178 AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT. 



after the pupils of the school, the hospital will be available for" 

 patients from the Eeserve, so that it is felt that those men and 

 women who are willing to enter for instruction will have oppor- 

 tunities of practical experience. As the scheme comes to develop 

 it is hoped to be able to open small native hospitals in suitable 

 centres in every Reserve, in direct touch with the nearest magis- 

 tracy by a main road, so that on the entry of a patient a message 

 may be sent at once to the nearest district surgeon, who will be 

 able to proceed by car with a minimum loss of time. Instead of, 

 as to-day, finding his patient perhaps in the last state of collapse, 

 under a rude shelter of leaves, with the flies at his wounds, the 

 doctor would be able to find him quiet in bed, with his wounds 

 washed and bandaged, and in a state where medical skill may have- 

 some hope of success. For the hundred and one simple matters 

 which require no great skill, but just common-sense treatment, it 

 is hoped these men and women who have been trained in our schools 

 will have sufficient knowledge to do all that is required. By 

 some such means as this we hope to be able to obviate much of the 

 suffering and loss of life that occurs in the Reserves. 



These then are some of the directions in which the energy of 

 the Native, awakened and instructed, might be employed. As I 

 have said, the motive should be first the good of the Native. It 

 is a fair demand to make of those who have had the advantage of 

 civilisation. It is also, from the point of view of that civilisation, 

 only common-sense to see to it that the great majority of inferior 

 people shall not be left either to stagnate in inefficiency, or on the 

 other hand to get for themselves, in perhaps a dangerous way, 

 that which they are bound eventually to have. There is, more- 

 over, the comforting assurance that this timely assistance will both 

 redound to the credit, and result in the profit, of those who proffer 

 it. With a better informed, more active, more contented com- 

 munity there will be more steady, more efficient, more willing 

 work. With greater producing power there will be greater earn- 

 ing power, and consequently greater spending power. 



But, it will be asked, how is all this to be brought about? 

 Our Government has sought a way. It has decided that there is 

 room, over and above the splendid work that is being done by so 

 many of the missions, for a simple form of education, or develop- 

 ment, starting from the immediate needs of the people. It has 

 brought into being a system that takes as its base the native home 

 and its requirements. Whatever may be said in favour of the 

 institutional system of education, it is clear that in its essence it 

 relies largely on a traditional system which was evolved for a dif- 

 ferent people, in a different climate, and for a different set of con- 

 ditions. Every effort is made to adapt that system to local needs, 

 nowhere with more realisation of its inherent unsuitability than 

 here in Natal. But we are making our Rhodesian experiment in 

 the belief that if we start from the home as our base, and from 

 there work outward and upward throughout the people, we may 

 hope for an uplift that will be more general, and because of its- 

 simplicity more helpful to the whole community. 



