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EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

same as the principal line of race and language cleavages. To this cause must be assigned the constant and bitter struggle for the control of the schools, the evil effects of which have been experienced by generation after generation of the South African population. In Natal, as is natural, this conflict is least marked. Her policy is more and more to adopt a Government system of schools, in which teachers occupy the position of Civil Servants, and this course is warranted by the small number and the distribution of the white population. In Cape Colony the general tendency has been to encourage voluntary effort on the part of parents and others, and by means of grants of public money to bring each school so formed into direct relation with the Education Department. This system was also well marked in the South African Republic. In the Orange Free State it was tempered by the grant of considerable local powers to district school boards. When these two States became part of the British Empire, the need of rapid reconstruction of the whole machinery of government led to a purely governmental system of schools for the white population. As much of the central control is now being transferred to local authorities as is consistent with the security of tenure of the teaching staff, and with the amount of local financial responsibility which the authorities in question are able to undertake. It was not to be expected that a school system which within three years of the end of the war gave the new Colonies nearly twice the number of children in school that were there before the war would not arouse some of the denominational bitterness already spoken of. But in the Orange River Colony the guarantees offered by Government for the local control of education have satisfied those who at first gave expression to their dissatisfaction by founding private schools, and there is reason to think that all parties and Churches will now work for the development of a national system of education. In the present year Cape Colony has passed an Education Act which tends in the same direction.