Some Stray Thoughts on Our People. 95 



closing down of numbers of others and established in their place central 

 schools under Government control, with the very best of masters imported 

 at excellent salaries in charge of these, with a staff of highly-paid well 

 qualified assistants, if necessary as in the case of the Headmasters 

 brought out specially for their known powers of teaching and their 

 interest in educational matters. After the war such men should be 

 available. Men who would know how to build up souud character, who 

 would recognise the great importance of physical fitness and the necessity 

 for training not only the mind but the hand. 



Distinction between the training of our children living on the 

 higher reaches of our rivers and children in Georgetown, or some of the 

 large villages, should we think be made. 



The old schoolmasters of the Renaissance went on the principle that 

 nothing else but Latin and Greek were of importance, and some of us 

 seem to think that arithmetic and writing and reading must occupy the 

 minds of primary pupils to the exclusion of nearly everything else. The 

 idea that there are lessons for the child in the play-ground and in the 

 tiefd appears to be unknown to the average primary schoolmaster here. 

 Rousseau's well-known aphorism has long ago been recognised by masters 

 of public schools " les legons que les ecoliers prennent entre eux dans la 

 cour du college leur sait cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu'ew leur dira 

 jamais dans la olasse," he says in his Emile. 



Our Aboriginal Indian children are fast losing their skill in basket- 

 making and hammock weaving — indeed on the Berbice River I was 

 told that the Indians were buying matapies — the chain-like basket sieve 

 used for pressing out the poisonous juices of the cassava before it is 

 made into bread — from the Blacks, and hammocks from the stores in town. 



What have we given them in exchange for their lost arts ? A little 

 reading, a little arithmetic, a little writing —just about enough to make 

 them exercise a certain amount of cunning. To our mind there is some- 

 thing pathetic in the picture of these little children of the forest repeating 

 the monotonous "sing-song'' so common to our primary schools, at the 

 bidding of a young schoolmaster trained in one of our towns. 



All these children have to make their living in the forests and by 

 means of the forest products they are skilful enough to bring to their 

 service — are we satisfied that we are helping them in their childhood to 

 tight the battle of life which awaits them in the forest ? 



Sugar is our staple product, but we are fairly well convinced that if 

 we were to ask a number of our town school-children anything about the 

 growing of the sugar cane and its manufacture into yellow crystals, that 

 their ignorance of the subject would be surprising. We see no reason 

 why models of sugar factories, and not only sugar factories, but citrate 

 of lime factories an 1 mills for oil producing plants, could not find their 

 way into the larger schools. With centralization we believe this would 

 be quite practical. 



