Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/302

242 The first column exhibits the number of Bengali or Hindi and Persian teachers in the localities where a census of the population was taken; the second, the number of their scholars; and the third, the average number of scholars to each teacher. From these, it appears that the existing bodies of teachers in those localities are not sufficiently employed, and that the same number of teachers could instruct a much larger number of scholars. The highest average number of scholars to one teacher is in the Culna thana of the Burdwan district; and if the other averages were raised only as high, a large addition would be made to the instructed children of the teachable age without any other instrumentality than that which is now engaged in the business of teaching.

The fourth column contains the number of those adults 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, constituting the most cultivated portion of the middle class of native society from which instruments must chiefly be drawn for the improvement of that class and of the classes below it. The fifth column exhibits from the table contained in page 110 the number of children of the teachable age, i. e., between 14 and five years, who receive neither domestic nor school instruction, constituting the class which needs the instruction that the preceding class is qualified to bestow. The sixth column shows the average number of children of the teachable age without instruction to each of the instructed adults capable of but not actually engaged in teaching, showing that if the whole number of uninstructed children were distributed among the instructed adults for the purpose of being taught, the number of the latter, particularly in the city of Moorshedabad and in the Culna thana of the Burdwan district, would be far more than sufficient to teach them all. This is on the supposition that the entire number of instructed adults could be spared from the other purposes of civil life to be employed solely in the business of teaching, but this supposition is as unnecessary as it is inadmissible, since especially in the two localities mentioned it is obvious that there would be a large surplus of instrumentality for the object required. The only locality of those enumerated in which there would apparently be no such surplus is the Bhawara thana of the Tirboot district where the number of instructed adults would, in the present state of things, even if they did nothing else, be barely sufficient to teach the children who are destitute of instruction.

According to these views the teachers of common schools, and those who in native society possess analogous qualifications, are the classes from which instruments must chiefly be drawn to promote general education, but these classes in their present state