SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 401 



Efforts must be made to lessen the disparity in educational opportunity between 

 the town child and the country child. The best solution is to centralise rural school 

 facilities. Ideally, a rural school should serve a circular area of six miles' radius — 

 or even a larger area, if motor transport is available. 



In sj)ite of efforts to centralise, however, it will be a long time before the single- 

 teacher school is entirely eliminated. In schools of this type the classes should be 

 grouped and the curriculum reduced to essentials. A modified form of the ' Dalton 

 Plan ' wiU probably prove to be the best solution. 



The small rural school should be related as closely as possible to its environment. 

 Topics of rural point and reference should figure largely in the course, and nature- 

 study and school gardening should be introduced as the qualifications and aptitudes 

 of the teachers and the conditions of the locality permit. The ' project plan ' can be 

 effectively employed in small rural schools. ' Club work,' on the American lines, is 

 also very valuable. 



(c) Dr. C. G. CiLLii. — Historical Survey of Bilingnalism in the South with 

 its Educational Implications. 



When the English finally decided to retain the Cape, in the second decade of the 

 nineteenth century, they changed their policy and attitude towards the Dutch popula- 

 tion. Although there is nowhere a definite pronouncement on the matter, there is 

 sufficient evidence to show that the intention was to Anglicise the Dutch inhabitants. 

 For this purpose Scottish Presbj'terian Ministers were invited from Scotland to fill 

 the vacancies in the Dutch Reformed Church. Although these men had to spend 

 some time in Holland before coming here in order to learn Dutch, their manses or 

 parsonages became centres for the spread of English ideas, English civilisation and 

 the English language. And after Lord Charles Somerset had announced in 1822 

 that from a certain date English would be the only official language in the country, 

 he imported a number of teachers from Britain who were stationed at certain well- 

 selected rural centres in the so-called English schools. These teachers were under 

 instructions to teach the young Dutch mind in English and the language of intercourse 

 between master and pupil was to be English exclusively. These were free schools. 



With few exceptions these schools were failures, and the system and the policy 

 were changed in 1840. Some of the schools where the instruction was given in English 

 were maintained under the name of ' Established ' schools, but alongside there were 

 started schools that received grants-in-aid from the Government under certain condi- 

 tions, one of which was that English was to be one of the subjects of instruction. 

 The medium was left to the choice of the parents of the pupils. In spite of this 

 freedom of choice English remained the sole medium of instruction throughout, 

 because the inspection and the examinations were conducted exclusively in English, 

 and gradually everybody had come to consider education, or at least schooling, as 

 synonymous with learning to speak and to write English. Even their mother-tongue 

 was taught to Dutch-speaking children through English. It was a rare privilege, 

 and certainly a great experience, to learn one's mother-tongue through a foreign 

 language — a privilege and experience enjoyed, as far as one knows, only by young 

 Dutch-speaking South Africans. 



Political events such as the first War of Independence in 1880, the Jameson Raid 

 and the war of 1899-1902, made Dutch-speaking South Africans realise that they 

 were a distinct nationality. There was a different attitude on their part towards the 

 English and the English language. Their leaders, some of whom were young men who 

 had studied at foreign universities, were intensely national, and concentrated their 

 energies on the rights of the Dutch language in the Civil Service and in education. 

 The Milner regime in the Transvaal and Orange Free State after the war, which had 

 practically banished the mother-tongue of the Boer people from the schools, roused 

 the Dutch in the Cape Colony. The result of this activity and agitation was the 

 insertion in the Act of Union in 1909-10 of clause 137, by which English and Dutch 

 received equal rights as official languages. Soon after Union the various provinces 

 passed legislation which made instruction through the mother-tongue compulsory up 

 to the standard of compulsory school attendance. On paper at least we may say that 

 every child in a Government school in South Africa is receiving instruction through its 

 mother-tongue up to the stage which we call standard six, i.e. throughout the primarj' 

 school, and practically every chUd learns both English and Dutch in those schools. 

 We are, therefore, trying to be not merely a bilingual country but a bilingual nation. 

 1929 D D 



