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educate girls to be the intellectual peers of their 
future husbands. “ The curriculum of the girls’ 
schools (1921) is no longer dead and uninspiring. 
Cookery, clay-modelling, paper-cutting, drawn-thread 
work, hygiene taught by Lady Medical officers are 
romantic subjects for the little Malay girl compared 
with what her elder sisters learnt a few years ago. 
Needle- work is the most popular subject. Oddly 
enough the education of Malay girls seems most 
backward in the matriarchal communities of Negri 
Sembilan.” In 1924 some Malay women teachers 
will be brought to the centre nearest to their 
homes and schools for a month or more at a time 
for a course of training under a qualified Eurasian* 
school-mistress, who will be appointed principal of 
the most important Malay girls’ school in the locality 
and use it as a practising school. 
(c), Tamil Vernacular Schools. 
For half a century there has been a sprinkling of 
Tamil vernacular schools in the Colony and as early 
as 1895 there were two Tamil schools in Perak. 
They sprang up especially in Province Wellesley 
(and later in Malacca) where an estate population 
created a need. All except a few Government 
schools are under private management but are 
inspected by Government officials, and such as reach 
a certain standard of efficiency receive grants-in-aid. 
In 1922 there were si± schools in the Straits Settle- 
ments under the supervision of the Education 
Department (as well as a few estate schools super- 
vised by the Labour Department) ; in the Federated 
Malay States there were 122 schools. The great 
difficulty has always been to get efficient teachers. 
But in 1922 it is recorded that “ estate managers 
are beginning to recognize the need for the employ- 
