612 REPORT—1905. 
supervising the toil of Kaflirs, with whom it is degrading to labour. It had 
been better for the white man if, as in America and New Zealand, the black 
had been almost entirely annihilated, for the proximity of the conquered race 
diminishes the sanctity of human life, lowers the dignity of labour, and imperils at 
the fountain-head the health and morals of the young South African, 
The disadvantages of bilinguality lie like a curse of Babel on the young South 
African, who can graduate from the Cape University without being able to write 
either good English or good Dutch. In the Dutch districts he speaks an unin- 
flected and ungrammatical jargon; in most of the English districts he speaks bad 
English, and rarely pronounces an initial aspirate. If he has his choice of the two: 
languages, he follows the line of least resistance in a hot country, and speaks the 
patois that has few words, no grammar, and no inflections. ‘Man jong,’ he says in 
playground or street. ‘Ik is half ge-kill van de warmte’ (‘I is half kill with the 
heat ’), and in his class-room ten minutes afterwards writes, ‘The women is being 
kill by the soldiers,’ The Cape University examiners are unanimous in their con- 
demnation of his prevailing style of composition. Grammatical Dutch suffers as 
well, for the English boy tackles it at what he thinks an unfair advantage, while 
the Dutch boy approaches it as if he knew it already, with disastrous results. It. 
would be better for the country if English, Dutch, Hottentot, and Bantu all talked’ 
Esperanto, for the present bilinguality involves much friction, much waste of time,. 
and great loss of power. 
There can be no denying that the South African racial question has laid its: 
peculiar curse upon the country. It is impossible to banish it entirely from 
schools, but: a wise schoolmaster may do much to counteract the intrigues of the 
politician and the fanaticism of the minister. The best object-lesson on the matter’ 
has recently been furnished by a meeting of the Native Political Association, at 
which the President openly declared to his coloured brethren that the time had 
come for asserting that the country belonged to them. I do not believe seriously 
in the possibilities of a native rising, but I do realise that the quarrel of the future 
will be not between English and Dutch, but between black and white, and I would 
welcome a bloody native insurrection if it could bring home to the younger genera- 
tion, at any rate, that the school should not be made the battle-ground of a struggle 
between the two white races, that the edged tool of the native vote should not be 
played with by either political party, but that the attention of all white men 
should be earnestly devoted to the solution of this most critical question. 
The peculiar conditions of the country have not, curiously enough, produced a 
unique system of education, The young South African is stretched upon the 
Procrustean bed of English and Scotch standard codes, and his mental pabulum is 
the same as that meted out to the son of the British workman in a crowded city. 
There are no real technical schools, and perhaps they are not wanted, except as a 
preparation for mining courses ; but in a land of farming there is but one agricul- 
tural college, and that a consistent failure, The farmer's son continues to think 
his father’s method of farming the best in creation, and if he goes to school at all, 
he busies himself with tonic sol-fa, and the new geometry, and graphical algebra, 
and impossible problems worked to six places of decimals, while around him lie 
unsolved all the problems of drought-resisting foodstuffs and food-producing 
animals, problems into the experimental solution of which he would rush with 
eager enthusiasm, 
Recent debates on educational legislation in the Cape House of Assembly have 
shown that the schoolboy is still to be made a political shuttlecock, that all interest 
shown in his welfare and his educational efficiency is mainly fictitious. In 
England and Wales the object of the pupil’s existence is to keep alive the flame of 
sectarian controversy; in France his raison d’étre is to pass by hard-and-fast 
examinations into the Government service; in Germany he is expected to train 
himself as an intelligent factor in the military and industrial advancement of the 
Fatherland ; in Americahe exists in order that Americans may point to him as the 
finest thing on earth in the way of educational training ; in South Africa he has 
his being in order that he may be looked after by a local committee. One political 
party in the country was all for school boards, the other all for school com= 
