IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions (IsiXIT) Digital Archive

IN the course of his speech on Colonial Affairs, at Edinburgh, Mr. Goschen ob-served as follows:—' do not think that this is a subject which I need elaborate much before an audience of Scotchmen, because, as was pointed out by Lord Reay last night, Scotland, of all the various parts of this Empire, is the one, perhaps, which furnishes the most successful Colonists. (Ironical Hear, hear and cheers.) I was one time Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. No names came before me except Scotch names. (Cheers.) There were Grahams, there were Donalds. Then look at the Premiers of Canada ; they are either Macdonalds or they are Mackenzies. Go to India; look to banking in China ; and wherever you look you find Jardines, and Mathesons Wallaces, and Crawfords. Wherever you go you find the most successful men to be Scotchmen—in fact, if you were to make a list of the most successful bankers merchants and traders in the Colonies it would look uncommonly like a Scotch Directory.' WE mean no offence to Colonists of other nationalities when we say that, though our present information is not as complete as to warrant us to say that we wholly subscribe to what Mr. Goschen has said, especially in money maters—we. as cultivated natives, owe 'more to the efforts of Scotchmen either as missionaries or philanthropists, than to those of any other Colonists of European origin. Such, as a rule, are the tempers of Scotchmen that they readily adapted themselves to circumstances the most crude. This ac¬counts for their popularity with the natives, who have ever received fair and considerate treatment from them. Their ability to turn even difficulties into step¬ping stones may account for their success as Colonists. FROM last year's report of the Native College, Zonnebloem, Cape Town, sent to us for review, we find that that Institution is under a cloud. Its numbers are declin¬ing, and it has not been able to attain any marked success in its work as measured by the public examinations of the country We admire Warden Peters' candour in these matters, for it has been too much the practice of heads of Institutions to blow their own trumpets to eulogize -whatever sucess they may have achieved during a period, or elaborate excuses for failure— instead df stating the simple facts about their schools. It is natural, therefore, that people should approach his report with that ympathy that always comes to the surface in the human breast whenever a cry from a fellow being in distress is heard. Most of the native pupils who have lately kept Zonnebloem College going came, it will be remembered, from the well-to-do far¬mers in the Tembu Location near Queen's Town. They were sent there because their parents believed that the College offered a more liberal curriculum to black and white without favouratism. Partly through the prevailing depression, and partly through the manifest failure of Zonne¬bloem at public examinations children have been steadily withdrawn from the College. The report goes on to say that the great decrease, however, is in the num¬ber of European boarders, which is ac¬counted for in their ' unwillingness to associate with natives. At the time when there were less than half-a-dozen natives,' the report goes on to say, 44 there were from twenty to twenty-five European boarders. From the moment that the number of natives increased the number of Europeans steadily declined.' Warden Peters observes that 44 against this very natural prejudice there is little to be urged, save that it is a prejudice.' He does not believe that any injury has been done to 44 the moral or spiritual being of any Euro¬pean lad from having associated with natives in the Zonnebloem College.' ONE of the reasons urged by the rich Tembus in sending their sons and daughters to Cape Town was that they should mix with the Europeans and be able to get up the English language well. It was supposed that none of the prejudice against mere colour existed in the metro-polis as it did in the Eastern Districts of the Colony. Having been ourselves in Cape Town two years ago, we are able to say that then the prejudice did not exist. We are sorry to find that it is beginning to make its immoral influence felt in Cape Town too. THAT the curriculum that the Zonnebloem authorities offer to Europeans and Natives is liberal will be seen from what the Rev. Canon Peters gives as his conception of the best mode of conducting the education of youths intrusted to his charge. Very many who have not been affected by the long-standing and onesided crusade started against all classical studies will subscribe to the weighty remarks of Mr. Peters on the merits of the classical and mathematical course: 'Our system of instruction is based on the time-honoured theory that Classics and Mathematics are the best known instruments of training the mind in right habits of thought and in power of expression.' 'The objection which is often felt and expressed to persons who are to occupy the lower positions of life engaging in these studies, which are commonly looked upon as the heritage of the wealthier classes, seems to be founded upon a wrong conception of the nature of education and of the duty of the educator.' 'Education is the training of the person in mind and body, or in the more accurate division of our being, body and soul and spirit. It is the making the most of him. Its aim is not to turn out blacksmiths or tailors or lawyers (though I believe that technical instruction and training can quite advantageously be carried on simultaneously with education and as part of it), but men—men able to think and to employ their varied faculties to the glory of God—the good of mankind and their own comfort and reward. And the plain duty of the educator is to adopt such methods as seem to him best adapted to these ends. Whenever then a native or any other boy is intrusted to us, and it seems likely that he will remain under our care a sufficient time, we apply to him whatever means of mental training are within our power, without reference to what the boy's future life is likely to be. There is, to 'my mind, no reason why the man occupied in the lower employments (as they are called) of life should not solace his leisure and carry on his mental cultivation by the study of the works of the great thinkers of antiquity— if there is any incongruity between the so called lower handycrafts and outdoor employments and mental cultivation, the educator is not responsible for that, nor does the remedy lie with him—but it is not with this view chiefly that we employ the classical languages in education.' 'We use them simply as instruments; we know of no better way of making a boy think—of making him able to understand the thoughts of others and to express his own—than by making him translate from one language to another, and for this purpose no languages are so well adapted as those of Greece and Rome.' 'So that whether or not a boy after leaving school ever looks into a Greek or Latin book again, these languages have answered, as far as we have been able to make them, the purposes for which they were employed. They have been the in¬struments of education, and at whatever stage the boy leaves off, so far his mental training has been carried on on sound principles.' ' Those who dissent from these views may find comfort in the fact that it is only in comparatively few instances we have the opportunity'of putting our theory to the test, and that then the results are not as a rule such as to give any ground for the dread of a sudden inroad into out- social system ofa horde of highly educated Kafirs—only a few stay at school long enough to make a proof of our system, and when it has been carried on as far as we are able, the process is but just begun.' WE are pleased to find the European electors of Victoria East so far reconciled to Mr. Innes as their representative in Parliament as to avail themselves of his services—as witness in the following case which had to be dealt with in the local Divisional Council: ' Moved by Mr. Ballantyne, seconded by Mr. Cairns, that the Secretary write to Government and point out a clerical error contained in resolution forwarded from this Council on the 11th February last, and further if no law exist to meet such a case as the present, then this Council pray that the Government will take such steps next session of Parliament to have the law enacted with such object; also that the Secretary communicate with the hon. member for Victoria East, Mr. Innes, and ask him to ascertain whether there be a law applicable to such a case.—Carried.'