PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 385, 



Probably in no other country of the world is there 

 the same urgent necessity for training the white pupil to " do " 

 — to act for himself. There has been in the past too much of the 

 spirit, let the Kaffir do it, while the white man looks on. No 

 longer may the white man be a stoep lounger — whose chief 

 occupations are smoking and coffee drinking. To live, to get 

 the wherewithal for the necessities and comforts of life, he must 

 get his coat off and work himself. Again, the question of the 

 unemployed here is not so nu:ch the lack of employment, as that 

 class is largely composed of unemployables. I noticed a crowd 

 of the so-cailed unemployed in Johannesburg and they were 

 mostly the biggest " toughs " to be found anywhere. Hence it 

 rests in a great measure with educationalists and teachers to 

 prevent by sound educational methods the further supply of 

 useless persons. 



Practical education is not new, it is merely a revival of the 

 spirit of training youths in the Middle Ages, or in the days of 

 chivalry when a lad was trained in all " that doth become a 

 man " and a maiden in all that pertained to housewifery. Many 

 teachers complain of the want of time for practical work. This 

 is mainly due to obsolete methods of teaching and badly 

 balanced time tables. 



In rural schools I take it that the pupils require only sufficient 

 arithmetic for their accounts — the results of purchases and 

 sales, ability to correspond in English and Dutch — proficiency in 

 reading to give them a taste for reading to acquire knowledge 

 on their own account, say from the Agricultural Journal, the 

 gardening columns of the newspaper, books on cattle, poultry, 

 etc., and ability to read their Bible and hymn books for Divine 

 worship both in Dutch and English. It is lamentable the amount 

 of time wasted over useless arithmetic, and acquiring a glib 

 facility for reading aloud, with a parrot-like lack of intelligence. 

 Inspectors are greatly to blame for encouraging by their 

 methods of examination this waste of time. 



In language teaching much of the formal grammar has been 

 done away with, and the children from the early stages are 

 encouraged to express their ideas both in speech 

 and in writing — this sometimes has its humorous side — 

 with the result that it is no great effort for the older 

 pupils to write a short narrative or a business or friendly letter.. 



The rural school has unlimited possibilities for adding to the 

 welfare of our colonies. Here should be laid the foundation of 

 a sound agricultural knowledge — in everything pertaining to the 

 land. In school the pupil should learn the " why," the reason 

 for many things done at home. With so much land and such 

 a climate, imported foodstuffs, such as poultry, eggs, butter, 

 cheese, flour, potatoes, preserved fruits, etc., should sink to a 

 minimum. The schoolmaster should keep the best breed of 

 payable fowls — a breed that is a good table bird and a good 

 layer. A small incubator and foster mother should be part of 

 the school equipment, which would enable the pupils to compare 

 natural and artificial hatching and demonstrate the profitable 

 way of rearing fowls. Fertile eggs of a good strain can be 

 obtained from the experimental farms. Should he need to keep 



