42 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. — SECTION III. 



school are often far from satisfactory, it is because the difficulties 

 are too great to be solved by him single-handed. 



Under the most favourable circumstances the problem of rural 

 school supply must always be a difficult one, and the circumstances 

 which prevail in South Africa are of an exceptional kind. The 

 difficulty of the problem may perhaps be illustrated in this way. 

 If we take all the existing schools, public or State-aided, in South 

 Africa, and assume that each of them taps an area with a radius of 

 three miles, it will be found that less than twenty-five per cent. 

 of the total area of South Africa is provided with school facilities. 

 Of course, the proportion of the school-going population provided 

 with or actually attending schools is much greater, but as far as 

 can be gathered from the statistics available, I find that at the 

 present time there must be about 80,000, or more than thirty per 

 cent., of the white children of school age in South Africa who are not 

 attending school, as compared with seven per cent, in a country like 

 Scotland. As every town and village is provided with a school, 

 it is safe to assume that at least two-thirds of these are children 

 living in rural parts ; _ that is to say, twenty per cent, of the children 

 of school age, scattered over an immense area, are still without the 

 means of education. The figures will serve to show the sparseness 

 of the population and the enormous difficulty of providing country 

 children with an education of any kind, but in addition to the dif- 

 ficulty of that problem, there is the question of the adequacy and 

 the suitability of the education which is being provided. 



Difficult as it undoubtedly is, I do not think that the problem 

 need be insoluble even in South Africa. Let us analyse it a little 

 further and see where the difficulty really lies. It needs no elaborate 

 argument to show that, in dealing with the country, the more nearly 

 we can approach to the favourable conditions of populous centres 

 the more efficient the education provided will be, and the problem 

 therefore at once resolves itself into one of how far it is possible to 

 so centralise rural education as to do away with the variable single- 

 teacher school and replace it by a premanent school with two or 

 more teachers. Personally I should like every central school 

 to have at least three teachers, and if this can be done great advan- 

 tages must follow from the establishment of such schools. There is 

 a certain amount of stimulus, both mental and moral, inherent in 

 numbers. There is a definite public spirit engendered in a large 

 school, and there is the influence of one mind on another. Better 

 accommodation and equipment can also be provided. Teachers 

 with better qualifications can be procured, as they will be better 

 paid and can look forward to a successful future in their profession. 

 When there are several teachers, it is possible to classify the pupils 

 according to their attainments, with the consequence that greater 

 attention can be given to individuals. But above all there is the 

 possibility of modifying and extending the curriculum and of 

 introducing a course of training which will be better adapted to 

 the requirements of the pupils. 



Of the gain in educational efficiency, therefore, there can be little 

 doubt. The problem before us, as I have indicated, is whether the 

 ■effective radius of country schools can be increased, and if so, who 



