Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR

of a Catholic school for some years. Although the letter was not long, it contained a total of twenty-six errors in grammar, composition, characters, etc. foreigner, when the nature and the significance of the mistakes had been

explained, was to make the message

appear like a caricature of the dignified missive that it was intended to be. The effect upon an intelligent Chinese can well be imagined. One comment was limited to “‘pitiable.” A letter of this kind in the hands of a non-Christian is a poor argument against the old calumny that the Church is only for the illiterate. The point is that, while such a letter may be exceptionally poor, so far as foreigners are concerned, it could be much poorer without anyone being the wiser, and in the meantime the author would be free to perpetuate, as it were, his mistakes by passing them on to his pupils. To the Chinese, a particularly irritating circumstance of a case of this kind is the fact that when the wrong meaning of characters has been learned in childhood, it is with the utmost difficulty

that corrections are afterwards made.

Hence, from the standpoint both of discipline and learning, it is vital that

The cumulative effect upon a

the teachers employed in Catholic schools should be of known and tested proficiency.

Registered schools have the problem of the qualification of the teacher solved by the government which examines each teacher frequently. But if the Catholic Church is to wield an influence on ‘“‘intellectually awakening China,’ she must not rest content until her teachers rank far above the standard set. We must remember that even if every single Catholic in China were a well-educated person, the sphere of influence of the Church would still be relatively small. Her only hope is to turn out as many sturdy, well-informed, well-instructed characters as possible. Her only means of producing such a group, isa strong, thoroughly distinctive system of education, imparted to selected Catholic and nonCatholic students, by men of character and of outstanding scholarship. The Catholic University has the ambition to assist in this work of raising up leaders, not only by affording to a few students opportunities for higher development, but also by sending forth into the Catholic higher schools, men fully prepared and eminently able to teach and to rule.