Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/338

278 of the book may be too copious, or not sufficiently explanatory; the time allowed for preparation may be too short, or unnecessarily long; the rewards held out may require to be modified or extended. The attention of the examiner will be alive to every circumstance likely to convey a useful hint and will place it on record for his own guidance or for suggestion to his superior authority. According to the greater or less degree of zeal excited among the body of school-masters will be the strictness or laxity of the examinations. If the competition is general and active, the examination will be searching and the rewards bestowed on those only who have made themselves thoroughly competent. If the number of competitors is small and their efforts feeble, the examination will be less strict, and the rewards bestowed on a lower standard of excellence in order to encourage others to appear as candidates. As the plan gains ground throughout the country in public confidence, the rewards will be gradually limited to the highest standard of excellence, consisting in a perfect acquaintance with the contents of the work forming the subject of examination. When on these or similar principles the examiner will have completed the examination of the school-masters of two or three thanas, he will proceed to the next set of thanas, and so on until he has a second time completed the tour of the district. At this period the examiner should be required to make a report containing the results of his experience as to the working of the plan, his opinion of its advantages or disadvantages, and the improvements of which it is susceptible. My expectation is that, by these means judiciously employed in a given number of districts, in a period at the farthest of two years, a body of school-masters would be formed incomparably better instructed in what they all at present profess, more or less, to teach than any equal body of school-masters of the same class now to be found throughout Bengal.

The preceding details contemplate the employment of the first volume only of the proposed series of school-books containing complete instruction in all the branches of a native vernacular education. I assume that this instruction must be at the foundation of all real improvement, for unless the people have a competent knowledge of the forms of composition and accounts universally practised in native society, whatever else they may be taught, they cannot be deemed to have received a practical education, and without that knowledge no native teacher should be recognized as qualified to act in such a capacity. If it should be supposed that the great body of the people do not need and cannot be expected to acquire more than this amount of instruction, and that, therefore, we should be contented with it in their teachers without seeking to carry them any farther, the advantage will still be great of carrying both teachers and people thus far. With the increased attainments of the teachers, and with the respect and