Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/322

262 or without reason, been abandoned. It was, I believe, under Lord Moira’s government that the Ajmere native schools were established and the Chinsurah native schools patronized by Government, but both have proved signal failures, and Government support has been withdrawn from them; the grand mistake being that new schools were formed subject to all the objections that have been described in another place, instead of the old schools and school-masters of the country that enjoyed, and still enjoy, the confidence of the people, being employed as the instruments of the desired improvements. The only other attempt known to me on this side of India to improve the system of vernacular instruction on a considerable scale unconnected with religion was that made by the Calcutta School Society, which received the special approbation of the Court of Directors. In 1825, in confirming the grant of 500 rupees per month which had been made to this Society by the Local Government, the Court made the following remarks:—“The Calcutta School Society appears to combine with its arrangements for giving elementary instruction, an arrangement of still greater importance for educating teachers for the indigenous schools. This last object we deem worthy of great encouragement, since it is upon the character of the indigenous schools that the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. By training up, therefore, a class of teachers, you provide for the eventual extension of improved education to a portion of the natives of India far exceeding that which any elementary instruction that could be immediately bestowed would have any chance of reaching.” The plan of the Calcutta School Society so highly approved was that of stimulating teachers and scholars by public examinations and rewards, and although it was very limited in its application, and very imperfect in its details, the effects upon tha state of vernacular instruction in Calcutta were for a time highly beneficial. Yet the plan has been relinquished, the Society has ceased to exist, and the donation of Government, confirmed by the Court of Directors on the grounds above stated continues to be drawn by the nominal secretary and is now applied to the support of an English school and to the gratuitous education of thirty students of the Hindu College. It is evident, therefore, that in proposing to lay the foundations of national education by improving and extending the system of vernacular instruction, and to improve and extend that system, not by forming new and independent schools, but by employing the agency of the long-established institutions of the country, I am proposing nothing new. It is necessary only that we should retrace our steps, and, taught by past experience, start again from the position we occupied twenty years ago. In 1815 Lord Moira saw the necessity, either by superintendence or by contribution, of improving and diffusing the existing tuition afforded by village school-masters; and in 1825 the Court of Directors, by deeds as well as by words,