Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/16

2 is surely laid in the establishment of those schools;” they were all conducted on the Bell and Lancaster system, which Mr. May had introduced into them with great success. Government availed itself of the services of Messrs. Pearson and Harley, who were Missionaries, to establish a number of Vernacular Schools between and. Crowds attended the schools, but their efforts, through not having suitable successors, were not followed up. Yet the seeds of knowledge they sowed in the Vernacular have fructified into the English schools which are now in Chinsura. Some of the best Educational Works in the Vernacular were composed for those schools. In 1819 Messrs. Pearson and Harley had under their superintendence at Chinsura seventeen schools and 1,500 children; at twelve schools and 1,266 children, all conducted on the Madras system, and supported by Government at an expense per mensem of Rupees 800. Dr. Bell’s “Instructions for modelling schools” were translated and introduced, Mr. Pearson writes—“I have heard it spoken of by the Natives as wonderful to see a boy in tears at losing his place in the class.” The Court of Directors made a special grant to those schools, in which the pupils learned more rapidly than in the common schools.

Lushington, in his “History of Calcutta Institutions” gives the following notice of Mr. May’s exertions:—

“At the beginning of July 1811, this benevolent and meritorious individual, while residing at Chinsura as a Dissenting minister, with a very narrow income, opened a school in his dwelling-house, proposing gratuitously to teach the natives reading, writing, and arithmetic. On the first day sixteen boys attended. In the course of the month of August the scholars became too numerous to be accommodated under his lowly roof; a spacious apartment being allotted to him in the Fort by Mr. Forbes, the Commissioner of Chinsura, the list of attendance at the commencement of October had swelled to ninety-two. In January 1815 Mr. May opened a village or branch school, at a short distance from Chinsura, and in the following month of June, not twelve months since the commencement of his undertaking, he had established sixteen schools, including the central one at Chinsura, to which 951 pupils resorted.

“Mr. May encountered some slight impediments in the commencement of his labours from the prejudices of the natives; chiefly, however, among the old teachers of the indigenous schools, who, from interested motives, naturally did not fail to foment the apprehensions at first entertained by some, that he intended to convert them to Christianity. His wise and conciliatory measures, however, soon removed distrust from their minds, and satisfied them that he meditated no interference with their religious opinions. The objection of the school-masters did not long exist, for the extension of the branch schools on the new principle, ultimately created a demand for additional teachers, who were, in many cases, provided from the class above mentioned. Although the opposition alluded to was ultimately overcome, it must not be supposed that the establishment of the schools was achieved without considerable difficulty: the introduction alone of a new plan of education among an ignorant people, notorious for their indolence, apathy, and attachment to established habits, involving frequent journeys, visits, and conferences, effected in an hostile climate, and with very imperfect accommodation, required no common