Introduction

The aim of this book, first published in 1936, was to give a complete conspectus of Chinese education at the time. It succeeds in this, describing entirely a period when China had abandoned an age-old system of literary education in favour of one derived from the West. However, the sponsors of the change, while admitting that the immediate new models were Western in origin, were able to point out that their prototypes were, in fact, in ancient China.