IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions (IsiXIT) Digital Archive

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1885 NATIVE EDCATION WHETHER Native youths should or should not be given Latin and Greek when they have reached the standard in schools when white boys are introduced to such subjects, is the all-absorbing topic among the more enlightened Natives. A cool-headed and in¬different observer of the raging controversy cannot but be struck by the fact that the controversialists are fighting a shadow. The discus¬sion arose from statements which were made with all the authority of the Christian Express in these matters that ' classical education 11 had produced positive evil ' to the students who received it at Lovedale, and that the same education ' had ' proved a failure for the mass of ' Natives.' These aspersions have been bandied about so often that an old Lovedale student has been pro¬voked to pick up the gauntlet thus repeatedly flung down. A little while ago, in these pages, ' Love- dalian ' went elaborately into the facts and figures of the charge. By resorting to the extraordinary but very convincing course of mention¬ing names, he published to the South African world the names of all the young Natives, to his knowledge, who had at different periods re¬mained long enough at Lovedale to be advanced to higher studies which comprised Latin and Greek. He succeeded, as we think, in showing that, if classics have any occult virtue, in the case of those whom he named they had produced positive benefit, for they were at the present moment engaged in various spheres throughout South Africa : a living testimony to the work and worth of Lovedale. This need surprise no one ; for the more a man is educated the better fitted is he to discharge whatever duties are entrusted to his care. That any sane man should for a moment have doubted this is, to us at all events, a revelation. Having thus shown the beneficial effects of higher education in these individual cases, ' Lovedalian ' proceeded to prove that, inasmuch as the mass of Natives had not, at any one period within the recollection of any living man, studied classics, it was exceedingly preposterous to speak of classical education as having been a failure among the Natives as a mass. Of course the facts of ' Lovedalian ' are unanswerable. We confess to having failed to comprehend the drift of the letter of Mr. JOHN KNOX BOKWE which appeared in these columns last week, and from which an able writer in the last Alice Times finds that Mr. BOKWE ' is taking a view somewhat ' different from his brethren.' To our minds, Mr. BOKWE has eminently fulfilled the part of BALAAM of old. Evidently sent to curse il Love- dalian's ' impudence ' in at all attempting to vindicate himself and a few others from the gross imputa-tion of having abused the privilege given them while at Lovedale to roll a few Latin phrases in their mouths, Mr. BOKWE has proceeded to bless 'Lovedalian' by eulogizing the very curriculum that enabled them both to acquire a little know¬ledge of classics, and has ransacked from the musty archives in the Love¬dale office a regulation which provides that ' if a sufficient number comes ' forward classes will be formed to 'prepare students for the higher ' certificates, for matriculation in ' the Cape University, and for the 'B.A. and M.A. degrees.' He tells us that it is open to Europeans and Natives to avail themselves of the good things that this regulation affords. As Latin is a compulsory subject at the Cape University matriculation and other University examinations, our tutelar gods may well ask : ' Wherefore is this bad ' blood and prodigal expenditure ' of words ? You are all agreed. ' You have been separated by a mis- ' understanding occasioned by some- ' one's erring, and '—to put it in the language which guardian divinities are supposed to make use of—'Humanum est errare.' But Mr. BOKWE will say, as he seems to have said in his manifesto, those who wish to learn these languages should pay for them. Just so; and we have often wondered why there was no graduated scale of fees for those who wished to proceed to extra subjects in our schools as is the case in European schools. As we said some time ago, it was the giving of Latin to European pupils in the same class and carefully weeding out the Natives that was occasioning this outcry from the Native pupils and their guardians. It is the drawing of the line at mere colour which ex¬asperates the Natives. In conclu¬sion we may say it will be better for our schools and our people to remove these artificial barriers in the course of the education of Native youths, for the longer they are set up and defended the more will the young Natives be tempted to go beyond them and to examine for themselves what is on the other side. It is natural that it should be so. We may sav that those Natives who have been introduced into the rudi¬ments of Latin and Greek have learnt the salutary lesson that has been learnt by all learned men, who, knowing the vast and stupend¬ous amount of what remains for them to learn, have been, like the Greek philosopher, compelled to own with humiliation that ' They know ''nothing except that they know 'nothing.'