Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/159

Rh addition and subtraction, but multiplication and division are not taught as separate rules,—all the arithmetical processes hereafter mentioned being effected by addition and subtraction, with the aid of a multiplication table which extends to the number 20, and which is repeated aloud once every morning by the whole school and is thus acquired not as a separate task by each boy, but by the mere force of joint repetition and mutual imitation. After addition and subtraction, the arithmetical rules taught divide themselves into two classes, agricultural and commercial, in one or both of which instruction is given more or less fully according to the capacity of the teacher and the wishes of the parents. The rules applied to agricultural accounts explain the forms of keeping debit and credit accounts; the calculation of the value of daily or monthly labor at a given monthly or annual rate; the calculation of the area of land whose sides measure a given number of kathas or bighas; the description of the boundaries of land and the determination of its length, breadth, and contents; and the form of revenue accounts for a given quantity of land. There are numerous other forms of agricultural account, but no others appear to be taught in the schools of this district. The rules of commercial accounts explain the mode of calculating the value of a given number of sers at a given price per maund; the price of a given number of quarters and chataks at a given price per ser; the price of a tola at a given rate per chatak; the number of cowries in a given number of annas at a given number of cowries per rupee; the interest of money and the discount chargeable on the exchange of the inferior sorts of rupees. There are other forms of commercial account also in common use, but they are not taught in the schools. The fourth and last stage of instruction generally includes a period of two years, often less and seldom more. The accounts briefly and superficially taught in the preceding stage are now taught more thoroughly and at greater length, and this is accompanied by the composition of business letters, petitions, grants, leases, acceptances, notes of hand, &c., together with the forms of address belonging to the different grades of rank and station. When the scholars have written on paper about a year, they are considered qualified to engage in the unassisted perusal of Bengali works, and they often read at home such productions as the translation of the Ramayana, Manasa Mangal, &c., &c.

This sketch of a course of Bengali instruction must be regarded rather as what it is intended to be than what it is, for most of the school-masters whom I have seen, as far as I could judge from necessarily brief and limited opportunities of observation, were unqualified to give all the instruction here described, although I have thus placed the amount of their pretensions on record. All, however, do not even pretend to teach the whole of what is here enumerated; some, as will be seen from Table II.,