The 1851 population of 69,609 included 10,812 persons born in other British colonies; 8,097 born in Africa; 4,915 born in foreign colonies; 4,169 born in India; 729 citizens of the United Kingdom.
Roman Catholics predominated - 43,605; followed by adherents of the Church of England -16,246. Other denominations included Wesleyans, 2,508; Presbyterians, 1,071; Baptists, 448; Hindus, 2,649;
Moslems, 1,016. French was the dominant language, and services in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Port-of -Spain and in other Catholic Churches were normally preached in either French or Spanish.
The Catholic children normally learned their catechism in French or Spanish. There were in the colony 19 French interpreters, 9 Spanish, one German and one Hindustani.
The next few years saw the establishment, under this system, of 30 ward schools, a model school for boys and one for girls as well as a normal school for training of teachers in Port-of -Spain. Of the 30
ward schools, thirteen were the property of the wards - in Laventille, Arima, La Brea, Cedros, Icacos, Mayaro, St Joseph, Couva, Naparima, lere Village, Indian Walk, Guapo and Arouca.
The others together with the model schools in Port-of-Spain were operated in rented buildings in Maraval, Santa Cruz, Maracas, Tacarigua, Victoria Village, Carenage, Diego Martin, San Juan, Caura, Chaguanas,
Savonetta, Pointe-a-Pierre, St Madeleine, Canaan Village, Oropouche and Erin.
On February 10, 1869, the Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, appointed Patrick Keenan to make a diligent and full inquiry into the state of public education, whether secular or religious, in Trinidad. Mr Keenan's report is a devastating criticism of the state of education under the Crown Colony system.
Eighteen years after the establishment of the Board of Education, only thirteen school buildings, as has been indicated, were publicly owned. Mr Keenan described 17 of the ward schools as buildings *which would bring discredit upon any country that recognises civilisation as a principle of Government.*
Generally speaking, the design of the school buildings had no reference whatever to school purposes.
Sanitary facilities were primitive where they were provided at all; some schools were entirely destitute of them. The school furniture was of the rudest kind. Keenan found a total lack of *everything
that gives character and tone to a well-worked school in Great Britain or Ireland.* Attendance was poor; not more than one pupil in four attended school for 100 days a year.
On the general suitability of the school books in use in Trinidad Keenan commented as follows:
*The books which I found in use were chiefly the publications of the Irish National Board. For elegance of style; for correctness of information; for acquaintance with the best prose and poetical com-
positions of the English language; for a general course of useful and interesting knowledge; for the high, manly, and moral tone of the selections; and for the didactic skill exhibited in the arrangement of
the lessons, no set of primary school books ever previously published in the English language could surpass, or even equal them. But not withstanding their recognized excellence and reputation, I should
desire to see them superseded by a set of books whose lessons would be racy of the colony -descriptive of its history, of its resources, of its trade, of its natural phenomena, of its trees, plants, flowers, fruits,
The pitch lake and the mud volcanoes, for instance, would supply materials for an attractive series of lessons. So would the growth, manufacture, value, and uses of sugar. And so, again, would the cacao, the bois immortelle, the cocoa-nut, the coffee plant, the cotton plant, the cannon-ball tree, the mora, the pine-apple, the mango, the star-apple, the sapodilla, the orange, the shaddock, the cashew, the guava, the plantain, the different varieties of palms, etc. objects all familiar to the Creole.
Interspersed amongst a number of such chapters there might be selections from the prose and poetical
extracts in the Irish National school books -local matter forming, say, one-half, and general literature the other half, of each volume of the new series.
The books would then possess the same general characteristics as the revised edition of the Irish series. As the Irish element preponderates in the Irish books, so the Trinidad element ought to preponderate in the Trinidad books, which would then be as popular with the Trinidadians as the Irish books are with the people of Ireland.
Lord Harris evidently contemplated such a series of books, for in his original instructions to the Board of Education he said- "Stiil it is my opinion that, on some subjects, books might be written especially adapted to the children of this island." No attempt, I regret to say, has hitherto been made to carry out Lord Harris' views. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the only publication of a local
character that has emanated from the Board, or from any of its staff, is a little volume descriptive of the geography of the island, by Mr Fortune, master of the Eastern Market Borough school.'