PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 



Bv T. W. LOWDEN. 



At no time in the history of South Africa has the schoohnaster" 

 been so much abroad as he is to-day, and people are recognising 

 that Education is of paramount importance in adding to the 

 welfare of the country, more than they ever did before; so 

 much so that in all the South African Colonies the education 

 given is decidedly democratic rather than class education. The 

 day of the ex-soldier, ex-sailor, and derelicts acting as private 

 tutors on a farm or as farm-schoolmasters, is over. The people 

 are crying for the best qualified men and w^omen they can get 

 for the salary offered, whether it be for a town school or a farm 

 school. For the purpose of this brief paper let us try to draw 

 the line of demarcation between education and instruction — 

 vis. : education, anything which tends towards the training and 

 building up of the mental faculties — instruction, the mere 

 imparting of information, which may not be educative inas- 

 much as it may not be assimilated and incorporated mentally, 

 or have tended to develop resourcefulness, thinking-power and 

 character. 



With the demand for more education has come the demand 

 for better and truer educational methods. The failure of the 

 superficial products of the early School Board system in England 

 set the world cogitating how to produce a reflective, persevering, 

 reliable, self-reliant pupil who would have the desire to go on 

 acquiring knowledge after his school-life was over and be of 

 some use to an employer. 



One regrets to find there are still some among us who cling 

 to the three R's only for primary schools. Such a monotonous 

 school course gave the pupil a distaste for figures, letter writing 

 and general reading. The bulk of such pupils avoided as much 

 as possible giving any sign of education in the three R's. 



Gradually the principles advocated by Frobel for the Kinder- 

 garten have been extended by the more intelligent educationalists 

 to all phases of school-life, and not merely left to the infant 

 room. Hence we find the best systems of education give a 

 large portion of the time to practical education, or as it is 

 some times termed constructive education. In a democratic 

 system of education, where it is possible for a free scholar to 

 pass from the lowest class in a primary, to the secondary school 

 and thence to the university, there is every chance for the 

 practical education being continuous. Some may be wondering 

 what is meant by practical education : briefly it is " learning by 

 doing." 



In South Africa, owing to the children beginning school 

 life older than they do in Europe, there is not the 

 opportunity for the elaborate kindergarten as practised in 

 Europe, of which much, I regret to say, is a caricature of 

 Frobel's principles. 



