rather than indigenous. For this reason it is easy to explain why Korea has no national literature of a distinctive type. Through all the long centuries education has meant the study of the Chinese character and the great classics which form the recognised curriculum of China. Most educated Koreans can tell you much more about the history of China than they can about their own national history; just as any English or American college boy can tell you more about Latin grammar than he can about the grammar of his own tongue.
With the few exceptions to be noted later, there are no public schools in Korea. It is only within the last decade that such a thing as an educational bureau has existed in Seoul. Even to-day the annual appropriation for this purpose amounts only to twenty thousand dollars, a large part of which is used in office expenses.
Generally speaking, education is a private affair and has so been considered from the first. Every village has its little room, always in a private house, where the boys sit on the floor with their large-print books of Chinese characters before them, and, as they sway back and forth with half-shut eyes, they drone out the sounds of the ideographs, not in unison, but each for himself. There is no such thing as a class, for no two of the boys are together, and to the unaccustomed ear the babel that results is almost stunning. But the system has its good as well as its bad points.
As the boys are not graded, the bright ones are not held back by the dull ones, nor are the dull ones forced ahead superficially in order to preserve the semblance of grade. Each one goes on his merits, and individuality is developed more than in our schools. Then, again, the deafening noise about him compels the boy to extreme concentration upon his own work. It is difficult for us to fancy that mentality would be possible under the circumstances, but the truth is that no one of those shouting boys hears any other than his own voice. The outside confusion, instead of shattering his mental processes, drives him in upon himself and probably enables him to memorise better than if he were alone. On the other hand, the Chinese method puts a veto upon all esprit de corps, and the boy loses a large part of the beneficial influence of comparison and competition.
The study of the ideograph is a consuming passion with the well-born Korean. We talk about burning the midnight oil, but the determined Korean student is said to tie a string about the beam overhead and attach the end to his top-knot in order to keep himself from falling over and going to sleep.
Pedagogy is neither a finished science nor a fine art in Korea. It merely consists in sitting before the boys with a stick and seeing that each one continues to shout, but there is plenty of evidence that, under cover of the noise, the urchins frequently talk with each other, as the choir boys in a Devonshire church are said to have done. During an antiphonal chant one boy changed the devotional words to : "John, ye owe me fower marbles." And the reply came back in sacred song: "You'm a liar; 't is but two."
However high may be the esteem in which letters are held, the ordinary teacher is a very humble member of so-called good society. He is treated politely by everyone, but he is looked upon very much as a pensioner. He receives no salary, but the boys bring him frequent presents, and he ekes out a living in some way. But there is a more dignified side to the question. Teaching seems to be looked upon as a thing that cannot be estimated in money value. You can buy the services of a cobbler or a mason, but knowledge is too fine a thing to be bartered. The same holds true of medicine. The physician takes no regular fee, but is the recipient of a gift proportionate to the wealth of the patient and the amount of service rendered. Nominally the service is a gift.
In all Korea there is nothing corresponding to our learned professions, where large fees are required and the service rendered is almost purely an intellectual one.
Throughout the history of this country the aim of the boy has been to master the classics and acquire a literary style which will carry him through the national examinations called kwaga.[1] These were of various kinds. The novitiates in the country, having attended preliminary examinations at the provincial capitals under the eye of government examiners, those few who were successful were sent up to the capital, where several kinds of tests still awaited them. Some of these were merely preparatory or continuative, while others gave access to the long-desired haven of political preferment.
Three or four times every year the capital would swarm with men from the eight provinces who had come to make the great attempt. Some of them were old hands who had tried time and again without success. Behind the Kyöng-bok Palace lie the deserted examination grounds, where crowds gathered and sat in groups under enormous umbrellas writing furiously on their essays. These were upon themes propounded by the master of ceremonies or often by the King himself. No care seemed to be taken to prevent communication between the different aspirants, and opportunities to bring in concealed manuscripts were abundant. All sorts of tricks were played, and the final award was only occasionally a just one. The element of luck entered very largely into the event, and there is only too much evidence that " pull " had still more to do than fortune. And yet, in every examination, out of a score of successful candidates two or three at least were honestly chosen. It was the narrow chance of becoming one of this small fraction that brought thousands of men up from the country.
When the paper was finished, the writer inscribed his name in the lower corner, and then slit the paper up a little way and folded the name in and pasted it. The examiners were not supposed to know the name of any writer until after the merits of his paper were passed upon. After writing his name, the candidate rolled his paper up and threw it like a lance over a barrier or fence made of spears stuck in the ground. When the names of the successful ones were posted the following morning, they were dressed up in gala attire, and paraded about the streets of the capital on horseback, and received the congratulations of their friends. If the fortunate man was a countryman, his village went en fete in his honour. This system of examinations was discarded ten years ago.
As education had to do so largely with the mastery of the Confucian classics, it went hand in hand with religion, and, though there was no genuine educational bureau, the Sung-gyungwan, or Confucian School, in Seoul might be called the centre of education for the country, just as the Royal Academy in England is the centre of English art. This Confucian School still exists as a sort of honorary institution, to which recognised scholars are appointed by the Emperor, but without emolument and without any duties to perform. It is not a school in any real sense, but a sort of scholastic club or college.
For the past ten years education has occupied a place of greater honour, and the Educational Department is coordinate with that of War, Finance, Law, Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. The small sum appropriated shows, however, its relative status. Education receives twenty thousand dollars, while an almost entirely useless army receives one million dollars. In Seoul a dozen or more primary schools have been established, with an average attendance of about fifty boys. These are of rather inferior grade, but they are much better than nothing. Arithmetic, geography and history are taught, besides the Chinese character and the Japanese vernacular. There is a small normal school, but it is in native hands only and its product is of little or no account. The so-called Middle School, which is housed in a substantial foreign building, can accommodate three hundred students, but the actual number is only about sixty. Two foreigners, American and Japanese, together with six Koreans, form the faculty of this school. Besides the higher Korean branches, chemistry, physics, botany, physiology, general history, geography, arithmetic, algebra and geometry are taught. The difficulty in this, as in all the other schools, is that the government gives no encouragement to the graduates. The student expects, and has a right to expect, that after graduating from a government school he should have a better chance to receive official position than ordinary, uneducated Koreans. But he finds that nepotism still holds sway, and that personal and family influence is a better door to preferment than education. These Korean youth have not yet come to recognise education as its own reward, and so the schools are almost empty.
Many of the Koreans are excellent students, especially in mathematics. They are quick to catch the point, and in every respect they compare favourably with boys of the same age in Western countries. There is no doubt whatever that they are the intellectual equals of the Japanese. They have lacked only the opportunity and the incentive.
There are a number of important foreign language schools in Seoul, - English, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. These are successfully carried on by gentlemen of these various nationalities. The government also employs a German musician to train a native band according to Western methods, and so successful has he been that foreigners hardly know which to admire more, - the skill and perseverance of the instructor or the natural talent displayed by the pupils.
In the various provincial capitals the government has established, in a desultory way, a number of schools of intermediate grade which are fairly successful, but until the public sentiment of the people at large rises to the fact that education is one of the main bulwarks of the state, no work of large dimensions can be done. The time will come.
Various missionary societies have established successful schools in this country, notably in Seoul and in Pyeng-yang, and these institutions rank the highest in the land. Many of their graduates hold positions under the government and command general respect.
There have been numerous attempts to establish private schools, but the enthusiasm seems to die out after, a few years, funds run low and the inevitable end comes. Some of these have been temporarily successful and have demonstrated some slight growth of public sentiment in the right direction.
One hopeful sign is the recent immense increase in the demand for reading matter throughout the land. Those who have in hand the sale of books say that the demand has increased fourfold during the past year.
One of the most powerful educative influences is the native press. This agency has been at work here for some ten years, and, while there have been many failures, yet it cannot be seriously questioned that the various daily, weekly and monthly papers have done an enormous amount of good. The Korean's idea of the daily press is still somewhat crude, and is illustrated by the fact that when some statement is denied he is very likely to say, " It must be true. The paper says so." It is to be hoped that the Korean press will always retain and deserve this reputation for veracity, which we fear had been partially lost in some lands we wot of. And in truth, so far as our observation goes, the native papers make an honest attempt to give straightforward and accurate news.
The matter of school text-books is still in a chaotic condition. Some people think they should all be printed in the pure native character, while the more conservative, together with the government, opine that the mixed Chinese and Korean script should be used. In this mixed script the verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs are expressed by Chinese characters, and all connectives, whether grammatical, syntactic or logical, are in pure Korean. The result is something like the rebus in which words are interspersed with pictures. The system is a clumsy one, but it may prove a useful stepping-stone from the pure Chinese to the pure Korean. Not until the Chinese is entirely discarded will the broadest general education be possible. This is as true of Japan as it is of Korea. Meanwhile all sorts of text-books are being published, without regard to consistency, and simply by private and individual initiative. Some of the best work in this line is being done by missionaries, who are the pioneers of education here as everywhere else. It is a hopeful sign that a number of foreigners here, among whom the missionaries largely predominate, have formed an Educational Association, and the important preliminary work of evolving a uniform system of nomenclature for all the sciences has been taken in hand. This is a fundamental necessity, and the results can only be good.
As for industrial and technical schools, nothing has yet been done in Korea. There have been sporadic attempts at agricultural, mining and engineering schools, but they have all failed, largely because such education has not been based upon a previous mastery of the common elementary branches. Much less has anything been attempted in the line of professional schools, if we except the theological training classes carried on by the various missions. A few Koreans are studying medicine under the foreign physicians, and there is a small law school, but, with the exception of a single Korean lady physician who was educated in America, there are no qualified native physicians.
A number of Koreans have graduated from American or English institutions and have returned to this country. As a rule these men have done good work here, and have demonstrated that the natural intellectual capacity of this people is equal to that of any other.