Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/337

Rh Sub-Committee appointed for that purpose, and by the examiner. These distinctions will have a practical value also by raising the approved teachers in the estimation of the native community, and thereby increasing their emoluments.

Other rewards to be bestowed according to the progressive qualifications of the teachers and scholars, such as eligibility to a course of instruction in the Normal School of the district, to a course of instruction in the English School of the District and ultimately to the possession of a permanent endowment, will be detailed hereafter.

Having with every necessary explanation and encouragement distributed books to all teachers of good character desirous of receiving them, the examiner will next proceed in the beginning of the following month to some central point of some two or three other thanas of the same district. There, according to previous invitations and arrangements, he will meet the native school-masters of those thanas, and will go over precisely the same ground with them as in the preceding instance. Thence he will proceed in the beginning of the next month to another set of thanas, so as to traverse the whole district in six months. If the district contains twelve or a smaller number of thanas, the arrangement may be made with one or two per month; if more than twelve and not more than eighteen, with two or three per month; and if more than eighteen, an arrangement adapted to the peculiarity of the case may easily be devised. In Moorshedabad, which contains in all thirty-seven thanas, it will be advisable to assign one examiner to the city and another to the district; and in like manner one to Calcutta and another to the 24-Pergunnahs. If the district is too large to be traversed by the examiner, with the requisite delays in six months; or if the book distributed is too large or too difficult to be mastered by the teachers in the same period, a twelve month may be allowed. No good will arise from prematurely urging to completion any part of the process. The plan must be allowed to work into the minds of the native community and to obtain gradually a firm place in their confidence.

I will now suppose that after the lapse of six or twelve months the examiner has returned to the point from which he set out, having in the previous month by a formal notice reminded the school-masters who had received books of their engagement to attend for examination. Distrust, indolence, sickness, death, will doubtless cause the absence of some. Others who do attend will be badly prepared for examination, and the best but indifferently. But under every discouragement the plan should be steadily and kindly prosecuted, the school-masters being treated as grown-up children, now needing reproof and now encouragement. The examiner will find that he has much to learn from them as to the best modes of giving effect to the intentions of Government. The style of the book may be too high or too low; the matter