Native Higher Education. 491 



influence that such a College will exercise on native education 

 generally, and the opportunity thus afforded of arriving at some 

 common basis of educational policy for the whole of South Africa. 

 How much this is to be desired all students of the subject can 

 testify. For while in most countries it is accepted as a guiding 

 principle that education should be framed to meet the social and 

 economic requirements of the people for whom it is intended, native 

 education in some, at least, of the older South African Colonies 

 has not been so dealt with. The same course of instruction, the same 

 system of examination, is devised for both black and white. No 

 account is taken of the difference of language, of environment, of 

 future position in the country. With delightful frankness the Cape 

 Education Department in an article appearing in the Education 

 Gazette of April ist last, alludes to its policy in the following terms : 

 " The native population is the problem of Africa; and the crux of 

 that problem, if it is rightly considered, is the question of the proper 

 educational policy to pursue. In Cape Colony this question was 

 never formally dealt with. The early missionaries, who of course 

 were not educationists, felt first the need for teaching reading 

 to the children of their converts, and having begun this added in 

 time a little of the other R's. As for the State it may be said to have 

 simply refrained from interfering. As a consequence of this policy 

 of drift two general principles came to regulate State action in this 

 matter ; first, that all native schools should be under the manage- 

 ment of one of the missionary societies ; second, that the instruction 

 given should follow the lines of the elementary course prescribed 

 for European schools, but that no assistance should be given in aid 

 of work higher than the fourth standard, except in the case of candi- 

 dates preparing for the teaching profession." 



While it is true to speak of the College as a natural develop- 

 ment of the work carried on by existing institutions, in another 

 sense it is a new venture, an experiment which must be conducted 

 under the most favourable circumstances and by men unfettered by 

 tradition. To this end the co-operation of all the States is desirable, 

 who should nominate a Governing Council independent of the 

 control of their respective Education Departments. 



All courses of higher work must at this stage in the development 

 of Native education be tentative and so framed as to be capable of 

 reconstruction again and again if necessary. At the same time some 

 who have closely studied the subject, and have had unique oppor- 

 tunities of making experiments in it, have arrived at a few guiding 

 principles which may be found to be of general application to all 

 native education. They are briefly stated here in the hope of their 

 being tested in a wider field of educational thought than they have 

 yet entered ; and with more confidence than would otherwise be 

 justifiable, since they have been thought out independently, and 

 applied with practical results in the native school system of Central 

 Africa, which affords instruction to over sixty thousand children. 



■ The first of these is, that a curriculum of native higher 

 education should be framed, not only to meet the present needs of 



