Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/300

240 instruction is found to rise and fall with the state of juvenile instruction, and although this is what might have been anticipated on the most obvious grounds, yet the actual correspondence deserves to be distinctly indicated for the sake of the confirmation which it gives to the general accuracy of the numerous details and calculations by which the conclusion has been established.

Although this correspondence is shown to exist, so that in comparing one locality with another, the proportion of adult instruction rises or falls with the proportion of juvenile instruction, yet the proportions are by no means identical. Not only are the proportions not identical, but in comparing the proportion of juvenile instruction in one locality, with the proportion of adult instruction in the same locality, the former is found to be uniformly higher. Still further, the excess in the proportion of juvenile instruction above that of adult instruction is found much higher in the Bengal than in the Behar thanas. These results are explained and confirmed by the conclusion at which we arrived on independent grounds in the early part of this Report, viz., that within a comparatively recent period certain classes of the native population hitherto excluded by usage from vernacular instruction have begun to aspire to its advantages, and that this hitherto unobserved movement in native society has taken place to a greater extent in Bengal than in Behar. Such a movement must apparently have the effect which has been found actually to exist, that of increasing the proportion of juvenile instruction as compared with that of adult instruction and of increasing it in a higher ratio in Bengal than in Behar. The increase is not so great in the city of Moorshedabad as in the Bengal Mofussil thanas.

Second.—In speaking of the total amount of adult instruction very different kitids and degrees of instruction are included under that general term. The attainments of those, both Hindus and Musalmans, who have received a learned education, and who are engaged in the business of teaching, have been already described, and the character of the learned who do not teach does not materially differ except that in general their acquirements are inferior and their poverty greater. They are most frequently engaged in the duties of the priesthood, but I met with two Police Daroghas, one of whom had some pretensions to Hindu and the other to Mahomedan learning. The degree of instruction possessed by those who have not received a learned education, and who are engaged in the business of teaching with attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, will be estimated from the account that has been given of the Bengali, Hindi, and Persian schools which they conduct. The next class composed of those who have neither received a learned education nor are engaged in the business of teaching, but who possess attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, includes