Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/354

294 plan, to extend the improved instruction, and to stimulate and aid the teachers in the interval before they can become eligible to hold a village-school endowment. That interval will probably extend to a period of four years which will be occupied in acquiring a knowledge of the series of school-books, and in passing through a course of normal instruction. But the vernacular school-masters are poor men, and they must teach as well as learn, nor will they learn the less successfully because their circumstances compel them to make immediate use from year to year of the new knowledge they acquire. What is proposed, then, is to devise some means of assisting and encouraging them in the exercise of their profession,—some means not merely of improving their qualifications, but of extending the utility of the instruments thus obtained and fashioned.

For this purpose I must revert to the point at which it was assumed that, on the occasion of the first periodical examination, a body of native teachers had established their competency in the first book which had been put into their hands six months before, and had received the second volume of the series of school-books in which they were invited to qualify themselves still further. I have proposed also on the same occasion to give to each approved teacher on loan and for the use of his scholars from three to twelve copies of the first book of the series, with the engagement on his part to produce six months thereafter from three to twelve pupils, according to the number of copies, thoroughly instructed in its contents and capable of standing a searching examination similar to that through which the teacher himself has passed. The inducements to accept and employ these copies are various. First, they are offered on loan, not to the scholars, but to the teacher who may sell the use of the books, as well as his own instruction to the scholars or their parents, and thus increase his emoluments. Second, they will become the absolute property of the teacher for future similar use, only by producing an equal number of instructed scholars. Third the teacher will receive a corresponding number of copies of the second book of the series on loan and for the use of scholars, only if he shall be found to have made a proper use of those copies of the first received for the same purpose. Fourth, one of the qualifications for an endowment is that the teacher shall have instructed six scholars per annum in some one of the books of the series in such a manner as shall enable them to sustain an examination; and to strengthen this inducement and insure justice, the name, age, and caste of the teacher whose scholars have passed, their and his place of residence, the book in which they have qualified themselves and the date of their examination should be recorded. Fifth, a strong additional motive might be presented to the teacher by offering him one rupee for every instructed scholar produced not exceeding six or twelve; but, for the reasons already assigned, I would, if possible, avoid money-payments.