Transvaal and Orange River Colony — Public Education : report of the
Director. (Esson and Perkins, Johannesburg.)—It need hardly be said that this Report, which covers a period of something more than three years, is full of interest. The Director has to deal with many difficult problems ; questions which are settled here are still hotly debated in South Africa. Free education was one of them not long ago ; now this is established everywhere. (It is a curious instance of the dominance of privilege under the Boer Government that there were side by side " poor schools " and " district schools." The former were frequented by the children of the "mean" whites; the latter had paying and non-paying scholars ; many parents of a good social position were accustomed to plead poverty and obtain exemption from fees. They were poor, but being burghers, did not send their children to the poor schools.) The question of compulsion is postponed till the establishment of responsible government. The appendices are not less interesting than the Report ; XIV., for instance, with its account of the school set up among the prisoners of the war camp at Green Point, Cape Town. The pupils varied in numbers from fifteen to twenty-three. There was a matriculation class which studied Latin (the " Metamorphoses " and the "De Amicitia "), algebra (up to quadratic equations), Euclid II. and III. with riders, and Gray's poems. Another specimen of the old regime is to be found in XV. This is how the Outlanders were treated. All children were to give in their first year one hour per diem to learning Dutch (real Dutch, not the Taal), two hours in their second, and three hours in their third. In the fourth the whole of the instruction was to be given in this language.
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