114 Timehri. 
The ex-slave-owners of this period in British Guiana could not have been very 
unlike the Southerners of the United States of later generations, and full allow 
ance must be made for human nature under the circumstances. It is a matter of 
history that the masses were allowed to lose their interest in education, that the 
employers of labour failed to grasp the opportunities of endearing themselves 
to their labourers, and that the Government was not equal to its duties of con 
verting a willing population of “freedmen ” into useful inhabitants, getting 
animpetus toindustry from enlightenment, which would have been far more 
effective than servile bonds and the cruel lash. 
In 1850 the first Council of Education in the colony was established, and in the 
following year reported that the system of education was defective and ill- 
adapted to the peculiar wants of the people, and that the adult population was 
very indifferent towards education. The Commissioners, who constituted this 
Council, considered that the deplorable state of things was largely due to the 
depressed condition of the estates, for the successive abandonment of cultivation 
in whole districts of the colony had resulted in the withdrawal of large numbers 
up the rivers and creeks, where they became squatters and had their children 
growing up ina state of idleness out of the reach of the schoolmaster. But they 
had to qualify this latter statement, for they found the teachers “ grievously defi- 
cient both in attainments and in educational training,” and, we must conclude, 
incapable of training the young, even if they had been all within easy reach. It 
is a matter of little surprise to find the Commissioners under these circumstances 
commenting strongly on the irregular attendance of the scholars. The Dutch 
language they found to be so prevalent among the Negroes that it acted as a 
great impediment to the dissemination of instruction under the imperfect 
system of education that could not make use of it. At this time the Colony 
grant-in-aid to education amounted to nearly £5,000 per annum, and was 
disbursed as yearly grants to a few schools in Georgetown and New Amsterdam, 
and to Indian missionary settlements ; a capitation allowance to schoolmasters 
in rural districts, and at times grants towards the erection and repairs of school- 
houses. This is a very important fact to be borne in mind by those who from 
time to time shall have to deal with the matter of elementary education in the 
colony ; and it should never be lost sight of by the Government, whose responsi- 
bilities in the matter of the education of the masses, nearly one-half of whom are 
non-Christian East Indians, have not been well-deputed to various religious 
sects, and must be assumed sooner or later in the best interests of the community. 
The efforts of the Commissioners to introduce a suitable system of education 
were frustrated by the various religious bodies, although the Court of Policy and 
the Secretary of State for the Colonies approved of the recommendations made 
by the Commissioners, who found it wise to record their regret at the prevalence 
among the upper classes of “ prejudice and indifference ”’ in educational affairs. 
The Court of Policy failed to confer by legislation the necessary powers on the 
Commissioners to put into effect their plans, and so they had only to their lasting 
credit the inauguration of a department for the training of teachers at the 
Bishop's College, which had been founded by the diocese in 1851 for preparing 
theological students for Holy Orders. 
