Septemuer 28, 1 905 J 



NA TURE 



549 



One of the urgent problems of the higher education in 

 our day is how to secure an adequate measure of literary 

 culture to those students whose primary concern is with 

 scientific and technical pursuits. Some of the younger 

 English Universities, which give degrees in Science, con- 

 tribute to this purpose by providing certain options in the 

 Science curriculum ; that is, a given number of scientific 

 subjects being prescribed for study with a view to the 

 degree of B.Sc, the candidate is allowed to substitute for 

 one of these a subject taken from the Arts curriculum, 

 such, for instance, as the Theory and Practice of Educa- 

 tion. This is the case in the University of Wales and in 

 the University of Birmingham ; and there are indications, 

 1 believe, that this e.xample will be followed elsewhere. 

 (Considering how hard and sustained is the work exacted 

 from students of science, pure or applied, it seems im- 

 portant that the subjects from which they are to derive 

 their literary culture should be presented to them, not in 

 ;i dryasdust fashion, not chiefly as subjects of examin- 

 ation, but rather as sources of recreation and changes of 

 mental activity. From this point of view, for British 

 students of science the best literature of the English 

 language offers unequalled advantages. It may be 

 mentioned that the Board of Education in London is 

 giving particular attention to the place which English 

 literature should hold in the examination of students at 

 the Training Colleges, and has under consideration care- 

 fully planned courses of study, in which portions of the 

 best English writers of prose and of verse are prescribed 

 to be read in connection with corresponding periods of 

 English history, it being understood that the study of the 

 literature shall be directed, not to philological or gram- 

 matical detail, but to the substance and meaning of the 

 books, and to the leading characteristics of each writer's 

 style. If, on the other hand, the student is to derive his 

 literary culture, whollv or in part, from a foreign literature, 

 ancient or modern, then it will be most desirable that, 

 before leaving school, he should have surmounted the 

 initial difficulties of grammar, and should have learned to 

 read the foreign language with tolerable ease. 



When we look at this problem — how to combine the 

 scientific and the literary elements of culture — in the light 

 of existing or prospective conditions in South Africa, it 

 appears natural to suppose that, in a teaching University, 

 the Faculty of Education would be that with which literary 

 studies would be more particularly connected. And if 

 students of practical sciences, such as Engineering and 

 -Agriculture, were brought together at the same centre 

 where the Faculty of Education had its seat, then it should 

 not be difficult, without unduly trenching on the time 

 demanded by scientific or technical studies, to provide such 

 students with facilities for some measure of good literary 

 training. 



A further subject is necessarily suggested by that with 

 which we have been dealing — I mean the relation of 

 University to Secondary Education ; but on that I can 

 only touch very briefly. Before University Education can 

 be widely efficient, it is indispensable that .Secondary 

 Education should be fairly well developed and organised. 

 Secondary Education should be intelligent — liberal in 

 spirit — not too much trammelled by the somewhat 

 mechanical uniformity apt to result from working for 

 external examinations, but sufficiently elastic to allow for 

 different aptitudes in the pupils, and to afford scope for 

 the free initiative of able teachers. It is a gain for the 

 continuity of education when a school-leaving examination 

 can be accepted as giving admission to the University. 

 Such an examination must be conducted under the 

 authority of the University ; but there is much to be said 

 in favour of the view that, under proper safeguards, the 

 school-teachers should have a part in the examination ; 

 always provided that the ultimate control, and the decision 

 in all cases of doubt, shall rest with the University. A 

 system of school-leaving examinations for this country was 

 earnestly advocated, I believe, by Mr. P. k. Barnett, who 

 has achieved such excellent work for the cause of educa- 

 tion in Natal. To discuss the advantages or difficulties 

 of such a proposal, as they at present affect South Africa, 

 would demand knowledge which I do not possess ; and 

 I must content myself with the expression of a 



NO. 1874, VOL. 72] 



hope that in days to come — perhaps in a not distant 

 future — it may be found practicable to form such a link 

 between the highest education and the grade next 

 below it. 



But the limit of time proper for a Chairman's address 

 has now almost been reached. I thank you sincerely for 

 the kindness and patience with which you have heard me. 

 In conclusion, I would only say how entirely I share a 

 conviction which has been expressed by one to whose 

 ability, to whose generous enthusiasm and unflagging 

 efforts the cause of education in this country owes an 

 incalculable debt — I refer to Mr. E. B. Sargant. Like 

 him, I believe that the progress of education in all its 

 grades, from the lowest to the highest, is the agency 

 which, more surely than any other, will conduce to the 

 prosperity and the unity of South .Africa. For all workers 

 in that great cause it must be an inspiring thought that 

 they are engaged in promoting the most fundamental and 

 the most far-reaching of national interests. They are 

 endeavouring to secure that the men and women to whom 

 the future of this country belongs shall be equal to their 

 responsibilities and worthy of their inheritance. In that 

 endeavour the sympathies which they carry with them are 

 world-wide. As we come to see, more and more clearly, 

 that the highest education is not only a national but an 

 Imperial concern, there is a growing desire for interchange 

 of counsels and for active cooperation between the educa- 

 tional institutions of the Colonies and those of the Mother 

 Country. The development of education in South Africa 

 will command keen attention, and will be followed by 

 earnest good wishes, not only in England but throughout 

 the British dominions. One of the ideas which are bound 

 up with the history and the traditions of our English 

 public schools and Universities is the idea of efficient work 

 for the State. Those institutions have been largely 

 moulded, from generation to generation, by the aim of 

 ensuring a supply of men qualified to bear a worthy part, 

 either in the government of the nation, or in professional 

 activities which are indispensable to the national welfare. 

 In our own time, and more especially within the last 

 thirty years, one particular aspect of that idea is illus- 

 trated by the closer connections which have been formed 

 between the Universities and the higher branches of the 

 Civil Service. The conception of work for the common- 

 weal is in its turn inseparable from loyalty to those ideals 

 of character and conduct by which English life and public 

 policy have been built up. It is by the long and gradual 

 training which such ideals have given that our race has 

 been fitted to grapple with responsibilities which have 

 inevitably grown, both in extent and in complexity, far 

 beyond anything of which our forefathers could have 

 dreamed. That training tends also to national self-know- 

 ledge; it makes for a sober estimate of our national 

 qualities and defects ; it quickens a national sense of duty 

 to our neighbour. The munificence of a far-sighted states- 

 man has provided that selected youths, whose homes are 

 in this land, and whose life-work may be here, shall go 

 for a while to England, shall breathe the intellectual and 

 social atmosphere of a great English University, and shall 

 learn to judge for themselves of the sources from which 

 the best English traditions have flowed. That is excellent. 

 But it is also most desirable that those traditions should 

 pass as living forces into the higher teaching of South 

 Africa itself, and that their spirit should animate educa- 

 tional institutions the special forms of which have been 

 moulded by local requirements. That, indeed, has been, 

 and is, the fervent wish of men whose labours for South 

 -African education have already borne abundant fruit, and 

 are destined to bear yet larger fruit in the future. Mav 

 those labours prosper, and may that wish be fulfilled ! 

 The sooner will come the day when the inhabitants of 

 this country, this country of vast and still indefinite 

 possibilities, will be able to feel, in a sense higher and 

 deeper than citizens of the Roman Empire could conceive, 

 Cnncti gens una sumtis (" We are all one people "). If 

 the work which lies before us, in this Section of the British 

 -Association, should result in contributing anything towards 

 the promotion of those great objects, by helping to elucidate 

 the conditions of further progress, our deliberations will 

 not have been held in vain. 



