610 REPORT—1905. 
sideration: (1) the actual supply of teachers in relationship to the demand ; (2) the 
advantages and disadvantages of bringing in trained educators from England and 
elsewhere ; (3) the possibilities of partial self-support for women students; (4) a 
study of the methods of higher education here and in other lands; (5) suggestions 
aa to possible future developments, regard being had to the special conditions of the 
country. . . . These points, however, can be only named, not developed, in so brief 
an outline. 
Causes of Small Increase-—The slow advance in the number of women students 
registered by the Colleges of this country is usually attributed to one of two 
causes: (1) lack of interest ; (2) lack of means. Into the reason first named may 
be read the meaning—lack of desire for the advantages offered, or of appreciation 
of their real value; several good authorities in the educational world regard this 
as the fundamental reason. Others, however, are equally sure that the expense 
of a College course, or even the immediate necessity for bread-winning, lies at the 
root of the fact that now, nearly twenty years after the granting of the first Cape 
University degree of B.A. to a woman, there are throughout the country fewer 
than fifty women students preparing for the University examinations. In other 
lands, where the paternal governments are less fatherly than here, much more is 
done in the way of self-support by undergraduates of both sexes, even while pur- 
suing their studies. Yet it must be acknowledged that the difficulties are greater 
here than in those countries where a student who has ‘ worked her way’ from 
matriculation to B.A. is not an anomaly. 
' The End—the Means and the Woman.—The higher education of women is’ a 
comparatively new factor in the growth of this country, and up to the present 
there has been very little conception of such education for its own sake, or for any 
other purpose than as a means to an end—the end being an academic degree which 
will open the way to a better position in the teaching profession than it would 
otherwise be possible to obtain. One would expect this to be true of the advanced 
classes in the Training Schools, but it is almost equally the case in the Inter- 
mediate and B.A. grades of the Colleges under the University. Whereas, in 
England, to some extent, and in the States toa much more noticeable degree, girls 
go to college for the sake of the social life, or through pure interest in some special 
line of study ; or even, in some families, as a matter of course, the situation in this 
country is as yet more nearly akin to that of Germany or Switzerlaud, where the 
woman student is still in some degree a rara avis, therefore more or less conscious 
of herself, her position, and the serious phases of collegiate life. . . . The higher 
education of women in this country has an immediate and a present interest, not 
only because of what has been and is, but also because of the real need that exists, 
and because of the unlimited possibilities of future development. 
3. The Disabilities of the South African Schoolboy. 
By W. W. Way, M.A. 
Want of continuity between home and school life is, as in England, one of the 
schoolboy’s greatest disadvantages. South Africa is a land of farming, and in the 
holiday distractions of farm life the schoolboy forgets all the lessons of discipline 
and progress learnt in the previous quarter. His father, utterly dependent upon 
the smiles and frowns of Nature, talks of nothing but the weather and the crops, 
and reserves his fund of general conversation for his fellow-farmer at the periodical 
show or stock-fair. His son grows up with a total lack of general information, 
and the rarer son of the professional man, who hears intelligent table talk, soon 
outdistances him in the class-room. He runs wild at home, and his father, who 
thinks that the return to school will bring back soon enough the reign of discipline, 
too often, pathetically enough, is glad to send him back to school to get rid of him, 
Yet the schoolboy is rarely seen to better advantage than when helping to entertain 
his father’s guests. The isolation of farm life, which tends to lack of discipline 
and lack of general information, has developed that birthright of the South African, 
a graceful and generous hospitality. 
