Government schooling and teacher identity: The exertions of the first-class teacher at Worcester, Cape of Good Hope, c.1856-1873
Abstract
In 1839 the colonial administration introduced to the Cape Colony one
of the first systems of state education in the British Empire. This Established
System of Education staggered along for a quarter century before the Cape
colonial parliament voted to bring it to an end in 1865. Ambitious in its social
and academic intentions, this “very English’’ system gained some acceptance
as a model that could be aspired to – though not always in the intended form
– even in predominantly Dutch-speaking communities like that of Worcester.
The personal role of the teacher was central and Albert Nicholas Rowan, the
government teacher at Worcester from 1856, was regarded as one of the more
successful pedagogues within the Established System. This article examines
the attempts of Rowan to make his school a viable entity. It engages with
his personal identity as an overworked but well-qualified and respectable
purveyor of knowledge. It notes how the social capital he possessed in terms
of connection with the local Dutch Reformed Church could be mobilized to
the school’s advantage. It also traces his attempts to steer his school through
the waters of religious denominationalism – a denominationalism symbolic of
competing cultural and political identities. The case study locates the teacher
during a time of transition from an early model of government schooling –
heavily dependent on one teacher in one classroom – to a “family model” of
public schooling becoming common throughout the British Empire by the
1870s. The Worcester Government School lasted longer than any other at the
Cape, as Rowan took on the identity of the more bureaucratic, paternalistic
head master. It made way for explicitly secular, subsidized Girls’ and Boys’
Undenominational Public Schools only in 1873, as the local inhabitants
assumed more responsibility for public schooling. The teacher’s reward was
promotion to a position of educational surveillance and regulation in a new
colonial inspectorate.