292 Repoht 8. a. a. Advanckment of Scip:xck. 



where, there must follow a great commercial impulse and the develop 

 meat of a distinctive national character. It will be well that the one 

 shall be on sound economic lines and the other be worth}' of a great 

 people. Already the country has been endeavouring to compete in the 

 great markets of the world. Its gold and diamonds have been good 

 enough, though these industries have fostered an unfortunate specula- 

 tive spirit which has stamped itself deeply on the country, but its 

 consignments of rotten fruit, undrinkable wine and unclean wool have 

 not hitherto commendefl themselves highly to the European dealers. 



This unsatisfactory order of things points to much more than bad 

 methods and commercial ignorance ; it points to the fact tliat South 

 African education with all its progress has not hitherto gone in the 

 direction of developing character, and it will be admitted that ulti- 

 mately the development of character is the goal of all education, for 

 ethciency is the outcome of character. Is it not too much to expect 

 from the future that it will attach due importance to instruction in 

 civic duties and responsibilities, so that we shall have a reliant farming 

 comnmnity, who will regard it as unworthy to be constant!}' whining 

 to the Government to give them wdiat they can get for themselves, a 

 legislative class sufficiently versed in social and economic science to be 

 able to legislate on sound and definite lines, commercial corporations 

 who combine a sense of honour with their operations, and a public 

 impressed with the dignity of labour and with the futility of specula- 

 tion as a source of ultimate national wealth i 



A system of education which can do this will necessarily be more 

 highly specialised than the one at presoit existing. How it is to 

 specialise experience alone can teach, for tlie country has its own 

 problems and must bring its own wits to bear in their solution. No 

 methods will necessarily avail because they have been found good 

 elsewhere. Most will ag^ee that our present system is far too aca- 

 demic for a country which has yet its own way to make. By the 

 processes of standard examinations a considerable portion of our youth 

 — boys and girls alike let it be noted — in their seventeenth or eigliteenth 

 year end a school course which has been identically the same for all, 

 regardless of difference of sex, mental capacity and future occupation. 

 In like manner the courses that lead to graduation give not much 

 more than a vague academic knowledge of no very high order. As 

 to the co-education in the mixed schools so usual in South Africa, 

 it may be an immediate financial necessity ; its wisdom, though it 

 seems to have the support of American experience, is at least not 

 proven. Nothing but the clearest scientific proof should satisfy us 

 that it is corr-ect to teach algebra to the motheis of the future and 

 leave them ignorant of household economy, of the laws of health, of 

 any acquaintance with the treatment of illness, especially when we bear 

 in mind that in South Afri(;a the doctor is often far away, and medical 

 science has recently made strong comments on the health of children in 

 the colonies. 



As for the boys, the immediate ami)ition of the South African 

 parent seems to be to make In's sons lawyers, i-egardless of one great 



