Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/343

Rh checks and guards as will secure their continued zeal, activity, and usefulness. A small endowment of land to each village school-master will answer this description. Such an endowment will be far more earnestly desired than even an assignment on the land-revenue of Government, both because the latter is open to all manner of abuse, and because the former gives more consideration in native society. It will give the village school-master a resting-place and a permanent means of subsistence for life or during good behaviour, and will thus produce both contentment of mind and diligence in the discharge of duty. It will fix his obligations, his interests, and his pleasures in one locality, and thus surround him with the most salutary influences derived from those to whom he will be constantly responsible. It may be added that numerous authorities may be adduced to show, if it were necessary, that under the ancient Hindu village system this has been from time immemorial the mode of remunerating the village servants. On these grounds I propose that small endowments of land should be the means employed to give permanence to the system of vernacular schools, and I will now briefly mention the conditions under which they should be granted and indicate some of the sources from which they may be derived.

The school-masters entitled to claim this endowment shall be those only who have successfully passed through the public and periodical examinations in the four school-books of the series already described; who, during the period in which this has been accomplished, shall have instructed six scholars per annum in any one of those books in such a manner as to enable them to pass through the examinations hereinafter to be prescribed for scholars; who shall farther have passed through a course of instruction in the normal school of the district with approved characters and attainments; and who shall finally receive and produce the written testimony and recommendation of three-fourths of the landowners, tenants, and householders of the villages to which they belong, or in which they propose to settle, and in which the endowment is to be situated. A lower degree of qualification cannot be required with a view to their future efficiency; and so high a degree of qualification will, for some time, prevent any considerable number of candidates for this reward from making their appearance, although in prospect it will produce its effect even upon those who may never reach the object of their ambition.

The endowment is to consist of land belonging to the lands of the village in which the incumbent is to exercise his vocation, the quantity of land to be determined by the value per bigha, and the total value not to exceed one-half of the ascertained average annual income of a vernacular teacher in that district. Thus the mean rate of payment to such a teacher in the city and district of Moorshedabad, as shown at page 177, is rupees 4-12-9, or to allow for unascertained sources of profit, say, rupees 5 per month, or