2 32 AGRICULTURAL TRAINING OF NATIVES. 



very serious indeed — serious not only to the natives, but also to 

 the country as a whole. 



It cannot be said that in past years the subject of agricultural 

 ■education for natives has received much attention, and this has 

 been so not only because as in other parts of the world it is in com- 

 paratively recent times that men have come to recognise that 

 previous training and a study of the experience of others are essen- 

 tial to success in farming, but also because the native has from 

 time immemorial regarded labour in the fields as belonging to the 

 province of the women and of slaves, fighting and hunting being 

 considered more suitable occupations for men. And so, even 

 after the men began gradually to take their share in the cultivation 

 of the fields, and the plough took the place of the ruder implements 

 o{ labour, it has taken many years to convince even the most 

 intelligent of natives that he had anj'thing to learn which he did 

 not already know. For this reason an attempt, made at Lovedale 

 some twenty years ago, to teach agriculture to native students 

 was a failure, and, until within the last year or two, all that could 

 be done was to try and teach them habits of industry by requiring 

 of every resident pupil that two hours a day and three hours on 

 Saturdays should be spent in field labour, making and keeping of 

 roads, hoeing, etc. 



It was found, however, that such work, having no relation to their 

 class-room studies, and being of a kind at which apparently no 

 fresh knowledge was obtained, was seldom done with zeal or even 

 interest. During the last three years, however, an experiment 

 has been made whereby this outdoor work has been organised 

 with a view to increasing its educative value. Further, in order 

 that the traditional stigma attaching in the native mind to every 

 kind of manual labour might be removed, the masters in charge 

 of the literary studies, having acquired some technical knowledge 

 of such subjects as tree-raising and tree-planting, fencing, dam 

 construction and gardening, are now teaching these to the boys, 

 University men working with their coats off side by side with them 

 in the fields. 



The results have been satisfactory. The work that was formerly 

 done " grudgingly and of necessity " is growing in favour. Even 

 when European supervision is withdrawn the work has been found 

 interesting enough to be worth doing for its own sake. In other 

 words, the old attitude of disdain for all form of manual labour is 

 giving place — thanks to the example of the men who take charge 

 of it, and to the constructive character of the work itself — to an 

 increasing appreciation of its value. 



But that is not all. Last year the senior students gathered 

 from the trees in Lovedale seeds of the Halepensis and Pitch Pines, 

 Pepper, Deodar, Cypress, Eucalyptus and other trees, sowed them, 

 and raised over seven thousand seedlings from them. Other 

 seedlings of previous sowings were planted out, beside some hun- 

 dreds of cuttings from the basket willow and other trees and shrubs. 

 The avenues of trees thus planted out are fenced and cultivated by 

 the students, who have also constructed a dam for storing water 

 for their use in time of drought. 



