In this chapter I want to say something about the little school of Dyak boys I had in the up-country mission station in my charge. My school was a very small one. The largest number of boarders I ever had was sixteen. It would seem hardly necessary to devote a whole chapter to it, but the up-country school is an important factor for good, and deserves encouragement. I should like to see more of these schools in different parts of the country. I feel sure that it does a Dyak boy a great deal of good to be a few years in one of these small schools under the personal supervision of the missionary in charge. Here he would do much manual work, just as he would do in his own home, and he would at the same time be taught moral truths as well as general knowledge. When he returns to his Dyak home, he is sure to influence his people for good. The object of education is to build up character. The way to improve the Dyaks is not to educate a certain number of them to earn their living elsewhere, but to take some young people from the Dyak village, improve them by implanting in their minds right ideas, and then send them back to live with their own people the ordinary work-a-day life of the Dyak. I agree with those who say that to place Dyak boys in one of the larger schools in Kuching for any length of time will make a return to their old surroundings distasteful to them, and unfit them for the ordinary life and occupations of their people. And therefore I think that only those who show a special aptitude to become teachers should be sent on to the school at the capital to be taught to read and write English. A certain number of clerks are needed, but that number is very limited, and to produce a large number of Dyak clerks for whom there is not sufficient work is surely a mistake. There are some who advocate technical education for the Dyak. No doubt he would with training make an excellent carpenter or smith, but again he would find difficulty in getting work. He would never be able to compete with the Chinese artisan into whose hands all the skilled labour has fallen. The main object of my school in the jungle was to teach Dyak boys for a few years, and then send them back to their own people. Unfortunately, I had not the means to carry this out to any great extent.