15

8.-2

Grove, Oreg., are movements towards recognizing the value of the individual Indian. At these schools he is taught trades, the value of labour, personal responsibility, and is thus prepared to cope with the world and earn his own living. If, after five years spent at either of these schools, he chooses to become a farmer, stock-raiser, or mechanic, he enters the field with' a wider knowledge, a shiftiness of mind, that he could never have gained without this industrial training received at these schools and direct and friendly contact with our own race. Such training is the key which unlocks the prison-door and sets the Indian free from the trammels of his own past and the white man's prejudice. Work makes the world akin, and the Indian can and he is willing to work, and eager to learn, as eager at least as it is possible for him to be, since he does not fully understand the benefits of knowledge. As has-been remarked, the heredity of the Indian man inclines him to the trades, and he has shown considerable adaptiveness where opportunity for such work has been given him. In any vocation, however, which the present generation may undertake, allowance should always be made for the Indian's previous -lack of training in persistent labour: this lack is perhaps the greatest drawback from which the Indian suffers. The one thing imperatively needed for the Indian is industrial education. Educate him thus and he becomes a friendly neighbour and co-worker. Keep him in ignorance and isolation and he becomes dangerous to his own future and to those about him. To my mind, Sir, these extracts point to the conclusion that what is required in order to complete our system of Native education is some sort of arrangement under which all boys that have finished their school education shall have an opportunity of learning a trade, and of mixing with Europeans for a considerable period. It is hardly necessary to do anything in this way for girls, seeing that all Fourth Standard pupils are offered scholarships at Hukarere or St. Joseph's Providence, where they are carefully taught all kinds of household work and needlework; it is for the boys that something should be done, either in the way of making them skilled artisans or of enabling them to become thoroughly acquainted with European methods of farming and stockraising. I am inclined to think that the plan that is now being tried at Auckland on a very small scale —of apprenticing boys to trades after their residence at St. Stephen's is completed—would, if extended, answer every purpose. All that it would be necessary to do would be to make it a rule that every boy who had gone through the village school course should, if his parents wished it, be apprenticed by the Government to some trade, but giving him the option of first going to St. Stephen's or Te Aute. Some difficulty might arise by-and-by if the number of boys that had to be apprenticed became numerous such a difficulty could be dealt with, if it arose, by the establishment of some kind of institution similar to those spoken of in the above extracts, but in the meantime the results desired could be, I think, obtained by the simple and comparatively inexpensive plan here suggested. I conclude my report, therefore, by expressing the hope that you will give the plan very full and favourable consideration, I feel very sure that its adoption would have an excellent effect in advancing the interests of Maori education. I have, &c, James H. Pope.