Get Test Bank For Educational Psychology Developing Learners, 7th Edition: Omrod Free All Chapters

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 34

Full download test bank at ebook testbankmall.

com

Test Bank for Educational Psychology Developing


Learners, 7th Edition : Omrod

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-developing-learners-7th-edition-omrod/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Download More ebooks from https://testbankmall.com


More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Test Bank for Educational Psychology 1st Edition

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-1st-edition/

Test Bank for Educational Psychology, 5th Edition :


Santrock

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-5th-edition-santrock/

Test Bank for Educational Psychology 14th by Woolfolk

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-14th-by-woolfolk/

Test Bank For Educational Psychology (2nd Edition) 2nd


Edition

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-2nd-edition-2nd-edition/
Test Bank for Educational Psychology, 7th Canadian
Edition, Anita Woolfolk, Philip H. Winne, Nancy E.
Perry

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-7th-canadian-edition-anita-woolfolk-philip-h-winne-
nancy-e-perry/

Educational Psychology Active Learning Edition Woolfolk


12th Edition Test Bank

https://testbankmall.com/product/educational-psychology-active-
learning-edition-woolfolk-12th-edition-test-bank/

Test Bank For Educational Psychology, Fifth Canadian


Edition: Anita E. Woolfolk

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-fifth-canadian-edition-anita-e-woolfolk/

Educational Psychology Active Learning Edition Woolfolk


12th Edition Solutions Manual

https://testbankmall.com/product/educational-psychology-active-
learning-edition-woolfolk-12th-edition-solutions-manual/

Test Bank for Educational Psychology: Reflection for


Action, 3rd Edition by O’Donnell, Reeve, Smith

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-educational-
psychology-reflection-for-action-3rd-edition-by-odonnell-reeve-
smith/
ne of several variables makes a pendulum swing fast or more slowly. 4)

5) Which one of the following is the best example of qualitative research? 5)


A) Interviewing middle school students about cliques at their school
B) Looking at school attendance records to identify potential school dropouts
C) Comparing average achievement test scores for students at three different
schools
D) Finding out how long it takes 6‐year‐olds to assemble challenging picture
puzzles

6) Which one of the following conclusions could be drawn from a descriptive 6)


study?
A) Concrete experiences help students understand abstract ideas better.
B) Students are more likely to appreciate classical music if they are exposed to it on a
regular basis.
C) Approximately 80% of the students at Southside High School are planning to go to college.
D) Students do better in school when they have warm, supportive relationships with their
teachers.

2
7) A study that tells us whether two variables are associated, but does not tell us if one variable 7)
causes or influences the other, is:
A) An experimental study without a control group
B) A correlational study
C) A descriptive study
D) An experimental study with one or more control groups

8) Which one of the following statements about educational research is true? 8)


A) Experimental research can be conducted only in the laboratory under somewhat
artificial conditions.
B) Correlational research is more difficult and time‐consuming than experimental
research.
C) Experimental research allows us to draw cause-and-effect conclusions.
D) Descriptive research gives us the most information for making decisions about
teaching
practice.

9) Experimental research requires which one of the following? 9)


A) Being able to predict two or more variables
B) Studying behavior in an actual classroom environment
C) Manipulating an aspect of the environment
D) Describing every variable in the study in considerable
detail

10) In general, experimental studies have which one of the following advantages over descriptive 10)
and
correlational studies?
A) Only experimental studies allow us to identify the possible factors influencing behavior.
B) Only experimental studies allow us to analyze data statistically and therefore arrive at
precise results.
C) Only experimental studies enable us to draw accurate conclusions.
D) Only experimental studies allow us to be specific about our teaching objectives.

11) A research study finds that students who weigh more do better in school. Which one of 11)
the
following is an appropriate deduction from this
information?
A) The school cafeteria should decrease the fat content of the food it serves
B) On average, students who eat more do better in school.
C) There is a correlation between weight and classroom performance.
D) Parents should feed their children as much as possible.

12) A researcher is interested in the possible effect of teacher-student ratios on studentsʹ learning. 12)
She finds 10 fifth‐grade classrooms with 30- 40 students per class and 10 others with 15- 25
students per class. She discovers that there is a correlation between class size and student
achievement. Which one of the following conclusions can we draw from this study?
A) Class size can help us predict school achievement.
B) Classes should be as small as is reasonably possible.
C) Classes should be as large as is reasonably possible.
D) The researcher has conducted a descriptive study.

13) Which one of the following conclusions can be drawn only from an experimental A)
study? Child
3
ren grow taller as they get older. 13)
B) Drugs administered during childbirth affect a childʹs early development.
C) Boys are more likely to show aggressive behavior than girls.
D) Childrenʹs muscular coordination improves as they grow older.

4
14) Imagine you are an educational researcher who wants to learn about the type of psychological 14)
atmosphere in which middle school students feel most comfortable and best able to
concentrate on their studies. You plan to look at a wide variety of factors that might contribute
to such an atmosphere—both physical factors (e.g., cleanliness and colorfulness of the school
building) and social factors (e.g., teacher-student relationships, general tolerance for diverse
behaviors and beliefs). You realize that students might identify important factors that you
yourself havenʹt even thought of. In this situation, your best choice would probably be:
A) A descriptive, quantitative study
B) A qualitative study
C) An experimental study with one treatment group and one control group
D) An experimental study with at least three treatment groups

15) Mr. Jacobs wants to find out whether a new program for teaching physical education 15)
promotes
studentsʹ physical development. He gives his students a number of tests before they begin
the
program (pretests) and the same tests again after they have been in the program for eight
months
(posttests). He finds that the studentsʹ posttest scores are higher than their pretest scores and
so
concludes that the program is effective. What is definitely wrong with Mr. Jacobsʹ conclusion?
A) There are other possible explanations for his results.
B) The posttests should always be different from the pretests.
C) Tests are not a good measure of physical development.
D) Eight months is too short a time for such a program to have a long‐term effect.

16) Dr. Kenney conducts a study in which she gives some students (chosen randomly) logically 16)
organized learning material; she gives other students the same material presented in a
haphazard,
unpredictable sequence. She finds that students with the organized material remember more.
This study can best be described as:
A) A correlational study B) A descriptive study
C) An experimental study D) A theoretical study

17) A French teacher reads an article about how visual imagery (i.e., ʺpicturingʺ things in oneʹs 17)
mind)
can be used to help students learn French vocabulary words. To find out if visual imagery is
more
effective than verbal repetition in learning vocabulary words, she develops two different study
guides for her students—one that tells students how to use visual imagery to learn French
words, and one that tells them just to repeat the words over and over again—and randomly
distributes the two study guides to her students. Over the next few weeks, the teacher finds
that students using visual imagery study guides achieve higher average quiz scores. She
concludes that the study guides describing the visual imagery technique help her students
learn their French vocabulary words. Is the teacherʹs conclusion valid?
A) No, because her experiment wasnʹt conducted in a laboratory.
B) Yes, because she was able to manipulate a variable in the environment.
C) Yes, because her students probably all had similar IQ
scores. D) No, because she used random assignment.

5
18) Mr. Jones, a physical education teacher, notices that some of his students are better basketball 18)
players than others. He wonders if having a basketball net at home fosters the development of
basketball skills. He gives his students a short survey that asks them if they have a basketball
net at home. Sure enough, Mr. Jones finds that the better basketball players are more likely to
have a net at home. He concludes that having a basketball net at home facilitates the
development of basketball skills. Is his conclusion appropriate?
A) No, because he didnʹt conduct an experimental
study. B) Yes, because he used random assignment.
C) No, because his study wasnʹt conducted in a scientific
laboratory. D) Yes, provided that his students responded truthfully
to the survey.

19) Dr. Lesgold finds that students in private schools perform better on achievement tests 19)
than do
students in public schools. He can conclude that:
A) The difference is probably due to differences in family income.
B) The difference is probably due to the fact that private schools are more likely to ʺteach to
the
test.ʺ
C) Studentsʹ achievement test scores can be predicted to some extent by the kind of school
they attend.
D) The difference is probably due to the fact that private schools have smaller classes.

20) Judging from the textbookʹs discussion of educational research, which one of the following 20)
would
be the best course of action for teachers to take?
A) Teachers should focus on research that relates to a single theoretical perspective (such
as
Piagetʹs theory or information processing theory).
B) Teachers should always go with their common sense and ʺgutʺ feelings about how to
teach, regardless of any research findings to the contrary.
C) Teachers shouldnʹt take research findings very seriously, because there are too many
ʺholesʺ
in what we know from research.
D) Teachers can use findings from educational research to guide their classroom
decision making.

21) In educational psychology, a theory can best be characterized as: 21)


A) An objective measure of how a person behaves in a particular situation
B) A statement that describes how a particular variable affects learning or
development
C) A description of the results of a particular research study
D) An explanation of how and why learning or development occurs

22) Which one of the following statements is most accurate regarding psychological theories? 22)
A) Theories are continually modified as new data emerge.
B) Theories will eventually be replaced by physiological (brain‐based) explanations of
behavior.
C) Theories have been proven to be true.
D) Any single theory can be used to explain virtually every aspect of human behavior.

6
23) As the textbook points out, assessment in the classroom can take a variety of forms. Three of 23)
the
following are examples of assessment in the classroom. Which one definitely does not, in
and of itself, illustrate assessment?
A) A teacher sees her students growing increasingly restless during a lengthy lecture
B) A teacher asks students to write an essay describing the pros and cons of a free enterprise
system.
C) A teacher decides to use a new approach to teach science this year.
D) A teacher observes that Lani rarely interacts with her classmates during recess.

7
24) Judging from the textbookʹs discussion of assessment, we can best think of classroom 24)
assessment practices as mechanisms and procedures that:
A) Give us hard, indisputable facts that we can use to assign grades
B) Enable us to form tentative hypotheses about what students know and can do
C) Allow us to draw conclusions about how studentsʹ motives and personality traits affect
their classroom performance
D) Are most likely to be accurate when they take the form of paper-pencil tests

25) Which one of the following is the best example of action research? 25)
A) A graduate student quietly observes adolescentsʹ behaviors in the school cafeteria. He
plans to
describe his observations in his masterʹs thesis.
B) A teacher gives her students a questionnaire that asks them to describe how often they
study
and what kinds of strategies they use when they study. She will use the results to
develop several lessons on effective study skills.
C) A college professor recruits sixth graders to come to his lab, where she assesses their
responses and reaction times in a variety of challenging problem‐solving tasks. Her
results
will help her refine the theory of problem solving she has been developing.
D) All of the school districts in a particular state are instructed to give the same mathematics
achievement test to their high school juniors. The average test scores for each district will be
presented in a report that will be released to the general public.

26) Which one of the following alternatives best illustrates action 26)
research?
A) A university professor and two of her graduate students conduct systematic observations
of
kindergartenʹs turn‐taking behaviors on the
playground.
B) A high school principal conducts a survey to find out what kinds of after‐school
activities students would most like to have available at their school.
C) After a first‐grade teacher completes a research project for her masterʹs thesis, she presents
her findings at a national teaching conference.
D) A middle school math teacher gives his students quizzes every Friday because he knows
that frequent quizzes will encourage students to study regularly.

27) As a beginning teacher, you may sometimes find yourself overwhelmed by the many decisions 27)
you
will have to make on a daily basis. The situation will improve over time, however, because:
A) Most students know that they should behave when they have an older and more
experienced
teacher
B) As you gain experience, you will be able to make some classroom decisions more quickly
and
easily
C) Children are typically more calm and cooperative during the winter months than they are
in
the fall
D) Fellow teachers are usually more helpful and supportive later in the school year, after
theyʹve
gotten to know you better.

8
28) Which one of the following is the best example of a teacherʹs pedagogical content knowledge? 28)
A) Knowing several effective ways to teach students about negative numbers
B) Making a reasonable guess as to why a particular student misbehaves just before lunch
time every day
C) Knowing what researchers have discovered about the effectiveness of discovery‐
learning approaches to instruction
D) Understanding why water expands when it freezes

9
29) Which one of the following high school teachers clearly has high self‐efficacy about his or 29)
her teaching?
A) Ms. Crosby insists that students complete their math homework using a particular
format
B) Mr. Driver is confident that he can get even seemingly ʺunmotivatedʺ students excited
about
science.
C) Mr. Abbot thinks that teaching is simply a matter of reading textbook passages aloud to
his
history class.
D) Ms. Bouthot has a hypothesis about why some students in her English class rarely turn
in
their assignments.

30) The textbook offers several suggestions for studying a textbook effectively. Which one of 30)
the
following is not necessarily recommended?
A) Draw inferences from the things you read.
B) Occasionally stop and check to make sure you understand.
C) Relate new ideas to things you already know.
D) Take detailed notes on the bookʹs content.

ESSAY. Write your answer in the space provided or on a separate sheet of paper.

31) A psychologist conducts a research study and finds that children who have been regularly abused at home
have more difficulty in school than nonabused children.
a. Is this a descriptive, correlational, or experimental study? Justify your choice.
b. Based on the study, the psychologist draws the conclusion that an abusive home life leads to poorer school
performance in school. Is this conclusion justified? Why or why not?

32) Dr. Carey gives a variety of achievement and aptitude tests to 1000 ten‐year‐old children from Southside
Elementary School and 1000 ten‐year‐old children from Northside Elementary School. On average, the
Southside students perform better on the tests than the Northside students. Dr. Carey concludes that
teachers at Southside are superior to those at Northside. Is this conclusion warranted? Why or why not?

10
Answer Key
Testname: UNTITLED1

1) B
2) D
3) C
4) B
5) A
6) C
7) B
8) C
9) C
10) A
11) C
12) A
13) B
14) B
15) A
16) C
17) B
18) A
19) C
20) D
21) D
22) A
23) C
24) B
25) B
26) B
27) B
28) A
29) B
30) D
31) Answers to the separate parts of the question are as follows:
a. It is a correlational study because it investigates the extent to which two variables, abuse and school
performance, are associated.
b. The conclusion is not justified. Hard‐and‐fast conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships cannot be
drawn from correlational studies.
32) Dr. Careyʹs conclusion is not warranted because he has failed to control for other possible explanations
for the differences in test scores (class sizes, educational levels of the studentsʹ parents, etc.).

11
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
promised us a tropical thunder-storm from those black clouds in the
south, and went forward to give ship’s orders, advising us to make all
haste below when the first drop should fall, as in an instant a sheet
of blinding rain would surround the decks, against which the double
awnings would be no more protection than so much gauze, and
through which one could not see the ship’s length. The clouds
remained stationary, however, and we missed the promised
sensation, although we waited for hours on deck, the ship moving
quietly through the soft, velvety air of the tropic’s blackest midnight,
and the lightning-flashes becoming fainter and fainter.

MAP OF JAVA.
II
IN “JAVA MAJOR”

In the earliest morning a clean white lighthouse on an islet was seen


ahead, and as the sun rose, bluish mountains came up from the sea,
grew in height, outlined themselves, and then stood out, detached
volcanic peaks of most lovely lines, against the purest, pale-blue sky;
soft clouds floated up and clung to the summits; the blue and green
at the water’s edge resolved itself into groves and lines of palms;
and over sea and sky and the wonderland before us was all the
dewy freshness of dawn in Eden. It looked very truly the “gem” and
the “pearl of the East,” this “Java Major” of the ancients, and the
Djawa of the native people, which has called forth more extravagant
praise and had more adjectives expended on it than any other one
island in the world. Yet this little continent is only 666 miles long and
from 56 to 135 miles wide, and on an area of 49,197 square miles
(nearly the same as that of the State of New York) supports a
population of 24,000,000, greater than that of all the other islands of
the Indian Ocean put together. With 1600 miles of coast-line, it has
few harbors, the north shore being swampy and flat, with shallows
extending far out, while the southern coast is steep and bold, and the
one harbor of Tjilatjap breaks the long line of surf where the Indian
Ocean beats against the southern cliffs. Fortunately, hurricanes and
typhoons are unknown in the waters around this “summer land of the
world,” and the seasons have but an even, regular change from wet
to dry in Java. From April to October the dry monsoon blows from
the southeast, and brings the best weather of the year—dry, hot
days and the coolest nights. From October to April the southwest or
wet monsoon blows. Then every day has its afternoon shower, the
air is heavy and stifling, all the tropic world is asteam and astew and
afloat, vegetation is magnificent, insect life triumphant, and the
mountains are hidden in nearly perpetual mist. There are heavy
thunderstorms at the turn of the monsoon, and the one we had
watched from the sea the Hallowe’en night before our arrival had
washed earth and air until the foliage glistened, the air fairly
sparkled, nature wore her most radiant smiles, and the tropics were
ideal.
It was more workaday and prosaic when the ship, steaming in
between long breakwaters, made fast to the stone quays of Tandjon
Priok, facing a long line of corrugated-iron warehouses, behind
which was the railway connecting the port with the city of Batavia.
The gradual silting up of Batavia harbor after an eruption of Mount
Salak in 1699, which first dammed and then sent torrents of mud and
sand down the Tjiliwong River, finally obliged commerce to remove
to this deep bay six miles farther east, where the colonials have
made a model modern harbor, at a cost of twenty-six and a half
million gulden, all paid from current revenues, without the island’s
ceasing to pay its regular tribute to the crown of Holland. The
customs officers at Tandjon Priok were courteous and lenient,
passing our tourist luggage with the briefest formality, and kindly
explaining how our steamer-chairs could be stored in the railway
rooms until our return to port. It is but nine miles from the Tandjon
Priok wharf to the main station in the heart of the original city of
Batavia—a stretch of swampy ground dotted and lined with palm-
groves and banana-patches, with tiny woven baskets of houses
perched on stilts clustered at the foot of tall cocoa-trees that are the
staff and source of life and of every economical blessing of native
existence. We leaped excitedly from one side of the little car to the
other, to see each more and more tropical picture; groups of bare
brown children frolicking in the road, and mothers with babies astride
of their hips, or swinging comfortably in a scarf knotted across one
shoulder, and every-day life going on under the palms most naturally,
although to our eyes it was so strange and theatrical.
At the railway-station we met the sadoe (dos-à-dos), a two-
wheeled cart, which is the common vehicle of hire of the country, and
is drawn by a tiny Timor or Sandalwood pony, with sometimes a
second pony attached outside of the shafts. The broad cushioned
seat over the axles will accommodate four persons, two sitting each
way. The driver faces front comfortably; but the passenger, with no
back to lean against but the driver’s, must hold to the canopy-frame
while he is switched about town backward in the footman’s place, for
one gulden or forty cents the hour.
Whether one comes to Java from India or China, there is hasty
change from the depreciated silver currency of all Asia to the
unaltered gold standard of Holland, and the sudden expensiveness
of the world is a sad surprise. The Netherlands unit of value, the
gulden (value, forty cents United States gold), is as often called a
florin, a rupee, or a dollar—the “Mexican dollar” or the equivalent
“British dollar” of the Straits Settlements, a coin which trade
necessities drove British conservatism to minting, which act robs the
Briton of the privilege of making further remarks upon “the almighty
dollar” of the United States, with its unchanging value of one
hundred cents gold. This confusion of coins, with prices quoted
indifferently in guldens, florins, rupees, and dollars, is further
increased by dividing the gulden into one hundred cents, like the
Ceylon rupee, so that, between these Dutch fractions, the true cents
of the United States dollar that one instinctively thinks of, and the
depreciated cents of the British or the battered Mexican dollar, one’s
brain begins to whirl when prices are quoted, or any evil day of
reckoning comes.
No Europeans live at Tandjon Priok, nor in the old city of Batavia,
which from the frightful mortality during two centuries was known as
“the graveyard of Europeans.” The banks and business houses, the
Chinese and Arab towns, are in the “old town”; but Europeans desert
that quarter before sundown, and betake themselves to the “new
town” suburbs, where every house is in a park of its own, and the
avenues are broad and straight, and all the distances are
magnificent. The city of Batavia, literally “fair meadows,”
grandiloquently “the queen of the East,” and without exaggeration
“the gridiron of the East,” dates from 1621, when the Dutch removed
from Bantam, where quarrels between Portuguese, Javanese, and
the East India Company had been disturbing trade for fifteen years,
and built Fort Jacatra at the mouth of a river off which a cluster of
islands sheltered a fine harbor. Its position in the midst of swamps
was unhealthy, and the mortality was so appalling as to seem
incredible. Dutch records tell of 87,000 soldiers and sailors dying in
the government hospital between 1714 and 1776, and of 1,119,375
dying at Batavia between 1730 and August, 1752—a period of
twenty-two years and eight months.[1] The deadly Java fever
occasioning this seemingly incredible mortality was worst between
the years 1733 and 1738, during which time 2000 of the Dutch East
India Company’s servants and free Christians died annually.
Staunton, who visited Batavia with Lord Macartney’s embassy in
1793, called it the “most unwholesome place in the universe,” and
“the pestilential climate” was considered a sufficient defense against
attack from any European power.
The people were long in learning that those who went to the higher
suburbs to sleep, and built houses of the most open construction to
admit of the fullest sweep of air, were free from the fever of the
walled town, surrounded by swamps, cut by stagnant canals, and
facing a harbor whose mud-banks were exposed at low tide. The city
walls were destroyed at the beginning of this century by the
energetic Marshal Daendels, who began building the new town. The
quaint old air-tight Dutch buildings were torn down, and streets were
widened; and there is now a great outspread town of red-roofed,
whitewashed houses, with no special features or picturesqueness to
make its street-scenes either distinctively Dutch or tropical. Modern
Batavia had 111,763 inhabitants on December 31, 1894, less than a
tenth of whom are Europeans, with 26,776 Chinese and 72,934
natives. While the eighteenth-century Stadhuis might have been
brought from Holland entire, a steam tramway starts from its door
and thence shrieks its way to the farthest suburb, the telephone
“hellos” from center to suburb, and modern inventions make tropical
living possible.
The Dutch do not welcome tourists, nor encourage one to visit
their paradise of the Indies. Too many travelers have come, seen,
and gone away to tell disagreeable truths about Dutch methods and
rule; to expose the source and means of the profitable returns of
twenty million dollars and more for each of so many years of the last
and the preceding century—all from islands whose whole area only
equals that of the State of New York. Although the tyrannic rule and
the “culture system,” or forced labor, are things of the dark past, the
Dutch brain is slow and suspicious, and the idea being fixed fast that
no stranger comes to Java on kindly or hospitable errands, the
colonial authorities must know within twenty-four hours why one
visits the Indies. They demand one’s name, age, religion, nationality,
place of nativity, and occupation, the name of the ship that brought
the suspect to Java, and the name of its captain—a dim threat
lurking in this latter query of holding the unlucky mariner responsible
should his importation prove an expense or embarrassment to the
island. Still another permit—a toelatings-kaart, or “admission
ticket”—must be obtained if one wishes to travel farther than
Buitenzorg, the cooler capital, forty miles away in the hills. The
tourist pure and simple, the sight-seer and pleasure traveler, is not
yet quite comprehended, and his passports usually accredit him as
traveling in the interior for “scientific purposes.” Guides or efficient
couriers in the real sense do not exist yet. The English-speaking
servant is rare and delusive, yet a necessity unless one speaks
Dutch or Low Malay. Of all the countries one may ever travel in,
none equals Java in the difficulty of being understood; and it is a
question, too, whether the Malays who do not know any English are
harder to get along with than the Dutch who know a little.
Thirty years ago Alfred Russel Wallace inveighed against the
unnecessary discomforts, annoyances, and expense of travel in
Java, and every tourist since has repeated his plaint. The philippics
of returned travelers furnish steady amusement for Singapore
residents; and no one brings back the same enthusiasm that
embarked with him. It is not the Java of the Javanese that these
returned ones berate so vehemently, but the Netherlands India, and
the state created and brought about by the merciless, cold-blooded,
rapacious Hollanders who came half-way round the world and down
to the equator, nine thousand miles away from their homes, to
acquire an empire and enslave a race, and who impose their
hampering customs and restrictions upon even alien visitors. Java
undoubtedly is “the very finest and most interesting tropical island in
the world,” and the Javanese the most gentle, attractive, and innately
refined people of the East, after the Japanese; but the Dutch in Java
“beat the Dutch” in Europe ten points to one, and there is nothing so
surprising and amazing, in all man’s proper study of mankind, as this
equatorial Hollander transplanted from the cold fens of Europe; nor
is anything so strange as the effect of a high temperature on Low-
Country temperament. The most rigid, conventional, narrow, thrifty,
prudish, and Protestant people in Europe bloom out in the forcing-
house of the tropics into strange laxity, and one does not know the
Hollanders until one sees them in this “summer land of the world,”
whither they threatened to emigrate in a body during the time of the
Spanish Inquisition.
III
BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST

When one has driven through the old town of Batavia and seen its
crowded bazaars and streets, and has followed the lines of bricked
canals, where small natives splash and swim, women beat the family
linen, and men go to and fro in tiny boats, all in strange travesty of
the solemn canals of the old country, he comes to the broader
avenues of the new town, lined with tall tamarind- and waringen-
trees, with plumes of palms, and pyramids of blazing Madagascar
flame-trees in blossom. He is driven into the long garden court of the
Hotel Nederlanden, and there beholds a spectacle of social life and
customs that nothing in all travel can equal for distinct shock and
sensation. We had seen some queer things in the streets,—women
lolling barefooted and in startling dishabille in splendid equipages,—
but concluded them to be servants or half-castes; but there in the
hotel was an undress parade that beggars description, and was as
astounding on the last as on the first day in the country. Woman’s
vanity and man’s conventional ideas evidently wilt at the line, and no
formalities pass the equator, when distinguished citizens and officials
can roam and lounge about hotel courts in pajamas and bath
slippers, and bare-ankled women, clad only in the native sarong, or
skirt, and a white dressing-jacket, go unconcernedly about their
affairs in streets and public places until afternoon. It is a dishabille
beyond all burlesque pantomime, and only shipwreck on a desert
island would seem sufficient excuse for women being seen in such
an ungraceful, unbecoming attire—an undress that reveals every
defect while concealing beauty, that no loveliness can overcome,
and that has neither color nor grace nor picturesqueness to
recommend it.
The hotel is a series of one-storied buildings surrounding the four
sides of a garden court, the projecting eaves giving a continuous
covered gallery that is the general corridor. The bedrooms open
directly upon this broad gallery, and the space in front of each room,
furnished with lounging-chairs, table, and reading-lamp, is the sitting-
room of each occupant by day. There is never any jealous hiding
behind curtains or screens. The whole hotel register is in evidence,
sitting or spread in reclining-chairs. Men in pajamas thrust their bare
feet out bravely, puffing clouds of rank Sumatra tobacco smoke as
they stared at the new arrivals; women rocked and stared as if we
were the unusual spectacle, and not they; and children sprawled on
the cement flooring, in only the most intimate undergarments of
civilized children. One turned his eyes from one undressed family
group only to encounter some more surprising dishabille; and
meanwhile servants were hanging whole mildewed wardrobes on
clothes-lines along this open hotel corridor, while others were ironing
their employers’ garments on this communal porch.
A JAVANESE YOUNG WOMAN.

We were sure we had gone to the wrong hotel; but the


Nederlanden was vouched for as the best, and when the bell
sounded, over one hundred guests came into the vaulted dining-
room and were seated at the one long table. The men wore proper
coats and clothes at this midday riz tavel (rice table), but the women
and children came as they were—sans gêne.
The Batavian day begins with coffee and toast, eggs and fruit, at
any time between six and nine o’clock; and the affairs of the day are
despatched before noon, when that sacred, solemn, solid feeding
function, the riz tavel, assembles all in shady, spacious dining-
rooms, free from the creaking and flapping of the punka, so
prominent everywhere else in the East. Rice is the staple of the
midday meal, and one is expected to fill the soup-plate before him
with boiled rice, and on that heap as much as he may select from
eight or ten dishes, a tray of curry condiments being also passed
with this great first course. Bits of fish, duck, chicken, beef, bird,
omelet, and onions rose upon my neighbors’ plates, and spoonfuls of
a thin curried mixture were poured over the rice, before the
conventional chutneys, spices, cocoanut, peppers, and almond went
to the conglomerate mountain resting upon the “rice table” below.
Beefsteak, a salad, and then fruit and coffee brought the midday
meal to a close. Squeamish folk, unseasoned tourists, and well-
starched Britons with small sense of humor complain of loss of
appetite at these hotel riz tavels; and those Britons further criticize
the way in which the Dutch fork, or most often the Dutch knife-blade,
is loaded, aimed, and shoveled with a long, straight stroke to the
Dutch interior; and they also criticize the way in which portions of
bird or chicken are managed, necessitating and explaining the
presence of the finger-bowl from the beginning of each meal. But we
forgot all that had gone before when the feast was closed with the
mangosteen—nature’s final and most perfect effort in fruit creation.
After the riz tavel every one slumbers—as one naturally must after
such a very “square” meal—until four o’clock, when a bath and tea
refresh the tropic soul, the world dresses in the full costume of
civilization, and the slatternly women of the earlier hours go forth in
the latest finery of good fortune, twenty-six days from Amsterdam,
for the afternoon driving and visiting, that continue to the nine-o’clock
dinner-hour. Batavian fashion does not take its airing in the jerky
sadoe, but in roomy “vis-à-vis” or barouches, comfortable “milords”
or giant victorias, that, being built to Dutch measures, would
comfortably accommodate three ordinary people to each seat, and
are drawn by gigantic Australian horses, or “Walers” (horses from
New South Wales), to match these turnouts of Brobdingnag.
Society is naturally narrow, provincial, colonial, conservative, and
insular, even to a degree beyond that known in Holland. The
governor-general, whose salary is twice that of the President of the
United States, lives in a palace at Buitenzorg, forty miles away in the
hills, with a second palace still higher up in the mountains, and
comes to the Batavia palace only on state occasions. This ruler of
twenty-four million souls, who rules as a viceroy instructed from The
Hague, with the aid of a secretary-general and a Council of the
Indies, has, in addition to his salary of a hundred thousand dollars,
an allowance of sixty thousand dollars a year for entertaining, and it
is expected that he will maintain a considerable state and splendor.
He has a standing army of thirty thousand, one third Europeans, of
various nationalities, raised by volunteer enlistment in Holland, who
are well paid, carefully looked after, and recruited by long stays at
Buitenzorg after short terms of service at the sea-ports. After the
Indian mutiny the Dutch were in great fear of an uprising of the
natives of Java, and placed less confidence in native troops. Only
Europeans can hold officers’ commissions; and while the native
soldiers are all Mohammedans, and great consideration is paid their
religious scruples, care is taken not to let the natives of any one
province or district compose a majority in any one regiment, and
these regiments frequently change posts. The colonial navy has
done great service to the world in suppressing piracy in the Java Sea
and around the archipelago, although steam navigation inevitably
brought an end to piracy and picturesque adventure. The little navy
helps maintain an admirable lighthouse service, and with such
convulsions as that of Krakatau always possible, and changes often
occurring in the bed of the shallow seas, its surveyors are continually
busied with making new charts.
The islands of Amboyna, Borneo, Celebes, and Sumatra are also
ruled by this one governor-general of the Netherlands Indies,
through residents; and the island of Java is divided into twenty-two
residencies or provinces, a resident, or local governor, ruling—or, as
“elder brother,” effectually advising—in the few provinces ostensibly
ruled by native princes. A resident receives ten thousand dollars a
year, with house provided and a liberal allowance made for the extra
incidental expenses of the position—for traveling, entertaining, and
acknowledging in degree the gifts of native princes. University
graduates are chosen for this colonial service, and take a further
course in the colonial institute at Haarlem, which includes, besides
the study of the Malay language, the economic botany of the Indies,
Dutch law, and Mohammedan justice, since, in their capacity as local
magistrates, they must make their decisions conform with the tenets
of the Koran, which is the general moral law, together with the
unwritten Javanese code. They are entitled to retire upon a pension
after twenty years of service—half the time demanded of those in the
civil service in Holland. All these residents are answerable to the
secretary of the colony, appointed by the crown, and much of
executive detail has to be submitted to the home government’s
approval. Naturally there is much friction between all these
functionaries, and etiquette is punctilious to a degree. A formal court
surrounds the governor-general, and is repeated in miniature at
every residency. The pensioned native sovereigns, princes, and
regents maintain all the forms, etiquette, and barbaric splendor of
their old court life, elaborated by European customs. The three
hundred Dutch officials condescend equally to the rich planters and
to the native princes; the planters hate and deride the officials; the
natives hate the Dutch of either class, and despise their own princes
who are subservient to the Dutch; and the wars and jealousies of
rank and race and caste, of white and brown, of native and imported
folk, flourish with tropical luxuriance.
Batavian life differs considerably from life in British India and all
the rest of Asia, where the British-built and conventionally ordered
places support the same formal social order of England unchanged,
save for a few luxuries and concessions incident to the climate. The
Dutchman does not waste his perspiration on tennis or golf or
cricket, or on any outdoor pastime more exciting than horse-racing.
He does not make well-ordered and expensive dinners his one
chosen form of hospitality. He dines late and dines elaborately, but
the more usual form of entertainment in Batavia is in evening
receptions or musicales, for which the spacious houses, with their
great white porticos, are well adapted. Batavian residents have each
a paradise park around their dwellings, and the white houses of
classic architecture, bowered in magnificent trees and palms, shrubs
and vines and blooming plants, are most attractive by day. At night,
when the great portico, which is drawing-room and living-room and
as often dining-room, is illuminated by many lamps, each lovely villa
glows like a fairyland in its dark setting. If the portico lamps are not
lighted, it is a sign of “not at home,” and mynheer and his family may
sit in undress at their ease. There are weekly concerts at the
Harmonie and Concordia clubs, where the groups around iron tables
might have been summoned by a magician from some continental
garden. There are such clubs in every town on the island, the
government subsidizing the opera and supporting military bands of
the first order; and they furnish society its center and common
meeting-place. One sees fine gowns and magnificent jewels; ladies
wear the heavy silks and velvets of an Amsterdam winter in these
tropical gardens, and men dance in black coats and broadcloth
uniforms. Society is brilliant, formal, and by lamplight impressive; but
when by daylight one meets the same fair beauties and bejeweled
matrons sockless, in sarongs and flapping slippers, the
disillusionment is complete.
The show-places of Batavia are easily seen in a day: the old town
hall, the Stadkirche, the lighthouse, the old warehouse, and the
walled gate of Peter Elberfeld’s house, with the spiked skull of that
half-caste rebel against Dutch rule pointing a more awful reminder
than the inscription in several languages to his “horrid memory.” The
pride of the city, and the most creditable thing on the island, is the
Museum of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences (“Bataviaasch
Genootschap von Kunsten en Wepenschappen”), known sufficiently
to the world of science and letters as “the Batavian Society,” of which
Sir Stamford Raffles was the first great inspirer and exploiter, after it
had dreamed along quietly in colonial isolation for a few years of the
last century. In his time were begun the excavations of the Hindu
temples and the archæological work which the Dutch government
and the Batavian Society have since carried on, and which have
helped place that association among the foremost learned societies
of the world. The museum is housed in a beautiful Greek temple of a
building whose white walls are shaded by magnificent trees, and
faces the broad Koenig’s Plein, the largest parade-ground in the
world, the Batavians say. The halls, surrounding a central court,
shelter a complete and wonderful exhibit of Javanese antiquities and
art works, of arms, weapons, implements, ornaments, costumes,
masks, basketry, textiles, musical instruments, models of boats and
houses, examples of fine old metal-work, and of all the industries of
these gifted people. It is a place of absorbing interest; but with no
labels and no key except the native janitor’s pantomime, one’s visit is
often filled with exasperation.
There is a treasure-chamber heaped with gold shields, helmets,
thrones, state umbrellas, boxes, salvers, betel and tobacco sets of
gold, with jeweled daggers and krises of finest blades, patterned with
curious veinings. Tributes and gifts from native sultans and princes
display the precious metals in other curious forms, and a fine large
coco-de-mer, the fabled twin nut of the Seychelles palm, that was
long supposed to grow in some unknown, mysterious isle of the sea-
gods, is throned on a golden base with all the honors due such a
talisman. The ruined temples and sites of abandoned cities in Middle
Java have yielded rich ornaments, necklaces, ear-rings, head-
dresses, seals, plates, and statuettes of gold and silver. A room is
filled with bronze weapons, bells, tripods, censers, images, and all
the appurtenances of Buddhist worship, characteristic examples of
the Greco-Buddhist art of India, which even more surprisingly
confronts one in these treasures from the jungles of the far-away
tropical island. A central hall is filled with bas-reliefs and statues from
these ruins of Buddhist and Brahmanic temples, in which the Greek
influence is quite as marked, and Egyptian and Assyrian suggestions
in the sculptures give one other ideas to puzzle over.
The society’s library is rich in exchanges, scientific and art
publications of all countries; and the row of reports of the
Smithsonian Institution, the Geological Survey and Bureau of
Ethnology, are as much a matter of pride to the American visitor as
the framed diplomas of institutes and international expositions are to
the Batavian curator. The council-room contains the state chairs of
native sovereigns, and portraits and souvenirs of the great explorers
and navigators who passed this way in the last century and in the
early years of this cycle. Captain Cook left stores of South Sea
curios on his way to and fro, and during this century the museum has
been the pet and pride of Dutch residents and officials, and the
subject of praise by all visitors.
The palace of the governor-general on this vast Koenig’s Plein is a
beautiful modern structure, but more interest attaches to the old
palace of the Waterloo Plein, the palys built by the great Marshal
Daendels, who, supplanted by the British after but three years’
energetic rule, withdrew to Europe.
IV
THE KAMPONGS

The Tjina, or China, and the Arab kampongs, are show-places to the
stranger in the curious features of life and civic government they
present. Each of these foreign kampongs, or villages, is under the
charge of a captain or commander, whom the Dutch authorities hold
responsible for the order and peace of their compatriots, since they
do not allow to these yellow colonials so-called “European
freedom”—an expression which constitutes a sufficient admission of
the existence of “Asiatic restraint.” Great wealth abides in both these
alien quarters, whose leading families have been there for
generations, and have absorbed all retail trade, and as commission
merchants, money-lenders, and middlemen have garnered great
profits and earned the hatred of Dutch and Javanese alike. The lean
and hooked-nosed followers of the prophet conquered the island in
the fifteenth century, and have built their messigits, or mosques, in
every province. The Batavian messigit is a cool little blue-and-white-
tiled building, with a row of inlaid wooden clogs and loose leather
shoes at the door; and turbaned heads within bow before the mihrab
that points northwestward to Mecca. Since the Mohammedan
conquest of 1475, the Javanese are Mohammedan if anything; but
they take their religion easily, and are so lukewarm in the faith of the
fire and sword that they would easily relapse to their former mild
Brahmanism if Islam’s power were released. The Dutch have always
prohibited the pilgrimages to Mecca, since those returning with the
green turban were viewed with reverence and accredited with
supernatural powers that made their influence a menace to Dutch
rule. Arab priests have always been enemies of the government and
foremost in inciting the people to rebellion against Dutch and native
rulers; but little active evangelical work seems to have been done by
Christian missionaries to counteract Mohammedanism, save at the
town of Depok, near Batavia.
In all the banks and business houses is found the lean-fingered
Chinese comprador, or accountant, and the rattling buttons of his
abacus, or counting-board, play the inevitable accompaniment to
financial transactions, as everywhere else east of Colombo. The
251,325 Chinese in Netherlands India present a curious study in the
possibilities of their race. Under the strong, tyrannical rule of the
Dutch they thrive, show ambition to adopt Western ways, and
approach more nearly to European standards than one could believe
possible. Chinese conservatism yields first in costume and social
manners; the pigtail shrinks to a mere symbolic wisp, and the well-to-
do Batavian Chinese dresses faultlessly after the London model,
wears spotless duck coat and trousers, patent-leather shoes, and, in
top or derby hat, sits complacent in a handsome victoria drawn by
imported horses, with liveried Javanese on the box. One meets
correctly gotten-up Celestial equestrians trotting around Waterloo
Plein or the alleys of Buitenzorg, each followed by an obsequious
groom, the thin remnant of the Manchu queue slipped inside the coat
being the only thing to suggest Chinese origin. The rich Chinese live
in beautiful villas, in gorgeously decorated houses built on ideal
tropical lines; and although having no political or social recognition in
the land, entertain no intention of returning to China. They load their
Malay wives with diamonds and jewels, and spend liberally for the
education of their children. The Dutch tax, judge, punish, and hold
them in the same regard as the natives, with whom they have
intermarried for three centuries, until there is a large mixed class of
these Paranaks in every part of the island. The native hatred of the
Chinese is an inheritance of those past centuries when the Dutch
farmed out the revenue to Chinese, who, being assigned so many
thousand acres of rice-land, and the forced labor of the people on
them, gradually extended their boundaries, and by increasing
exactions and secret levies oppressed the people with a tyranny and
rapacity the Dutch could not approach. In time the Chinese fomented
insurrection against the Dutch, and in 1740, joining with disaffected
natives, entrenched themselves in a suburban fort. The Dutch in
alarm gave the order, and over 20,000 Chinese then within the walls
were put to death, not an infant, a woman, nor an aged person being
spared. In fear of the wrath of the Emperor of China, elaborate
excuses were framed and sent to Peking. Sage old Keen-Lung
responded only by saying that the Dutch had served them right, that
any death was too good for Chinese who would desert the graves of
their ancestors.
After that incident they were restrained from all monopolies and
revenue farming, and restricted to their present humble political
state. An absolute exclusion act was passed in 1837, but was soon
revoked, and the Chinese hold financial supremacy over both Dutch
and natives, trade and commerce being hopelessly in the hands of
the skilful Chinese comprador. The Dutch vent their dislike by an
unmerciful taxation. They formerly assessed them according to the
length of their queues and for each long finger-nail. The Chinese are
mulcted on landing and leaving, for birth and death, for every
business venture and privilege; yet they prosper and remain, and
these Paranaks in a few more generations may attain the social and
political equality they seek. It all proves that under a strong,
tyrannical government the Chinese make good citizens, and can
easily put away the notions and superstitions that in China itself hold
countless millions in the bondage of a long-dead past. The recent
exposure of Chinese forgeries of Java bank-notes to the value of
three million pounds sterling has put the captains of Batavia and
Samarang kampongs in prison, and has led to wholesale arrests of
rich Chinese throughout the island.
Native life swarms in this land of the betel and banana, where
there seems to be more of inherent dream and calm than in other
lands of the lotus. The Javanese are the finer flowers of the Malay
race—a people possessed of a civilization, arts, and literature in that
golden period before the Mohammedan and European conquests.
They have gentle voices, gentle manners, fine and expressive
features, and are the one people of Asia besides the Japanese who
have real charm and attraction for the alien. They are more winning,
too, by contrast, after one has met the harsh, unlovely, and
unwashed people of China, or the equally unwashed, cringing Hindu.
They are a little people, and one feels the same indulgent, protective
sense as toward the Japanese. Their language is soft and musical
—“the Italian of the tropics”; their ideas are poetic; and their love of
flowers and perfumes, of music and the dance, of heroic plays and of
every emotional form of art, proves them as innately esthetic as their
distant cousins, the Japanese, in whom there is so large an
admixture of Malay stock. Their reverence for rank and age, and
their elaborate etiquette and punctilious courtesy to one another, are
as marked even in the common people as among the Japanese; but
their abject, crouching humility before their Dutch employers, and the
brutality of the latter to them, are a theme for sadder thinking, and
calculated to make the blood boil. When one actually sees the quiet,
inoffensive peddlers, who chiefly beseech with their eyes, furiously
kicked out of the hotel courtyard when mynheer does not choose to
buy, and native children actually lifted by an ear and hurled away
from the vantage-point on the curbstone which a pajamaed
Dutchman wishes for himself while some troops march by, one is
content not to see or know any more.
These friendly little barefoot people are of endless interest, and
their daily markets, or passers, are panoramas of life and color that
one longs to transplant entire. Life is so simple and primitive, too, in
the sunshine and warmth of the tropics. A bunch of bananas, a
basket of steamed rice, and a leaf full of betel preparations comprise
the necessaries and luxuries of daily living. With the rice may go
many peppers and curried messes of ground cocoanut, which one
sees made and offered for sale in small dabs laid on bits of banana-
leaf, the wrapping-paper of the tropics. Pinned with a cactus-thorn, a
bit of leaf makes a primitive bag, bowl, or cup, and a slip of it serves
as a sylvan spoon. All classes chew the betel- or areca-nut, bits of
which, wrapped in betel-leaf with lime, furnish cheer and stimulant,
dye the mouth, and keep the lips streaming with crimson juice. In
Canton and in all Cochin China, across the peninsula, and
throughout island and continental India, men and women have equal
delight in this peppery stimulant. The Javanese lays his quid of betel
tobacco between the lower lip and teeth, and so great seem to be
the solace and comfort of it that dozing venders and peddlers will
barely turn an eye and grunt responses to one’s eager “Brapa?”
(“How much?”)

You might also like