Another very important observation bearing on the necessity of careful consideration of habits is recorded on the return from one of the Natal schools. It might be supposed that one of the most obvious duties in bringing native children to school would be to clothe them, but nevertheless clothing an uncivilized child requires care.[†] In their natural state they expose themselves to torrents of rain which, runs off them, and they are easily warmed {8} and dried at the hut fire. But it is stated that, when clothed in flannel and jersey, they get chilled by the rain, and that pulmonary diseases ensue as a consequence.
[†] People have been asked to assist in making clothing for the Kaffir tribes whom missionaries were going out to address, that the feeling of decency might not be offended in addressing the naked.
The method of conducting colonial schools appears to be based on our home system, without reference to physical training or other local conditions affecting health. This fact, together with the high rate of mortality, is the most prominent result of our inquiry. And although there is not sufficient evidence to show to what extent the school education increases the mortality, there is strong reason to believe that it is a cause. By far the greater part of the mortality is the direct result of mitigable or preventible diseases.
In all the schools within or near the tropics the miasmatic class of diseases occasions most of the mortality at the earlier periods of life. A considerable proportion arises from small-pox, showing bad management of children, and that vaccination is either neglected or imperfectly performed. The other fatal diseases are mainly those which in this country are connected with bad drainage, deficient and bad water supply, overcrowding, and want of sufficient house accommodation and cleanliness. In the Canadian schools consumption and scrofula appear to occupy the place of miasmatic diseases. But there is nothing in the school education, as described in the returns, sufficient to account for their special prevalence in these schools. The causes must probably be looked for in the close foul atmosphere of the native dwellings in a climate where warmth is more likely to be sought by closing every opening capable of admitting fresh air than would be the case in warmer latitudes, together with exposure and other conditions depressing to the general health.
Although these returns show the necessity of making systematic physical training and bodily labour at useful occupations an element absolutely essential and never to be neglected in the training of uncivilized and half civilized children in civilized habits and trains of thought, there is nothing to show that education properly conducted tends to the destruction and disappearance of native tribes.
The general result may be summed up in the following words: “Educate by all means, but look carefully at the problem with which you have to deal, and above all things never forget that education everywhere, but more {9} especially with uncivilized tribes, must always include physical training and useful work.”
Colonial hospital returns.
Besides this statistical inquiry into the condition of schools, I had forms prepared for colonial hospitals into which natives are received for treatment, in order to compare the school diseases with those prevailing among the adult population. They were sent to the colonies, also by the great kindness of the Duke of Newcastle. And returns have been received from the following hospitals:—Free Town, Sierra Leone, Cape Coast, Natal, Mauritius, Colombo and Malabar, King William’s Town, Kaffraria, and from two native hospitals in Canada.
pp. [40] to 53.