VI[1]
WE want to ask the Indian Government to send us to Europe at the countr's expense. Roekmini wishes to study art, and later to work for the revival of our native art. Kleintje wants to go to the school of Domestic Science, so that she may learn to teach frugality, good house-keeping and the care of money to our future mothers and housewives. For in these virtues, the careless, idle, luxurious and splendour loving Javanese people have much need of schooling. And I, as a teacher, am to instruct the future mothers in practical knowledge — to teach them to understand love and justice and right conduct, as we have learned them from the Europeans.
The Government wishes to bring prosperity to Java and to teach the people frugality; it is beginning with the officials. But what good will it do, if the men are compelled to lay aside money, when the women in whose hands the house-keeping rests do not understand the worth of that money?
The Government wishes to educate and civilize the Javanese people and must needs begin by teaching the smallest and highest class, which is the aristrocracy, the Dutch language.
But is an intellectual education everything? To be truly civilized, intellectual and moral education must go hand in hand.
And who can do most for the elevation of the moral standard of
- ↑ Mevrouw M. C. E. Ovink-Soer.
—48—
