PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. — SECTION III. 4I 



it can hardly be said that any systematic attempt has been made 

 to deal with their requirements. The following significant passage 

 from the last report of the Superintendent-General of Education 

 in Cape Colony will serve to show how the problem has been faced 

 in the past. In explaining the three-fold classification of Public 

 Schools in that Colony, he says that the Education Ordinance of 

 1865 contemplated that 

 " at 'eligible stations among the agricultural population' there should be Third 



Class Schools with a teacher at a salary of /60 per annum The 



Third Class School was a small, rural, purely elementary school." 



And to-day the position is practically unaltered. 



" The Third Class School in country districts is still the small elementary 

 school, with one teacher and an enrolment of between 15 and 20 puplis." 



What is the case in Cape Colony is true of South Africa as a whole. 

 Wherever a few pupils could be gathered together a small single- 

 teacher school v/as opened, generally on the initiative of the parents, 

 who were naturally concerned for the future of their children; As 

 these small schools are intended to provide for the needs of only a 

 fev/ families, they disappear as soon as the children grow up, to be 

 re-established perhap^^ on a neighbouring farm-. The school buildings 

 are therefore, as a rule, of a very simple kind — indeed, often ill 

 adapted for the purpose, and not infrequently a disused outhouse 

 roughly transformed and provided with a few benches. The 

 accommodation for the teacher, who has to live on the farm, is also 

 far from satisfactory. Even with the aid of a Government grant, 

 the salary that can be offered to the teacher must be poor, and his 

 qualifications are generally on a par with his emoluments. Owing 

 to the inadequacy of his qualifications and the lack of opportunities 

 for improving them, he has little prospect of rising in his profession, 

 and it is therefore not surprising if he is somewhat half-hearted in 

 his work. In addition to all these disadvantages the few pupils who 

 attend such a school are at every stage of advancement and the 

 amount of attention which each receives can only be very limited. 

 Even with efficient and qualified teachers such schools could not do 

 more than provide instruction in the elem.ents of Reading, Writing 

 and Counting, together with a small amount of general knowledge. 

 With teachers who are too often teachers merely because they have 

 failed in other walks of life, the standard of the work is best left to 

 the imagination. 



While I emphasise the unsatisfactory nature of the existing 

 condition of things, I do not by any means forget that great credit 

 is due to the energy and zeal in the cause of education which has 

 been shown not only by the various Governments but by the 

 inhabitants and the local authorities. The Dutch Reformed Church 

 in particular deserves special praise for the keen interest which it 

 has always show^n in the schools and for the parental solicitude with 

 which it has watched over its people, impressing upon them the need 

 for education, and endeavouring to bring facilities within the reach of 

 the most isolated farms. The teachers, too, have many of them 

 shown great self-sacrifice and devotion in the midst of surroundings 

 and conditions of a depressing kind. Nor must we forget the 

 farmer, who as a rule does his best, and, if the conditions of his 



