78 HYGIENE AND SCHOOL LIFE. 



conception of the merest rudiments of personal or domestic 

 hygiene : one who is not aware that her child is half starved 

 through improper feeding, or cannot realise that he is suffer- 

 ing from some physical weakness that is stultifying his mental 

 faculties. The next point that suggests itself is : why does not 

 the mother know these things ? Why was she not instructed 

 in them by her mother, by her school teacher, or somebody 

 who was responsible for the rational and natural training of 

 her childhood to prepare her for the duties and responsibilities 

 of life ? Or, maybe, they find the horrors of a home cursed 

 by indolent or dissolute parents, or perhaps the sad spectacle 

 of bona fide, honourable poverty, or of sickness presents itself. 

 Which of these or other causes it may be, the result is the 

 same, and the difference in the two children is accounted for. 



Now, putting aside all excuses, let us honestly look around 

 for a remedy. We are loth but compelled to admit that little 

 can be done at the home to secure immediate relief for the 

 child of parents who know no better, but we must and do 

 realise that much can be done at school by sympathetic and 

 conscientious teachers, especially if they are conversant with 

 even the rudiments of physiology and of human weakness. 

 By insisting upon the observance of the rules of hygiene, simple 

 though they may be, the child will be taught to think and to 

 acquire habits of personal discipline that are necessary to his 

 physical, moral and mental development. 



Here, in Africa, under our new Union Government, we are 

 to-day at last brought face to face with the subject of school 

 hygiene, a subject that has, for local reasons, been neglected in 

 the past. According to statements made at the late Cape 

 Division School Board in May last, there are about 1,100 boys 

 and girls of European descent, in the Cape Peninsula alone, 

 between the ages of 6 and 13, running wild and aimlessly 

 about, without even rudimentary education. Under the bless- 

 ings of our new government and the adoption of compulsory 

 education this is now a thing of the past. Now, those who 

 have travelled and seen the effects of advanced education upon 

 the economical and political interests of modern nations, insist 

 that national education must be something more than a mere 

 rudimentary or primary course, and that even the elements of 

 any educational system must be so arranged as to form a 

 curriculum anticipating the study of science to some extent, or 

 in some form, as being a condition precedent to the success 

 of the humblest scholar. 



Now, in making this statement, I do not wish to be mis- 

 imderstood. I am not advocating an advanced scientific educa- 

 tion for every boy and girl, but simply what I have written, 

 and, if substantiation is necessary, I would ask why, in so many 

 industries, especially in those depending upon chemical science, 

 our German cousins have outdistanced us in the past quarter 

 of a century, to the serious displacement of our work-people. 

 Their success, I submit, is not altogether attributable to 

 advanced scientific knowledge and research, or to the lament- 

 able attitude assumed by the leaders of labour organisations 

 in England, but rather to the natural intelligence and industry 



