ADDRESS BY THEODORE REUNBRT. Vll. 



It will probably come as a shock to many to learn that there 

 are not less than 50,000 white children of school-going age in South 

 Africa who are receiving no instruction at all. Until the full 

 official figures of the last general census of 1904 are published in 

 detail, it is not easy to frame even an approximate estimate with any 

 approach to finality. But there is evidence enough to prove that 

 the above appalling number of uncared-for children of European 

 descent — I am not considering tlie native or coloured population at 

 all for the present — is rather under than over-estimated. That 

 this is so may be shown in various ways. 



The preliminary census returns of British South Africa give 

 the total number of the European or white population in the five 

 Colonies, on the 17th April, 1904, as 1,133,756. It is generally 

 assumed that in a properly educated country 1 in 6 of the popu- 

 lation should be at school. Thus, in England and Wales, with a 

 population in 1904 of 33,763,434, there were 5,967,868 children 

 on the registers of primary day schools, or a proportion of 1 in 5.7. 

 In Scotland, in the same year, out of a population of 4,627,656, 

 there were on the registers 785,473, or 1 in 5.9. In Ireland, there 

 were 726,552 pupils on the rolls, out of a population of 4,398,462, 

 or 1 in 6. In specially well-educated countries, like Switzerland, for 

 instance, the proportion is as high as 1 in 5. Now, as there are 

 about 1,200,000 white people in the five South African Colonies, if 

 we apply the rule of 1 in 6, it is evident there should be 200,000 

 children at school. But what are the facts'? 



In June, 1904, there were only 115,000 pupils enrolled in all 

 the Government or Government-aided schools for white children in 

 South Africa. So that, making the most liberal allowance for 

 children receiving private tuition, and allowing further for the 

 abnormal proportion of unmarried men in districts like the Wit- 

 watersrand, the conclusion can hardly be avoided that at least 

 50,000 white children of school-going age are receiving no schooling 

 at all. Startling as these figures are to those who may have been 

 under the pleasant impression that at least primary education had 

 been successfully dealt with by the State, they are amply corrobo- 

 rated by the recent utterances of the official heads of the several 

 education departments. 



In a papar read before the Educational Section of the British 

 Association in Johannesburg, Mr. H. Warre Cornish, late Acting- 

 Director of Education in the Transvaal, stated that of the 300,000 

 white inhabitants of this Colony at the time of the last census, 

 145,000 were living in towns and dorps, and that in the rural 

 areas embracing the other half of the population about one-fifth 

 were of school-going age, that is, 30,000 children in the rural 

 districts alone, of whom not more than 10,000 were enrolled in 

 Government schools of the country area, while not more than 5,000 

 were estimated by Mr. Cornish as receiving education of some kind 



