Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/317

Rh management, expenditure, instruction, discipline, correspondence, &c.; and this superintendence would either be adequate or inadequate to the purpose. If inadequate, the schools would be inefficient and would serve other ends than those of public instruction. If adequate, the expense alone would be a valid objection to the plan. The previous table exhibits the total number of children between 14 and five years of age in five thanas of five different districts, and the average number of such children in each thana is 13,307. The highest average number of scholars taught by each teacher, is not quite 25. Suppose each teacher was required previously to teach double that number, not less than 266 teachers will be required to instruct the children of the teachable age in one thana. Five rupees per month must be considered the very lowest rate of allowance for which, under an improved system, the services of a native teacher maybe engaged; and this very low rate would require an expenditure of 1,330 rupees per month, or 15,960 rupees per annum for the teachers of one thana. Besides teachers, school-houses must be built and kept in repair, and books and stationery provided. At least one superintendent or inspector would also be required for such a number of schools, teachers, and scholars; and this apparatus and expenditure would, after all, furnish only the humblest grades of instruction to the teachable population of one thana. The number of thanas in a district varies from nine or ten to sixteen or seventeen, and sometimes extends even to a larger number; and the number of districts in the Bengal Presidency alone amounts to about sixty-six, with a constant tendency to increase by sub-division. On the plan proposed all the expenses of all these teachers, schools, and superintendents in every thana of every district must be defrayed by Government. When the subject of national education shall receive the serious consideration of Government, I do not anticipate that its appropriations will be made with a niggard hand, but the plan now considered involves an expenditure too large, and promises benefits too inconsiderable and too much qualified by attendant evils, to permit its adoption.

Instead of beginning with schools for the lower grades of native society, a system of Government institutions may be advocated that shall provide, in the first place, for the higher classes on the principle that the tendency of knowledge is to descend, not to ascend; and that, with this view, we should at present seek to establish a school at the head-station of every zillah, afterwards pergunnah schools, and last of all village schools, gradually acquiring in the process more numerous and better qualified instruments for the diffusion of education. The primary objection to this plan is that it overlooks entire systems of native educational institutions, Hindu and Mohammadan, which existed long before our rule, and which continue to exist under our rule, independent of us and of our projects, forming and moulding the native character