John Hammond.
It is with very real pleasure that I on behalf of all in the School welcome you here this afternoon. Speech days serve the double purpose of allowing us to indulge that very human desire to show ourselves off while at the same time calling upon us to give an account of our stewardship. Our debt to all of you here this afternoon is that you act both as an audience when we display a little exhibitionism and as judges of what we are trying to do.
I hope that you have all taken the opportunity of seeing those aspects of the schoolwork which have been put out for exhibition. I hope that you have judged its quality, assessed its value and tried to fit what you have seen into the picture of the Country’s growth and development.
It is my task now to try and fill in the background to the picture of the past year’s work, because without it, what you have seen may appear to be no more than the highlights, lacking both perspective and proportion.
We have in this School at the present time, a total of 327 pupils of whom 73 are girls. They come from all corners of Southern Rhodesia and a few have slipped in from even further afield. They come from a variety of home backgrounds and have emerged from a great diversity of religious and educational institutions. They are selected to come here to be offered the chance of reaching the peak of the educational pyramid. Their ages vary from the correct age of 13 or thereabouts, for starting on a secondary academic training, to the very much over age pupil, well into the middle twenties.
We offer them as good classroom teaching as most schools could hope to offer. We are generously staffed with highly qualified teachers and consequently we can offer a very good range of subjects. These subjects include those which must form the basic education for anyone going on to University, some of which are of particular value to those who will later become primary school teachers and others which develop practical skill, artistic ability and domestic training for girls.
In addition to the more formal classroom instruction there is a considerable variety of activity, stimulated by the energies, which members of Staff give to their jobs over and above the calls which duty makes on them. There are special classes in music and musical appreciation, Scouting and Guiding are flourishing and some of the senior Scouts are assisting with a Wolf Cub Pack; there is a keen photographic club; those who like Art, but cannot fit it into their school instruction can continue with it in the Art Club; there are opportunities for the pupils to learn Chess and Draughts and other indoor games; there are the beginnings of a Young Farmers’ Club and those who wish for more religious activity than the School programme provides, can join the Students; Christian Association or assist in the running of Sunday School classes.
After tea you will see a small dramatic production into which the drama Club has put much work. There is, of course, room for many more of such activities and we are nearly at the stage where a small printing press, a museum, a modelling club and perhaps carving and pottery could find a very useful place. Lack of time, and rooms to house these activities are problems which must be met and, of course, we have to watch the funds available.
Games and P.T. cater for pupils’ physical well-being. We are endeavouring to teach a variety of games rather than concentrating on football throughout the year. The boys have athletics and football as their main activities and cricket is making a good start. Soft ball is played with much enthusiasm and tenniquoits and table tennis are also available to them. There is considerable enthusiasm for tennis though the facilities are poor. We hope to devote more effort in the coming year to getting new tennis courts made. The girls play netball, take part in athletics and have rounders as their summer game. They have also shown enthusiasm for tenniquoits and a start has been made with hockey. The dam is providing very useful recreation for those who are keen on fishing and with all that water there, we hope to be able to get a swimming bath and to lay on water to the school grounds and the playing fields.
It will all take time, of course, and money and effort, but, if we have patience we will get there. The School is just ten years old. Reasonably rapid progress has been made in that time, but we are still at the earth moving stage and it will be some years yet before we can add the frills and the elaborations.
Further behind the scenes of the schoolwork, are the many chores which every pupil has to do. While most of the school are doing a quarter of an hour’s P.T. in the early morning, others are sweeping and polishing their dormitories, washing down their latrines and picking up the pieces of paper which, in any school of this size, always litter the grounds.
In the afternoons, when prep is over, each House has its activity. One plays games, another is doing its laundry, another is doing manual labour to level more playing fields and the four devotes its time to the cleaning up and development of its particular area of the School grounds. The girls, meanwhile, have much the same kind of activities, except that they mend sheets for the whole school while the boys are levelling the playing fields.
I hope you will realise, from this account of what goes on here, that there is plenty of variety of activity and plenty to occupy everyone. We try to bring out the full potentialities of those entrusted to our charge. Along with this, we endeavour to give them a realisation of the need for service to the community – and the good response to requests for blood donors is a measure of that success. We try to inculcate a sense of responsibility in the minds of those who are chosen as prefects and we try to encourage initiative where it wishes to branch out on any venture.
It is this last thing that has given me much satisfaction during the year. In many small ways and in some big things I have seen pupils in the School taking the initiative and accepting the responsibilities which follow upon the things which they want to organise for themselves. The Students’ Christian Association, which meets on Sunday nights, has been under the Chairmanship of the Head of the School this year. He has organised and conducted the meetings, arranged for Speakers and, where necessary, has invoked the aid of the staff. It has been very pleasing to watch the success that has followed his efforts – as a culmination of those efforts, this group will be putting on a Nativity Play tomorrow evening.
The Captains of games have also taken much responsibility in the training of their teams, taking them out for runs at both ends of the day and it was very gratifying that their enthusiasm helped us to achieve one of the most successful football seasons in the School’s history. We won the inter-school football competition after several very exciting games, and did not lose one match! The Young Farmers’ club is taking the initiative in several ways, and is growing vegetables and planting flowers. Tenniquoits was reintroduced largely through the enthusiasm of one of the boys, while another, maybe with an eye to earning some pocket money, started taking his camera to our various football matches and gaining the experience which, I assume, all Press photographers have to acquire.
These are some, among many others, which are indications of ways in which the boys and girls of this School are showing their initiative and accepting responsibilities. I very much hope that there will be increasing signs of this spirit as the years go by. There can be no doubt that these characteristics are what the young African must develop if he is to earn the respect of all and if he is to make that contribution to the Country’s development for which we in this School aim to equip him.
And what, you may ask, are the dividends which the Country as a whole reaps from this. From the classrooms we saw very good results in last year;s School Certificate examination, 58 out of 59 passed and these results are a tribute both to the skill of the teaching staff and the industry of the pupils. Of those 58 who gained Certificates, eight came back to work for their Higher Certificate, one or two went direct to Universities and most of the others entered Teacher Training Institutions, whence they will emerge in a year’s time to help expand the work of the higher classes of primary schools. Others went into various occupations, mainly of a clerical nature and some of the girls are being trained as Nurses in the Union (South Africa)
This year, for the first time, ten pupils of this school are sitting for the Cambridge Higher Certificate examination. At least two of these we hope will be foundation students of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. I feel sure they will be a credit to the School. The others hope to go to the Union, some to Fort Hare to take degree courses leading to teaching jobs, three hope to take Medicine at Natal University, one would like to be a dentist and another a veterinary surgeon.
All of these will in time take their places in the ranks of the professions and we hope that our endeavours here will have given them the background to enable them to live up to the highest standards both professionally and ethically, which those professions so rightly demand.
There can be no doubt that opportunities in very many directions are beginning to open out for those young Africans who have had an education such as we offer. Government Service, Commerce and Industry are all making openings for those who have had a good secondary education. They are as yet, perhaps, doing little more than exploring the possibilities of offering interesting and worthwhile jobs to boys and girls of this School and others like it. They are, so to speak, throwing the ball to the young African to see what he will do with it. If he catches the ball neatly, knows what to do with it when he has caught it and plays it according to the rule of decent behaviour, many more such opportunities will be given to him. Whether this happens or not, depends largely upon the young African concerned and upon what we can make of him when he is in school.
One thing which still makes the work of our schools difficult is the age of the pupils who are in them. In any European school covering the range of education which we offer here, even a 19 year old is considered a misfit. He is no longer a boy, but a man, he should be either at an institution catering for a University standard of work or he should be out in the world, making an independent living and contributing to the production of the Country. We at Goromonzi have an age range of 13 to 26. I leave it to your imagination to picture the problems which arise from this. I would like, however, to draw your attention to some of the wider implications in the Country as a whole, of maintaining in schools the very many over age pupils which can be found in almost every African school.
Consider to begin with, the loss of productive capacity resulting from all the 16, 17, and 18 year olds who are still in the primary schools. Even the more advanced countries of the world cannot afford to keep youths of this age in school if they have not by then progressed well into the secondary stages of education. Can we, with our very limited resources, do what even a Welfare State cannot attempt ?
Think also of the extent to which many of the African children aged 10 or 11 or 12 are excluded from schools because the places are occupied by those who should have been superannuated and who should be out working and producing.
We are also doing ourselves much harm in the eyes of the world by giving the impression that we are providing less education for the African population than we are doing.
1932 was the year in England and Wales when the full impact of the post-war population bulge was being felt in their schools. For that reason and also because the Butler Act and the fully fledged Welfare State had not at that time been introduced, I use figures of that year for a comparison with ours in Southern Rhodesia today. In 1932 in England and Wales, the total number of children undergoing full time schooling at public expense was roughly 150 for every 1,000 of the population. This is the figure for nursery schools, elementary schools and secondary schools which were wholly or partly supported from public funds. I repeat the figure. 150 for every 1,000 of the population. Southern Rhodesia today, is providing schooling for approximately 180 out of every 1,000 of our African population.
From this, it would certainly appear that with the places which we are today providing in African schools, there is room for every child to have six years of primary schooling. This is one year more than the Kerr Commission laid down as being the first objective at which we should aim. It would be an excellent thing for us if we could tell the world that we had reached the stage where every child received six years of education. Instead of that, however, we too often hear complaints that children of 9 or 10 or 11 are unable to get places in school and this, not unnaturally gives the world the impression that we are further from offering adequate educational facilities than in fact we are.
Another point worth taking into account, is the fact that those whose education is behind schedule very often do not start their working lives until very much later than they should do. The education of a Doctor, for instance, entails a considerable investment of money. Where the State provides that money they should demand on behalf of the community the fullest possible return. Yet a man who because of the late age at which his education starts, only qualifies to practice as a Doctor when he has reached an age of 30 or more, has fewer years of service to offer to the community than one who can start making his contribution when he is 24 or 25.
There is one further point I would make. By retaining in our schools large numbers of over age pupils, we are not getting the best out of the facilities we offer. Six years of elementary schooling between the ages of 6 and 12 is of much more value to the child than the same instruction given between the ages of 10 and 16 or as is often the case, between 12 and 18. In the same way, we in the Secondary schools can have a far greater impression upon, and can teach much more thoroughly, the child who is here between the ages of 13 and 18, than the young man or woman who gets here at 17 or 18 and struggles on to his middle twenties.
Hitherto, we have looked for a solution of the problems resulting from our limited resources to restrictions both on the opening of new schools or on increases in school enrolment. Surely the solution must be in thinking in terms of age rather than standards of attainment and turning away from the schools the older rather than the younger pupils.
I know, only too well, how large a part sentiment plays in this. There is always the one who couldn’t start going to school early because he had to herd the cattle or the goats, there is the one who had to leave school to work for a year or two to earn the money to take him on to the next stage, there is always the decent, hardworking, keen individual whom, one feels, should be given a chance. But every chance we offer to the sixteen year old in standard four, is depriving some 12 year old of his chance and, I submit, that the 16 year old is the one who should stand aside. There are growing alternatives for out of school education. Sentiment also takes a hand when it puts forward the plea that a 14 year old is too young to start work. Few who say this ever stop to think that in Britain today, over 80% of the population starts work at 15 and that before 1947, this same proportion started work at 14.
Hitherto, as I very well know, we had to have rather more mature pupils in schools. We wanted Demonstrators, and Medical Orderlies and Teachers who could start, immediately they left the primary school, doing responsible jobs. A 17 year old Demonstrator would not have carried much weight with a grey headed Chief and a Medical Orderly of the same age might well have done more harm than good. But those days are going. We now have grey headed Demonstrators who can handle the more difficult old men in the Reserves and the 17 or 18 year old youngster would come to no harm if he were made to mind his p’s and q’s when he first started working!
We must look at it today as an educational problem and try to see what methods we must adopt in order to get the best value for the money we are spending. It is a problem which must be tackled by Government, by Schools and by parents. The parents must ensure that their children start going to school at the right age; they must learn that only some of the family will be able to go far with their education while others who do not show the aptitudes which secondary schools demand must start work earlier and become independent of the father’s income. They must also realise that pleas of poverty are not always very convincing when children who are quite old enough to fend for themselves are still being maintained in schools.
The schools will have to take a wider and more realistic view of things. They will have to remember that in being kind to an over age child they are being more cruel to the younger one. They will have to try to see the picture as it presents itself to the schools higher up on the educational ladder. Here, for instance, we watch with regularity, the 14 year old in form one, catch up with his 17 year old classmate in form two, overhaul him in form three and race away from him the following year. There are, of course, exceptions – but this happens sufficiently frequently to be stated as a rule.
On Government, of course, rests the major responsibility. They will have to lay down the unpopular ruling which will exclude from schools, those who will feel they have not had their chance. On them also will rest the responsibility for keeping up the flow of more and better trained teachers to ensure that those who do have six years in school get the best teaching which can be made available. They will have to plan ahead to the time when these six years of training can be made compulsory and that will involve school attendance officers, the compiling of statistical information and the registration of births. The provision, in fact, of all the background information which any modern system of educational administration requires.
We have enough school places to take in every child – for six years of schooling – provided we are prepared to take the step of removing those who are over age. We have reached this stage despite the enormous backlog which has had to be made up over the past 20 years and we can, presumably, now hold our own against the large natural increase in school population which is coming.
If we have now reached this milestone, the next stage must be the improvement in the quality of the instruction we offer. This involves firstly, a higher educational background for the teachers, so that those who are untrained and inadequately educated may be replaced. Having provided a sound teaching staff for the six years of primary training, the next step will be the expansion of the six years to eight years as and when the Country can afford it.
That boarding schools of this type have been able to get along as well as they have done with such a wide age range is really rather remarkable and is an indication of the great keenness to learn which nearly every pupil has. This great keenness carries even the older ones through the classroom work. They are attentive and anxious to learn and present few disciplinary problems there. But in many respects we miss the liveliness of the very young, we find that the mischievousness which often leads on to many useful lessons in living is overshadowed by the almost extreme seriousness of the approach to their work.
Good examination results from older pupils, tend to come from sheer hard slogging rather than through that intelligence which learns despite every effort to side track a teacher off his path and every temptation to think of things other than the job in hand!
We need prefects of 17 and 18 who are near enough to the mischief making age to know how best to deal with it, who will not tolerate obstreperousness in a junior but put him firmly and effectively in his place. But the 18 year old has a difficult time when he has to discipline those older than he is, and prefects in consequence have to be chosen from amongst those who are old. Boys of 17 and 18 should be learning to take responsibility, they should be learning the fundamentals of leadership, but with our present age range they are denied these opportunities until they are too old to get the full benefit from them.
As a Schoolmaster, I am very anxious to have school boys to deal with rather than undergraduates and I feel sure that as taxpayers, you will want to see money spent to the best advantage, and not be devoted to those old enough to look after themselves and who should also be making a contribution to the Country’s prosperity.
A start has been made in tackling this problem. I believe that the facilities are available for a system of compulsory education which would reflect great credit on this Country which is still so young and undeveloped. From the point of view of this school and the Country as a whole, the sooner it happens the better.
It may seem that I have been critical of those older pupils who are now in this School. There are many of them who have made a very valuable contribution to the life of the School and I would be the last to decry their efforts. Most of them, I know, are impatient to get out on their own, to live their own independent lives and they realise, as much as anyone, that they would have got more out of their time here, had they been able to come here at an earlier age.
Much of the credit for what success we have achieved here must go to them for the good example which they have set. But the major part of whatever success we achieve, must also go to the staff and I am sure that the boys and girls would wish that I speak for them and add their thanks to my own for all the work the Staff has put in during the past year. We have had many changes in the Staff since the end of last year. More changes than any school should be expected to accept. That the work of the School has not suffered to a greater extent is a great tribute to all, Staff and girls and boys. I would like to thank them all very much for their outstanding efforts during this past year.
Finally I would like to thank His Excellency the Governor for coming here to speak to us this afternoon, and Lady William Powlett for consenting to present the prizes.