Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/161

Rh tion. No one will deny that a knowledge of Bengali writing and of native accounts is requisite to natives of Bengal; but when these are made the substance and sum of popular instruction and knowledge, the popular mind is necessarily cabined, cribbed, and confined within the smallest possible range of ideas, and those of the most limited local and temporary interest, and it fails even to acquire those habits of accuracy and precision which the exclusive devotion to forms of calculation might seem fitted to produce. What is wanted is something to awaken and expand the mind, to unshackle it from the trammels of mere usage, and to teach it to employ its own powers; and, for such purposes, the introduction into the system of common instruction of some branch of knowledge in itself perfectly useless (if such a one could be found,) would at least rouse and interest by its novelty, and in this way be of some benefit. Of course the benefit would be much greater if the supposed new branch of knowledge were of a useful tendency, stimulating the mind to the increased observation and comparison of external objects, and throwing it back upon itself with a large stock of materials for thought. A higher intellectual cultivation however is not all that is required. That to be beneficial to the individual and to society must be accompanied by the cultivation of the moral sentiments and habits. Here the native system presents a perfect blank. The hand, the eye, and the ear, are employed; the memory is a good deal exercised; the judgment is not wholly neglected; and the religious sentiment is early and perseveringly cherished, however misdirected. But the passions and affections are allowed to grow up wild without any thought of pruning their luxuriances or directing their exercise to good purposes. Hence, I am inclined to believe, the infrequency in native society of enlarged views of moral and social obligation, and hence the corresponding radical defect of the native character which appears to be that of a narrow and contracted selfishness, naturally arising from the fact that the young mind is seldom, if ever, taught to look for the means of its own happiness and improvement in the indulgence of benevolent feelings and the performance of benevolent acts to those who are beyond a certain pale. The radical defect of the system of elementary instruction seems to explain the radical defect of the native character; and if I have rightly estimated cause and effect, it follows that no material improvement of the native character can be expected, and no improvement whatever of the system of elementary education will be sufficient, without a large infusion into it of moral instruction that shall always connect in the mind of the pupil, with the knowledge which he acquires, some useful purpose to which it may be and ought to be applied, not necessarily productive of personal gain or advantage to himself.

2. Elementary Persian Schools.—The Persian schools in Nattore are four in number, containing twenty-three scholars,