Teaching Chinese by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 27, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 42.

Teaching Chinese.

By Editor

An appeal comes to us from the Helen F. Clark Mission, of New York City, of which the Rev. David James Burrell is president, pleading that in the teaching of Chinese, women, and especially young women, should not be employed; and we agree with her. She says:

“I have seen lives wrecked both of the Chinese and American women teachers, homes broken, and have heard the piteous cries of nameless, deserted babes—the results, the direct results of unholy alliances between teachers and pupils of the Chinese Sunday-schools. Believe me, Christian men and women; I am telling you the naked truth. I know personally of what I speak.”

I would say that in our own Chinese missions we have not and do not follow the method of using young girls for the teaching of the Chinese. Where women are engaged in it at all they are married and older women who are wise and trusted teachers. Foreigners are prone to regard American women as they do their own. We sincerely hope that the great public example which was before the country a few months ago, and the appeal of Mrs. Clark and others, will have a permanent effect.