Education: How to Avoid Frustration

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After waiting more than three months for a passport, Stephen Ramasodi, the 16-year-old South African Negro to whom Kent School in Connecticut had offered a scholarship (TIME, July 25), learned that his hopes for getting away from the land of apartheid were dashed. Said the Ministry of the Interior in a blunt telegram to Stephen's headmaster: "Application for passport refused." The philosophy behind the refusal, according to one government official: "Frankly, Stephen Ramasodi would be taught things he could never use when he came back to South Africa. Why should we let the boy be frustrated by being led to hope for things he can never have in this country?"