ADL>KESS BY THEODORE EEUNERT. Xlll. 



Mechanical Engineers by Mr. James M. Dodge to illustrate his 

 address on the " Money Value of Technical Training," in 

 December, 1903), and then to j^ublish this information as widely 

 as possible. Secondly, we should organise a campaign in favour 

 of compulsory education, and try to get the minimum age at which 

 children are allow^ed to leave school gradually raised to 14 or 15, 

 or a corresponding standard. At present only about one in five 

 of all the children in our schools are above Standard IV. ; the 

 remainder leave school at such an earl}- age that the}' have barely 

 learned to read and write, which accounts for the large number 

 of illiterate persons returned by the census. 



Educational questions are too often discussed as if they only 

 concerned the children and the general public ; but surely there is 

 another class with whose welfare they are even more intimately and 

 permanently connected. I mean, of course, the teachers. There 

 are some 7,000 teachers in South Africa; there ought to be 10,000. 

 I may add, in passing, that I hope to live to see this number enrolled 

 not only on the books of the Education Departments, but in the 

 membership list of your Association ; or, what is more important, 

 in some real way associated with us in our work. At the outset, 

 however, it is necessary to draw a distinction between those who are 

 teachers by vocation and those who have merely drifted into teach- 

 ing. We must remind the latter class that competition is keen in 

 every walk of life, and that to deserve promotion they must be con- 

 stantly working to keep themselves abreast of the times, and by 

 reading, by study, by throwing their whole heart into their work, 

 they must convince us that it is really their life-work, and then, I am 

 sure, they will find the world not slow to recognise their merit. For, 

 after all, what is there in life that an educated man looks back upon 

 with more gratitude than to the first teachers who lighted the lamp 

 of knowledge and attuned the youthful mind to sympathy with 

 elevated thoughts ? And when it happens that the debt we feel so 

 keenly can no longer be repaid to those we owe it to, the most natural 

 thing is to desire to pay it to the younger generation of teachers, 

 whom we, in turn, can help by our sympathy, and in other more 

 practical ways. 



It is gratifying to all friends of education to know what gooid 

 work the normal schools are doing in attracting to the teaching pro- 

 fession a number of young men and young women of South African 

 birth, who in the absence of such facilities would probably have 

 chosen some other career. No effort should be spared to render that 

 profession, which we all theoretically admit to be one of the most 

 honourable and arduous, more attractive still : and I believe the most 

 effective way to do this is not so much in the direction of an increased 

 scale of pay — though, no doubt, that, too, may be needed 

 — as to enhance the dignity of the profession by providing 

 for teachers some prizes commensurate with the prizes which 

 allure the best brains into other professions. Why should 

 there not be a few head-masterships in South Africa equal in 



