TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 613 
mittees, two totally different and mutually contradictory entities. An extra- 
ordinary compromise has been effected, by which these two contradictory entities 
are to exist side by side. One of the young South African’s rapidly approaching 
disabilities is that he is going to fall heavily between two stools.' 
The very nature of farming in South Africa, with the consequent paralysing 
distance of farm from farm, has caused the greatest difficulty in bringing home 
education to the farmer's children. The problem still remains unsolved. The 
peripatetic teacher and the travelling schooihouse are useless, because continuity 
of instruction is so necessary at this stage; while the farm school at present in 
vogue is damned at once by the multiplicity of different standards simultaneously 
at work under one teacher, the lack of class emulation, and the noise and confusion 
going on in one small room. The only remedy, the systematic establishment of 
large district boarding-schools at convenient centres, with grants to indigent 
farmers, is made impracticable by that lack of money to be spent on education to 
which allusion will be made later. 
One cannot but deplore the scarcity of large boarding-schools in South Africa, 
those little states in which a boy, as he manages a debating society, or a games 
club, may learn, not too soon in life, lessons of organisation and control, of dis- 
cipline over himself and others. That lamentable lack of respect towards elders 
and betters, only too evident in all colonies, is mainly due to the fact that boys 
have not learnt at school that awe and respect for their seniors which a junior in an 
English public school feels for the giants and heroes of the sixth form. In South 
Africa a small boy in Standard III. may be on terms of impudent familiarity with 
a man of twenty in an intermediate class. There are in South Africa only one or 
two schools, mostly denominational, where these sound principles of early respect 
are rigidly inculcated. 
The early type of teacher, the Buonaparte Blenkins of Olive Schreiner’s ‘South 
African Farm,’ has left his mark on present-day education in the suspicion with 
which the teacher is still rezarded by many parents. Anyone who could read or 
write, escaped convict or deserted soldier, took up the profession of teaching as a 
dernier ressort, and it has taken some time for the schoolmaster of modern type to 
win back the confidence and affection of his pupils. Added to this, some districts 
were so isolated in the early days of settlement that the teacher and the clergyman 
hardly reached them, and this almost barbarous state has left its trace on the intellect 
and on the morals of the third and fourth generation. 
Nothing could have a worse effect upon the young South African’s education 
than the fact that teaching is in most cases a despised, because an underpaid, 
profession. There are a few posts of dignity and competence, but the large 
majority of teachers are miserably paid. The male pupil teacher is becoming as 
rare as the sepyornis, for a boy of spirit and intelligence will make a living more 
quickly in almost any other walk of life. The Education Department deplores the 
lack of efficient teachers, but will not adopt the obvious remedy, Teaching will 
soon fall mainly into the hands of women living on the spot; and, great as is the 
need of their infinite patience, their innate kindliness, and their instinctive mother- 
hood in the lowest classes, there are lessons to be taught boys which only a man, 
who has been a boy himself, can teach. The younger generation of South Africa 
is thus cut off from a noble profession, for a capacity for martyrdom is not one of 
its virtues. 
There are few large towns in South Africa, and the curse of the small village, 
with its local jealousies and slanders, cannot but have a bad effect on the young. 
Eyery clerical synod in the country deplores the increasing amount of scepticism 
and irreligion, The Temperance adherent, the Anti-tobacco Leaguesman, and the 
Anglican advocate of definite religious teaching all have their special reason for 
this sad state of affairs; but the true reason is more to be found in the close juxta- 
position of the various branches of the Christian Church as they jostle one another 
in the small villages. The young South African is also tending to become a 
hypocrite, for only in America are there more religious societies for the young, 
and every boy and girl wears some distinctive badge of Christian profession. 1 
haye heard of a young rascal, caned several times during the week for lying, 
