Excerpt from Report on Christian Education in China: Its Present Status and Problems Before presenting matter relating to existing constructive movements it appears necessary to give a brief historical resume, setting forth the beginnings and wide extension of educational missionary work, and the natural presentation and discussion of this subject in the general conferences of missionaries, which gradually led to the formation of the missionary Educational Association of China and of the General Board of Education, active membership in the first being confined to members of Protestant Christian Churches engaged or who have been engaged in-educational work or in making and editing school and text books, the second representing the Centenary Missionary Conference held in Shanghai, 1907. Historical Resume. The very nature of mission work binds the propagation of the Gospel to an educational development: first, the missionary is himself at school, in studying a new language, and incidentally is educating his teacher. Those to whom he has access immediately begin to widen their literary and intellectual horizon, and to enter a distinctly higher sphere of philosophy and ethics, and to find the deeper moral causes underlying the rise and fall of empires. In China, following John of Monte Corvino in the thirteenth century, we find the Jesuit Fathers in the sixteenth century introducing the knowledge of the elements of Western science and history of that era. Later, after the beginning of the Protestant Missions, Morrison's first work was the creation of a dictionary containing a Chinese and English working vocabulary, which became the stepping stone to the study of the Chinese language by foreigners and of the English language by Chinese. The next step was the founding of the Morrison Educational Society with its school near Canton, and the issuing of text-books in Chinese and English of an elementary character. Mission day and boarding schools followed the opening of mission stations in all parts of the Empire. Many of the day schools at first were very elementary and largely given to the teaching of children to read, especially the Bible and books of a primary order containing distinctively Christian ideas. The boarding schools served for somewhat higher training and brought the youth into more direct contact with the missionaries. In some cases these were carried on with the distinct aim of raising up a body of native helpers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.