EDUCATION IN BRITISH GUIANA. 
By A. A. THORNE, M.A. 
Part II. 
No fundamental changes m the system of primary education have taken 
place since the colony was introduced to the vicious system of payment by 
results ; and irom 1890 onwards there have been open hostilities between 
the Inspectors of Schools, as representatives of the Government, and the 
teaching fraternity, the one party being charged with the administration of 
a limited grant-m-aid for distribution by examination results, and the other 
party being compelled to regard the pupil as nothing but a money-making 
unit. The Government would require « definite number of attendances io make 
vach pupil eligible for examination, which, asain and again, was shown to be 
compose of unfair and money-saving tests; the teachers would be caught 
with falsified registers herve and there, and the improper possession an use of 
Government test-cards! Scandals were grave and numerous throughout 
the *pmeties, ad yet no determinea effort was mace by the authorities to put 
a speedy end to t,is sad state of affairs. . Commission was appointed and 
repo:ted adversely on the system and the administration, but nothing tangi- 
bie was done. Hach Governor seemed afraid to appoint a Board oi Fduca- 
ton; and, when a resolution was carried m the Combined Court m 1907, 
by the unanimous «ote of the Electives, to get a Board to see after the educa- 
tional needs of the colony, it was damned by the covering despatches of the 
Governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who refused to accede to the 
wishes of the Court, although he should have seen the palpable errors of the 
official Government which had been forced by the said Court to pay Teachers 
balances of annual grants earned and withheld on their own bad system. This 
Governor, | owever, made a wretched attempt at a compromise in the appoint- 
ment of a Standing Committee of the Comb inea Court to advise the Executive 
Government in the matter of Primary Educaiion. But the mover of the ori- 
ginal resolution was strongly imbued with the sense of injustice done the 
masses in not making the requisite move onward to get the machinery to 
bring about the sadly needed changes in the system of education, and so he in 
the following year, 1908, brovght in a second resolution with a full preamble 
to get the Board oi Education ; and his persistency and strong advocacy of 
the good cause met with a fair response, for the Secretary of State tor the 
Colonies (a change having occurred in Downing Street) made the local Gov- 
ernment fall in line with the wishes of the inhabitants as voiced by the Hlec- 
tive members of the Combined Court. 
The official Government always readily admitted that the existing system 
of education was not productive of much good ; the pupils trained under this 
system had not been making as good citizens and inhabitants as those had 
done under the Longden and prior systems ; the tendency to despise menial 
work and to aspire to clerical work had more than grown apace ; insubordina- 
