Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/341

Rh recently formed and are every year increasing in number under the management of the General Committee of Public Instruction. For some years the plan of the committee has been to establish an English school at the head station of every district; and within the last two years, with the growing conviction of the importance of cultivating the language of the people, a vernacular department has been attached to each institution. The manner in which I would link the English school with the established vernacular schools will afterwards be shown. It is the vernacular department of the English school that I would propose gradually to form and mature into a normal school for native teachers, answering every purpose which that department now does, and at the same time affording both instruction and example to native teachers in the art of teaching. The qualifications of the teachers appointed to the vernacular department or normal school should be estimated and the whole discipline framed with a distinct view to this important purpose.

I am not prepared to speak with confidence of the extent to which the instruction offered in normal schools would be sought by native teachers. In every district there are certain months of the year—in different districts and in different years the months vary—when it would be more convenient to the teachers to attend than in other months. A general failure of the crops of any season would have the effect of closing many schools from the inability of parents to pay for their children’s schooling; and the failure of any particular crop in a district would have a local and temporary effect of the same kind. On such occasions many teachers would probably be glad to attend the normal school for regular practical instruction in their profession; while at other times when crops are abundant and parents able to pay, they would be unwilling to relinquish the profits, and we should not seek to draw them from the duties of their vocation. The normal school, therefore, should be open to native teachers throughout the year, and it should not surprise or disappoint us if for months in succession, or even for a whole year, none should appear to receive instruction. To stimulate their attendance, two expedients may be legitimately adopted. One is that all native teachers shall not be permitted indiscriminately to attend the normal school, but only those who have evinced such industry and devotion to their profession as shall have enabled them to pass successfully through at least one of the periodical examinations. It will thus be a favor, and therefore an object of desire, or rather a reward bestowed on merit, and therefore an object of ambition. It will probably have the double effect of stimulating a greater number of teachers to appear as candidates for examination and a greater number of successful candidates to seek the advantages of instruction in the normal school. In other words, it will both be a motive and an end, an auxiliary to success, and in itself the success which is sought. A